Cultural Differences in Emotion Socialization Among Children

Introduction: Agents of Emotion Socialization

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, and aunts), peers (neighbors, teachers, and friends at school, church, or daycare), and media representations (children's shows, cartoons, and 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. Media can be especially important because even if they feature make-believe cartoon characters, they still function as a socialization agent for the child.

Over time, these socialization agents change. The individual child will rely less on family and begin focusing more on technology, mass media, peers, 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 develop a sense of independence, that socialization process shifts in a new direction. The individual seeks acceptance in groups beyond the family — whether a church group, school group, work group, or any other social community — and those groups become increasingly powerful socialization agents.

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, and how to view different races or ethnicities. For children, emotions and the regulation of emotions are the main behaviors learned through socialization (Raval & Walker, 2019). Children observe how others react in certain situations and frequently imitate those behavioral responses in similar contexts (Raval & Walker, 2019). They are especially attentive to how their parents demonstrate emotion, which is why researchers identify two main parental emotional socialization strategies: emotional expressiveness and reactions to children's emotional responses — that is, whether those reactions are supportive or non-supportive of the child's emotions (Brown, Craig, & Halberstadt, 2015). As Chen et al. (2015) note, "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 influence the development of a child's emotional socialization.

Parental Influence and Emotional Regulation

The extent to which children are able to regulate their emotions is determined, to a large extent, by how their parents regulate their own emotions and the degree to which parents are supportive of their children's feelings. While self-regulation of emotions can be quite difficult for children to achieve quickly, the more love, affection, support, and guidance they receive, the more likely they are to develop regulatory skills that allow them to manage their emotions in a positive manner. Social learning also plays an important role in this process: social learning theory holds that children learn from watching others — by observing the way people act, talk, and socialize (Chen et al., 2015).

Children perceive parental behavior closely, and this observation-based learning means that parents who model healthy emotional expression provide a template their children can internalize. When parents respond to their children's emotional displays with warmth and validation, those children are more likely to develop confident emotional self-awareness. Conversely, non-supportive or dismissive parental reactions may hinder a child's emotional development by communicating that certain feelings are unacceptable or shameful.

The Role of Culture in Emotional Development

Culture plays a significant part in the emotion socialization process, as Raval and Walker (2019) demonstrate. Their research examines the social and emotional competence of children, peer relationships, self-esteem levels, and the ways in which children internalize and externalize their feelings, then connects all of this with the cultural inputs children receive from their caregivers. As familial cultures differ across populations, they find that "caregiver emotion socialization behaviors that are associated with adaptive child outcomes in White middle-class families… may not be related to adaptive child functioning in other cultural groups" (Raval & Walker, 2019, p. 146). This finding indicates that other cultures are likely to have their own emotion socialization cues and expressions that shape children's development in distinct ways.

Understanding emotion socialization through a cultural lens thus requires moving beyond assumptions derived from any single population. The dominant frameworks used to study parenting and child emotional outcomes have historically centered Western, middle-class families, which may limit their generalizability. Cultural variation in emotional display rules, expectations about emotional restraint or expressiveness, and the degree to which children are encouraged to verbalize feelings all contribute to divergent developmental pathways across communities.

Conclusion: Cultural Expectations and Emotional Conduct

The main takeaway from these studies 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 associated with behavioral responses — even if they are unable to articulate this association or fully recognize that it is happening. They begin to connect place and environment with emotional conduct: a church setting calls for a different kind of emotional self-regulation than a play area, where children are given more freedom to express a full range of feelings, including anger, joy, and sadness.

The extent to which parents are patient or tolerant toward children's emotions is also informed by their own sense of place and the cultural norms associated with behavior in particular environments. Parents may react more harshly toward children who act out in a setting that demands composure. They may respond with more warmth and affection in settings where a range of feelings is culturally permitted and accepted. In their own homes, parental reactions will depend on their cultural orientation, their gender, and the gender of the child (Brown et al., 2015; Chen et al., 2015; Raval & Walker, 2019) — along with their own expectations about how the child should manage his or her emotions. Taken together, these findings underscore that emotion socialization is not a uniform process but a richly varied, culturally embedded one that continues to evolve as both parents and children grow.

References

Brown, G. L., Craig, A. B., & Halberstadt, A. G. (2015). Parent gender differences in emotion socialization behaviors vary by ethnicity and child gender. Parenting, 15(3), 135–157.

Chen, S. H., Zhou, Q., Main, A., & Lee, E. H. (2015). Chinese American immigrant parents' emotional expression in the family: Relations with parents' cultural orientations and children's emotion-related regulation. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 21(4), 619.

Raval, V. V., & Walker, B. L. (2019). Unpacking 'culture': Caregiver socialization of emotion and child functioning in diverse families. Developmental Review, 51, 146–174.