Sociodemographic disadvantage is a stressor related with unsupportive parenting practices, but little is known about the process by which it may undermine early parental emotion socialization. In the current study, we examined (1) the direct association between sociodemographic risk and supportive emotion socialization and (2) possible indirect effects via psychological distress and mother-oriented cry processing (i.e., negative cognitions about crying) in a short-term 3-wave longitudinal study that followed a stratified sample of 259 first-time mothers from pregnancy through 14-months postpartum. Sociodemographic risk included mothers’ age, education, and income reported by the expectant mothers prenatally. Psychological distress was assessed prior to the 6-month laboratory visit using mothers’ reports on depressive symptoms, difficulty regulating emotions, and trait positive and negative emotions. During the 6-month laboratory visit, mother-oriented cry processing was assessed using a video-recall procedure. Supportive emotion socialization at 14 months was assessed based on observer-rated maternal sensitivity during two distress eliciting tasks and maternal reports. Consistent with prediction, the first indirect pathway from higher sociodemographic disadvantage to lower supportive emotional socialization through higher mother-oriented cry processing was statistically significant, however the second indirect pathway from higher sociodemographic disadvantage to higher psychological distress to higher mother-oriented cry processing to lower supportive emotion socialization was not. Over and above these indirect effects, higher sociodemographic disadvantage was directly associated with lower supportive emotion socialization. Psychological distress was not significantly directly associated with emotion socialization. These findings highlight the importance of policies and interventions that provide financial assistance to the mothers experiencing sociodemographic disadvantage and target their psychological wellbeing.
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Previous research suggests that socialization of emotions during the early years of life has significant long-term impacts on various child outcomes including social and emotional competence, self-esteem, anxiety, and behavioral self-control (Denham et al., 2000; Ramsden & Hubbard, 2002). Given that parents are the primary emotion socialization agents for young children, identifying factors that enhance or constrain parenting quality is of high practical value. Yet, some families are at heightened risk for engaging in poor emotion socialization parenting behaviors. Sociodemographic disadvantage, a multidimensional construct including parents’ age, education, and income levels, has consistently been demonstrated to undermine the quality of parent-child interactions such that parents experiencing sociodemographic risk are more likely to use harsh discipline and less likely to engage in verbal interactions with children and to provide them with stimulating home environment (Cooper & Stewart, 2021; McLoyd, 1998; Hart & Risley, 1995; Magnuson & Duncan, 2019). The deleterious impact of sociodemographic disadvantage on parenting outcomes occurs indirectly through several factors. One such factor highlighted in the Family Stress Model (Conger & Conger, 2002) that has received a great deal of empirical support is parental psychological distress (Masarik & Conger, 2017). Although there is some evidence that factors reflecting socioeconomic disadvantage predict parents’ engagement in less adaptive emotion socialization practices (Leerkes et al., 2020; Shaffer et al., 2012), efforts to identify intervening mechanisms have been scant. Hence, in the present study, we apply the Family Stress Model to identify intervening mechanisms that explain the association between sociodemographic risk and mothers’ less supportive emotion socialization when their children are toddlers. Further, we extend the Family Stress Model by integrating it with core principles from the Social Information Processing (Lemerise & Arsenio, 2000) by introducing mothers’ negative social cognitions about toddler crying as an additional factor in the model. Moreover, most of this research is cross-sectional thereby limiting the capacity to draw causal inferences and the model is widely tested on families with adolescents, but there is a dearth of studies on younger children (Gard et al., 2020a, 2020b). Given the importance of emotion socialization practices during early childhood (Sanders et al., 2015) and the salient influence of parent’s psychopathology on children during early childhood (Goodman et al., 2011), it is important to test the model on parents with young children and in the domain of emotion socialization. To our knowledge, no study to date has applied the Family Stress Model to identify pathways by which sociodemographic factors predict mothers’ supportive emotion socialization in early childhood. The current paper aims to fill this gap by examining the association between sociodemographic risk and supportive emotion socialization and possible indirect effects via psychological distress and mother-oriented cry processing.
