Maternal Meta-Emotion and Child Socioemotional Functioning in Immigrant Indian and White American Families

Socialization of emotion is implicated in a variety of child outcomes, yet few studies have examined parental emotion socialization in ethnic minority families in the United States. In this study, we compared Indian immigrant (n = 40) and White American (n = 54) mothers' parental meta-emotion philosophies using the Parental Meta-Emotion Interview (Katz & Gottman, 1996) to specifically examine how differences in these philosophies may be related to reports of social competence and behavior problems in school-age children. Results showed that White American mothers were rated significantly higher than were Indian mothers in emotion coaching, awareness of their own and their child's emotions, acceptance of their own emotions, and regulation of their own emotions; however bivariate correlations indicated that emotion coaching was positively related to mother-rated child social competence and inversely related to mother-rated child externalizing behaviors for White Americans, whereas it was unrelated to child outcomes for Indian families. Moderation and simple slope analysis revealed that the interaction between ethnicity and mothers' regulation of her own emotions significantly predicted child behavioral problems, such that mothers' regulation of her own emotions was inversely related to child behavior problems for Indian mothers, whereas there was no relationship for White American mothers.