Cultural Differences Related to Emotion Socialization among Children
Emotional socialization among children is determined to a large extent by the cultural environment in which the child is raised (Raval & Walker, 2019). The most common agents of socialization to which individuals are exposed from a young age include family (mother, father, brothers, sisters, grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts) and peers (neighbors, teachers, friends at school or church or daycare) and media representations (kids’ shows, cartoons, movies). As Chen, Zhou, Main and Lee (2015 show, socialization agents include people in one’s environment, people in media and people in one’s family. The media can be especially important because even if they are just make-believe cartoon characters, they still represent a socialization agent for the child. Over time these socialization agents will change, of course. The individual child will stop relying so much on family and start focusing more on technology or mass media or peers or school or religion for socialization. Inherent in each of these agents, however, is an aspect of culture. Family is probably the most important agent of socialization in the younger stages of development, but once the individual begins to have a sense of independence, that socialization process kicks over into a different direction and the individual wants to be more accepted in other groups than just one’s family. So a church group or a school group or a work group or a street group or any other kind of group might be more appealing to the person and so they become a more powerful socialization agent for the individual.

Some of the cues and behaviors that individuals learn through the socialization process across their life span include what to believe about religion, what to think about politics, how to view gender roles or how to view different races or ethnicities. For children, the emotions and the regulation of the emotions are the main behaviors that are learned through socialization (Raval & Walker, 2019). Children perceive how others react in certain situations, and they imitate their behavioral responses often in similar contexts and situations (Raval & Walker, 2019). They are especially attentive to how their parents demonstrate emotion, which is why there are two main parental emotional socialization strategies that parents typically use: their emotional expressiveness and their reactions to children’s emotional responses—i.e., whether their reactions are supportive of their child’s emotions, or non-supportive (Brown, Craig & Halberstadt, 2015). Chen et al. (2015) note even that “though parents of different cultures may vary in their patterns of emotional expression…the effects of parents’ emotional expression on children’s development appear to be consistent across cultures” (p. 619). In other words, it is a universal phenomenon that parents are able to impact the development of the child’s emotional socialization ability.

The extent to which children are able to regulate their emotions is determined, therefore, to a large extent by how their parents regulate their own emotions and the degree to which the parents are supportive of their children’s emotions. While self-regulation of the emotions can be quite difficult for children to achieve in short order, the more love, affection, support and guidance they receive the more likely they are to develop regulatory skills that enable them to control their emotions in a positive manner. There is also the idea that social learning comes into play in this learning process, as social learning theory holds that children learn from watching others—i.e., by the way people act, talk, socialize and so on (Chen et al., 2015).

Culture also plays a part in the process, however, as Raval...…than they would in a familiar home. Time of day may also impact the emotion socialization process, which parents and children both negotiating the process differently depending on whether they are tired, hungry, whether parents themselves are worn out or feeling as though they are not getting the love and support they themselves need to assist their children effectively in their own emotion socialization development.

The main takeaway from these articles is that as children learn to understand and cope with their own emotions, they begin to develop a sense of the cultural demands and expectations that are associated with behavioral responses—even if they are unable to articulate this association or to fully understand that this is what is happening. They begin to connect place or environment with emotional conduct: church is a setting in which they are expected to self-regulate their emotions in a manner that is different from a play area environment in which they are allowed more freedom of expression, including various feelings such as anger, joy, sadness, and so on. The extent to which parents are universally more patient or tolerant towards children’s emotions is also informed by their sense of place and the cultural expectations that are associated with behavior in these environments. Parents may react more harshly towards children who misbehave in a setting that demands no nonsense. They may react with more love and affection in a setting where a range of feelings is permitted and accepted, culturally speaking. In their own homes, however, they may react depending on their own cultural orientation, gender and the gender of the child (Brown et al., 2015; Chen et al., 2015; Raval & Walker)—and they will also have expectations that stem from how they want the child to manage his or her emotions.