Emotion Socialization
According to Eisenberg and colleagues (1998), emotion socialization encompasses parenting behaviors, beliefs, goals, and values related to their children’s awareness, meaning-making, expression, and regulation of emotion. Emotion socialization is an important aspect of parenting and is a strong predictor of children’s social-emotional outcomes, not only in early years but throughout the lifespan (Denham et al., 2000). In the emotion socialization literature, specific focus is given to parent-child interactions that occur when children display negative emotions since the inability to regulate negative emotion can impede children’s social and emotional competence. There is heterogeneity in the way parents respond to their children’s emotions, ranging from supportive to nonsupportive behaviors (Fabes et al., 2002). Supportive responses include providing comfort when children express negative emotions, helping children solve the situation/problem that caused distress, and encouraging children’s emotion expressiveness. In contrast, nonsupportive responses include dismissing/minimizing children’s negative emotions, punishing children for displaying negative emotions, and getting upset in response to the child’s negative emotions. Consistent with Eisenberg and colleagues (1998) framework, robust findings have evidenced the association between emotion socialization and children’s social-emotional and behavior outcomes (Suveg et al., 2011). Specifically, parents’ supportive responses to children’s negative emotion predict children’s socioemotional competence (Mirabile et al. 2018), whereas nonsupportive responses to children’s negative emotions predict emotion dysregulation, behavior problems, and lower social competence (McElwain et al., 2007). Thus, identifying the predictors of supportive emotion socialization is important in order to promote children’s social-emotional competence.
Family Stress Model Pathways Linking SES to Emotion Socialization
The Family Stress Model suggests that economic pressure constrains parents’ ability to engage in supportive parenting practices through different mechanisms (Conger & Conger, 2002). Indeed, prior research has shown that economic hardship affects the well-being of individual family members and their functioning as a whole by creating daily hassles and pressure due to the limited availability of resources (Masarik & Conger, 2017). These daily stress experiences, such as the inability to pay monthly bills, increase parental psychological stress (Landers-Potts et al., 2015). In turn, parenting stress leads to less sensitive and more unsupportive parenting practices (Magnuson & Duncan, 2002). Importantly, families can experience acute financial stress, such as job loss, as well as chronic financial stress, such as low per capita income and both acute, which can disrupt family functioning predicting poor child outcomes over time (Conger et al., 2002).
Sociodemographic Risk and Emotion Socialization
Sociodemographic risk may have direct effects on less supportive emotion socialization for several reasons. The stress and challenges associated with sociodemographic risk appear to hinder key components of socialization of emotions, such as parents’ emotion-related conversations, expression of their own emotions, and response to children’s emotions. Consistent with this view, prior research demonstrates limited emotion-related conversations in low-income families (Garrett-Peters et al., 2008). Additionally, there are other demographic risk factors that can impede supportive parenting, such as younger age and lower education level. Prior research found that the less educated, younger mothers with lower income were less likely to engage in supportive emotion-related conversations with their young children and less likely to promote emotion expressiveness in their children as compared to more educated, older mothers with higher income (Raikes & Thompson, 2008; Shaffer et al., 2012). Older and more educated mothers tend to have more parenting knowledge about children’s needs, which predicts positive parent-child interactions (Augustine et al., 2009). More educated mothers also tend to have access to more social, cognitive, and psychological resources that assist them to effectively manage parenting demands (Augustine et al., 2009).
Prior research about the antecedents of emotion socialization has tended to treat sociodemographic factors as covariates (Nelson et al., 2009). For example, a prior study with the current sample focused on examining the association between mothers’ own remembered childhood emotion socialization and emotion socialization via cry processing and specified socioeconomic status as a covariate in the model (Leerkes et al., 2020). However, socioeconomic status, included only as a covariate in the study was the single strongest predictor of supportive emotion socialization. Given this robust association, it is imperative to understand the pathways and mechanisms by which sociodemographic risk predicts emotion socialization.
Sociodemographic Risk and Psychological Distress
Sociodemographic risk factors such as lower parents’ income, age, and educational level are well-established factors influencing the psychological well-being of mothers (Hatch & Dohrenwend, 2007). Consistent with the assertion of the Family Stress Model that socioeconomic disadvantage predicts more risk of psychological stress among parents, mothers with low-income levels, lower levels of education, and who are younger during their first postpartum year are shown to be at greater risk for psychological distress including postpartum depression, depression, and anxiety (Adynski et al., 2019). Poverty can make the home environment stressful, and exposure to these acute and chronic stressors undermines parents’ coping abilities which in turn leads to psychological distress among parents (Newland et al., 2013). Extensive literature has focused on the individual factors associated with poverty and have found low-education and young age as salient risk factors that are more prevalent in families living in poverty than the families not living in poverty (Brady et al., 2017). These markers of sociodemographic disadvantage can have a profound impact on family functioning since one of the key mechanisms through which their deleterious effect is transmitted in families is through mothers’ lower psychological well-being (Conger et al., 2002).
