A cross-sectional analysis of mothers' ability to recognize expressed facial emotions in children and its association with maternal alexithymia, depression, parenting styles, and practices

Background: The ability to recognize emotional facial expressions (EFEs) is an important skill for a mother and may impact her parenting. This ability is innate but affected by multiple factors. Aims: This study aims to study the mother's ability to recognize a child's facial emotions and its association with present depressive symptoms, alexithymia, parenting practices, and styles. Materials and Methods: Seventy-five mothers of children being evaluated for academic problems were assessed through purposive sampling at a tertiary care child guidance clinic. The mothers completed the National Institute for Mental Health Child Emotional Faces Picture test, Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ), Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS), Coping with children's negative emotions scale, and Parenting style questionnaire. Statistical Analysis: Statistical Program for Social Science (SPSS Version 21) for Windows was used. Descriptive analysis was carried out using mean and standard deviation. Other tests used for analysis were Student's t-test, ANOVA, Pearson's Product Moment, and Spearman's rho. Results: The proportion of EFEs correct responses (PC) was 0.776. The happy EFE had the highest PC and neutral the least. PC of happy EFE correlated positively with emotion-focused reactions and inversely with TAS score and authoritative parenting. PC of sad EFE correlated inversely with TAS subscale of difficulty identifying emotions and positively with expressive encouragement and authoritative style of parenting. PC of angry EFE correlated with expressive encouragement and inversely with distress and minimization reactions. PC of afraid EFE inversely correlated with TAS score, PHQ-9 total score, punitive and distress reactions, and authoritarian parenting and positively with expressive encouragement. PC of neutral EFE correlated with TAS score, minimization reactions, and authoritative parenting style. Conclusions: Impairments in EFE recognition affect mother's parenting styles and practices. Alexithymia and depressive symptoms can affect the ability to correctly identify EFEs.