Indirect Effects via Psychological Distress
Prior research also supports our contention that elevated psychological distress stemming from sociodemographic disadvantage contributes to less supportive emotion socialization. The symptoms associated with depression, such as fatigue, irritability, and sadness, hinder mothers’ capacity to be psychologically available for their children and make them more prone to misinterpret the child’s signals during their interactions (Havighurst & Kehoe, 2017). Mothers of young children with elevated depressive and/or anxiety symptoms have been observed to be less responsive and more withdrawn and detached in response to infant/toddler cues (Bertie et al., 2021) and also more negative, hostile, and punitive in response to infant/toddler cues (Premo & Kiel, 2016). In addition, mothers with heightened psychological distress tend to express more negative emotions and fewer positive emotions (Zahn-Waxler et al., 2002). Likewise, mothers of young children with poorer emotion regulation tend to engage in less supportive and more unsupportive emotion socialization (Bertie et al., 2021; Gross & John, 2003), likely because of their inability to effectively control their own negative emotions when faced with their children’s distress.
Integrating Social Information Processing Pathways
Drawing from the social information-processing perspective, Leerkes et al. (2015, 2020) have asserted that mothers’ interpretation and encoding of children’s distress cues are central determinants of their behavioral responses to children’s distress. These social-cognitive responses to children’s distress cues are likely informed by mothers’ trait emotions and current emotional states. Given toddler cries are arousing and somewhat aversive, it requires a great amount of energy, attention, and emotional resources to intervene and meet infant’s needs promptly and appropriately, the hallmark feature of sensitive responding according to Ainsworth (1978). Mothers who struggle to regulate their own emotions, who are more prone to negative emotionality, and who have elevated depressive symptoms may have more negative appraisals and self-oriented cognitive reactions to toddler cries described as mother-oriented cry processing (e.g., child is crying deliberately to make her life difficult; Leerkes et al., 2012), compared to other mothers. We posit that sociodemographic disadvantage will contribute to more mother-oriented cry processing via higher psychological distress.
However, sociodemographic disadvantage may also have direct effects on mother-oriented cry processing. For instance, mothers facing economic disadvantage are more likely to confront daily stressors and struggles to provide necessities to their children such as food and housing. In addition, mothers with lower incomes may need to focus more time and energy on problem solving how to meet critical daily needs than other mothers (e.g., brainstorming how to stretch limited dollars to meet needs, working for alternative source of income to cover childcare, medical bills, and other necessities, applying for and demonstrating ongoing eligibility for various sources of economic aid; Edin & Lein, 1997). Given the additional cognitive stressors and limited supports, they may miss brief temporary and situational factors that would facilitate more infant-oriented and positive cognition (e.g., my baby is crying because the situation is challenging or because of having a difficult day).To be clear, we do not wish to convey that mothers living in poverty have attributional biases, but rather, the higher stress and limited resources that often accompany poverty may undermine mothers ability to cope with the stressors associated with parenting, in this case infant crying (Magnuson & Duncan, 2019). Indeed, mothers with lower income often face barriers to accessing formal support and are more likely to have limited informal support as the people embedded in their social network tend to have fewer economic resources (Henly et al., 2005; Purtell et al., 2012). Therefore, the limited availability of resources at the family and community levels can hinder their ability to respond to child cues in the face of these stressors.
Scholars have long theorized that the negative cognitions about children inherent to psychological distress partially explain the associations between psychological distress and compromised parenting (Field et al. 1996). This view is highly compatible with the social information-processing perspective that the encoding and interpretation of social cues and beliefs and goals about how to respond are highly influenced by the individuals’ emotional state (Lemerise & Arsenio, 2000). Drawing from this model, mothers’ background emotions, mood, and emotion regulation will influence the way child cues are interpreted. For example, mothers who experience anger in response to child distress may be inclined to perceive crying as a barrier in their own goals and end up engaging in unsupportive emotion socialization behaviors such as dismissing the child’s emotions. Empirical evidence supports this view; for instance, recordings of infant cries were less likely to evoke caregiving responses such as picking up and cuddling the infant among depressed mothers of newborn infants who also reported infant cries as less urgent and aversive as compared to mothers without depression (Schuetze & Zeskind, 2001). Furthermore, Kim et al. (2017) found that psychological distress was linked with first time mothers’ dampened neural response to infant crying during the first 6 months, a known correlate of less sensitive maternal behavior (Atzil et al., 2011). Of particular relevance, first-time mothers with high levels of prenatal emotional risk (i.e., high levels of depressive symptoms, negative emotionality, difficulties with emotion regulation, and low positive emotionality) engaged in more negative and self-focused social cognition about infant crying, which in turn predicted less sensitive responding to their infants in distress-eliciting contexts when they were 6 months old (Leerkes et al., 2015). The indirect pathway from emotional risk to sensitivity via social cognition about crying was statistically significant.
The Current Study
In the current study, we hypothesize that high sociodemographic disadvantage predicts higher maternal psychological distress, higher mother-oriented cry processing, and lower maternal supportive emotion socialization to their toddlers. Further, mothers’ higher psychological distress will predict higher mother-oriented cry processing and lower supportive emotion socialization towards their toddlers, and high mother-oriented cry processing will predict lower supportive emotion socialization. Finally, we hypothesize that sociodemographic disadvantage will have indirect effects on supportive emotion socialization via psychological distress and mother-oriented cry processing. We use longitudinal data collected at three waves (prenatally and when children were 6- and 14-months old) to test this model. Expanding on prior work that has mostly relied on maternal reports of emotion socialization, the current study includes observational assessments of emotional socialization. Given the potential confounding of race, child’s gender, number of people in the household, and partner in the home with emotion socialization (Leerkes et al., 2014; Leerkes et al., 2020; Nelson et al., 2009), these variables were controlled in the current study. We also controlled for children’s concurrent observed distress and maternal perceived negative emotionality given their associations with mothers observed sensitivity to distress and self-reported emotion socialization in prior research (Leerkes et al., 2012; Eisenberg et al., 2019).
Method
Participants
The stratified sample included 259 primiparous mothers (128 European American, 131 African American, 8 multiracial) and their toddlers from the southeastern United States who participated in a larger study using a longitudinal design to assess maternal sensitivity and child adjustment. The inclusion criteria were that mothers were 18 years or older, were first-time mothers, were fluent in English, and identified their race as either Black or White. The study sample not designed to be representative of the target population, but it has variability in terms of age, income, and educational level. Mothers ranged in age from 18 to 44 years at enrollment, with a mean age of 25.1 years. Twenty-seven percent had a high school diploma or less, 27% had attended but not completed college, and 46% had a 4-year college degree. Most mothers (71%) were married and/or living with their child’s biological father, 11% percent were dating but not living with their child’s father, and 18% were single. Participants’ annual family income ranged from less than $2000 to over $100,000, with a median income of $35,000. All participating toddlers were full-term, and healthy; about half (51%) were females. The current study focused on information from the prenatal, 6-month, and 14-month waves of data collection. Of the initial 259 mothers, 230 mother-infant dyads participated at 6 months and 227 mother-infant dyads participated at 14 months (89 and 88% of the baseline sample, respectively). Mothers who did not participate at the two follow-up points withdrew from the study (N = 7) or were either too busy or could not be contacted to participate in a particular wave.
Procedure
We recruited expectant mothers using numerous strategies, such as the distribution of flyers and presentations at the childbirth education classes, prenatal breastfeeding classes, and obstetric practices. Mothers filled out a contact form if they were interested in hearing about the study by phone and agreed to participate after hearing the details of the study on phone. Upon enrollment in the study, participants were mailed and completed written consent forms and questionnaires, including one focused on demographics, approximately 6 to 8 weeks before their due date. At 6 months postpartum, mothers were mailed and completed questionnaires about their depressive symptoms and emotion regulation difficulties prior to the laboratory visit. During the 6-month laboratory visit, dyads participated in videotaped observations during three distress-eliciting tasks. The first distress task was an arm-restraint task designed to evoke infant frustration. In this task, infants sat in a car seat, and the experimenter gently restrained their arms for 4 min while kneeling in front of them with their head bowed to avoid eye contact. The second distress task was a novel toy approach designed to evoke infant fear. The infant seat was tucked into a table with a barrier to prevent the toy from touching the infant. The experimenter presented a dump truck operated by remote control with flashing lights, vibration, horn, ignition sound, and music in front of the child. The toy approached the infant three times, and the task lasted for four minutes. In both tasks, the experimenter instructed the mother to remain uninvolved for the first minute unless she wanted to end the activity. Then the mother was allowed to interact with her infant in any way she wanted. A basket of toys was available within reach. The third distress task was the Still Face Procedure (Tronick et al., 1978) which lasted for 6 min. The experimenter instructed mothers to play with their infants as they would normally do for the first 2 min without objects, then face the infant with a still face for the next 2 min, and for the remaining 2 min, the experimenter instructed them to again play with their infants as normal but without objects. There is evidence that these tasks reliably elicit infant distress, and maternal behavior observed during tasks of this nature demonstrated predictive validity to children’s attachment, emotion regulation, and behavior problems (Leerkes, 2011; Leerkes & Wong, 2012; Crockenberg & Leerkes, 2004, 2006). Immediately following the observations, mothers moved to an adjacent room with the experimenter to complete an interview through a video-recall procedure while a research assistant took care of the infant. Mothers watched the videotapes of the three distress-eliciting tasks and completed a standard set of questions after each. Mothers also completed a questionnaire about their beliefs about infant crying. These measures were used to assess mother-oriented cry processing.
Prior to the 14-month laboratory visit, mothers were mailed and completed questionnaires, including a measure of how they respond to toddler distress. During the visit, mothers and toddlers participated in videotaped observations during two distress-eliciting tasks to assess maternal sensitivity to distress. The first task was a toy removal task designed to evoke frustration. The experimenter presented an attractive toy phone to the child and instructed the mother to get the child interested in the phone for a brief period. Then the experimenter put the phone in a clear jar and closed the lid, so the toy was visible but not accessible to the child. The experimenter asked the child to open the jar and play with the phone for 4 min. The second task was the novel character approach designed to evoke fear. A research assistant dressed as an ogre entered the room after the experimenter left the room, stood silently at a distance from the child, then repeatedly approached the child, crouched down near them, stated their name, and hummed a song. In both tasks, the experimenter instructed the mother to remain uninvolved for the first minute unless she wanted to end the activity. Then the experimenter allowed the mother to interact with her toddler in any way she wanted. During these tasks, a basket of toys was available within the mothers’ reach. These sets of measures were used to assess mothers’ supportive emotion socialization. Study procedures were reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of the study’s home institution (Triad Child Study; Protocol # 09 – 0035).
Measures
Sociodemographic disadvantage
Mothers reported sociodemographic characteristics prenatally, including their age, educational level (1 = some high school; 7 = graduate degree), annual family income, and household size. Family income-to-needs ratio was calculated by dividing the total annual family income by the official poverty threshold for that family’s household size. Age, education, and income to needs ratio were then reversed by multiplying each by −1 so high scores on each reflect high sociodemographic disadvantage.
Psychological distress
Prior to the 6-month laboratory visit, mothers completed the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale (CESD; Radloff, 1977), the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS; Gratz & Roemer, 2004), and The Differential Emotions Scale (DES; Izard et al. 1993) to assess multiple indicators of psychological distress. The CESD consists of 20-items (e.g., “I felt depressed”, α = 0.87), and the responses ranging from (0) rarely/never to (3) most of the time, with a higher score indicating higher depressive symptoms. The DERS is a 36-item, self-report instrument (e.g., “I have difficulty making sense out of my feelings”, α = 0.91) with responses ranging from (1) almost never to (5) almost always such that higher scores reflect more regulation difficulties. The DES is a 36-item questionnaire on which mothers indicated the frequency with which they typically felt specific emotions on a 5-point scale from rarely/never (1) to very often (5). Mean scores for the extent to which mothers experienced positive emotions (sum of interest, joy, and surprise scales, “In your daily life, how often do you feel glad about something”, α = 0.78) and negative emotions (sum of disgust, contempt, hostility, fear, sadness, shame, anger, shyness, and guilt scales, e.g., “In your daily life, how often do you feel mad at somebody”, α = 0.92) were calculated.
Mother-oriented cry processing
Immediately after the 6-month interactive tasks, mothers were shown the video of each distress task. To assess mothers’ causal attributions about infant crying, they were asked to rate the extent to which they agreed with 18 statements about the causes of their infant’s behavior during the tasks on a 4-point scale ranging from (1) strongly disagree to (4) strongly agree (Leerkes & Siepak, 2006). Two subscales are used in the current report. Emotion minimizing attributions included five items (e.g., tired, hungry). Negative attributions included seven items (e.g., spoiled, unreasonable). A mean score for each subscale was calculated for each task, and these were then averages across the three tasks yielding a single score each for minimizing (α = 0.86) and negative attributions (α = 0.83). Then mothers completed the Infant Crying Questionnaire (Haltigan et al., 2012) to report their global beliefs regarding infant crying. It is a 43-item questionnaire in which they indicated the extent to which they agreed with the statements on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = never; 5 = always). To create the measure of mother-oriented cry beliefs (α = 0.61), items from two subscales were averaged: Minimization (9 items; e.g., “when my baby cries, I want my baby to stop because I can’t get anything else done”, α = 0.74) and Spoiling (Three items; e.g., “how I respond when my baby cries could spoil my baby”, α = 0.69) in which higher scores reflect more mother-oriented cry processing. Based on prior research on this sample (Leerkes et al., 2016), we anticipated that negative attributions, minimizing attributions, and mother-oriented cry beliefs would load on a single latent factor named mother-oriented cry processing.
Supportive emotion socialization with toddlers
Supportive emotion socialization was assessed at the 14-month wave via observer-rated maternal sensitivity during the two distress-eliciting tasks described above and maternal self-report. First, maternal sensitivity during the toy removal task and novel character approach were rated by coders using Ainsworth’s Sensitivity-Insensitivity 9-point Likert scale ranging from (1) highly insensitive to (9) highly sensitive (Ainsworth et al., 1974). Thirty-four videos were double-coded and interrater reliability was assessed using interclass correlation coefficients (ICC for toy removal = 0.83; ICC for novel person approach = 0.88). Ninety-one percent infants became distressed during these tasks for an average duration of 1-min and a range from 0 to 4.45 min demonstrating the utility of these tasks for observing maternal responses to toddler negative emotion.
Second, mothers completed the Coping with Toddlers Negative Emotions Scale (CTNES; Spinrad et al. 2007). The measures consist of 12 hypothetical situations in which their toddler is upset, distressed, or angry (e.g., “If my child is going to spend the afternoon with a new babysitter and becomes nervous and upset because I am leaving I would…”). For each situation, mothers were presented with 7 types of responses and rated the likelihood of responding in each way on a scale from (1) very unlikely to (7) very likely. This yielded multiple subscales, 5 of which were used in the present study: (a) emotion-focused reactions (e.g., “distract my child by playing and talking about all of the fun he will have with the sitter”, α = 0.83); (b) problem-focused reactions (e.g., (“help my child think of things to do that will make it less stressful, like calling him once during the afternoon”, α = 0.87); (c) expressive encouragement (e.g., (“tell my child that it’s ok to be upset”, α = 0.91); (d) minimizing responses (e.g., “tell him that it’s nothing to get upset about”, α = 0.85); (e) punitive responses (e.g., (“tell my child that he won’t get to do something else enjoyable, such as getting a special snack, if he doesn’t stop behaving that way”, α = 0.85). Consistent with prior research, a supportive response to negative emotions composite was created by averaging the scores of expressive encouragement, emotion-focused, and problem-focused subscales (α = 0.91) and a nonsupportive responses to negative emotions composite was created by averaging the scores of punitive and minimizing subscales (α = 0.86).
Covariates
Maternal race, infant gender, number of people in the household, presence of partner at home, mother-reported child negative affect assessed using the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised Very Short Form (IBQ-RVSF; Putnam et al., 2014) and observed toddler distress during the distress eliciting tasks at 14 months were included as covariates predicting supportive emotion socialization. Mothers reported the frequency with which their children became upset in certain situations in the past 7 days on 12 items (e.g., “When tired, how often did your baby show distress”, α = 0.74) on a scale from (1) Never to (7) Always on the IBQ-VSF. Toddler distress during the phone in jar and ogre approach tasks were continuously rated from digital media files using INTERACT-9 (Mangold, Arnstorf, Germany) on a 7-point scale ranging from (1) high positive affect (open mouth, intense smile, laughing) to (7) high negative affect (screams, wails, sobs intensely). For the current study, toddler affect was assessed by calculating mean affect across all tasks; higher scores indicate more time distressed. Inter-rater reliability was ICC = 0.76 based on 34 double-coded tapes.
Analytic Plan
The model was analyzed with structural equation modeling (SEM) using Mplus software (version 8.6; Muthén & Muthén, 2017). Full-information maximum likelihood was used to address the missing data. The model included both observed variables (maternal race, infant gender, number of people in household, presence of partner at home, child negative affect and observed toddler distress) and latent factors (sociodemographic risk, psychological distress, mother-oriented cry processing, and supportive emotion socialization). In the hypothesized model, a latent variable representing sociodemographic disadvantage was specified using three indicators: mother’s age, education level, and income-to-needs ratio. Psychological distress was specified using four indicators (depressive symptoms, difficulty in emotion regulation, trait positive and negative emotions), and mother-oriented cry processing was specified using three indicators (mothers’ minimizing and negative causal attributions about infant crying and mother-oriented cry beliefs). Supportive emotion socialization was specified as a multi-method latent variable with four indicators: observer-rated maternal sensitivity during two distress-eliciting tasks and maternal self-reported supportive and non-supportive emotion socialization. Method effects were addressed by allowing the subscales from the same measures and ratings that occurred during the same task to correlate. Nonsignificant correlations were not included. Table 1 shows the factor loadings for latent variables and correlations for method effects.
Table 1
Standardized factor loadings and significant residual correlations
Construct
Indicator
β
Sociodemographic risk
Mother age-reversed
0.78**
Mother education-reversed
0.83**
Income-to-needs ratio-reversed
0.66**
Psychological distress 6 M
Maternal depressive symptoms
0.88**
Difficulty in emotion regulation
0.67**
Differential emotions-Positive
−0.42**
Differential emotions-Negative
0.83**
Mother-oriented cry processing 6 M
Negative attributions
0.50**
Minimizing attributions
0.21**
Mother-oriented cry beliefs
0.81**
Supportive emotion socialization 14 M
Novel character approach
0.56**
Toy removal
0.63**
CTNES nonsupportive emotion socialization
−0.50**
CTNES supportive emotion socialization
0.36**
Residual correlations
Minimizing with negative attributions
0.41**
Novel character sensitivity with toy removal sensitivity
0.41**
**p < 0.01
Direct pathways included prenatal sociodemographic risk predicting psychological distress and mother-oriented cry processing at 6 months, and supportive emotion socialization at 14 months. Psychological distress and mother-oriented cry processing at 6 months were specified as predictors of supportive emotion socialization at 14 months. We also estimated indirect pathways from sociodemographic disadvantage to supportive emotion socialization via psychological distress and mother-oriented cry processing. To test indirect effects, the bootstrap method with 5000 bootstrap samples and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used. The a priori covariates, race, child gender, number of household members, presence of partner at home at 6 months, child’s negative affect at 14 months and child’s observed distress at 14 months were specified to predict supportive emotion socialization at 14 months.
Transparency and Openness
Although the design and analyses of the current study were not pre-registered, we have uploaded the Mplus syntax, data file, and supporting documents on the Dataverse and are available via: https://osf.io/qrkvj/. Detailed procedures for recruitment and data collection, exclusion criteria for the participation in the study, and the measures used in the study are in the method section. The authors will provide further details and materials upon reasonable request.
Results
Overall, less than 8% of data was missing and the data were completely missing at random based on Little’s test = χ2 (166) = 179.252, p = 0.228. Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations among the study variables are displayed in Table 2. Examination of skew and kurtosis demonstrate the distributions are approximately normal. There were no significant differences in the mothers who participated at either 6 months or 14 months from the mothers who did not participate at either of the waves on maternal age, education, income-to-needs ratio, depressive symptoms, difficulties in emotion regulation, positive, and negative emotions, race and presence of partner at home.
Table 2
Correlations and descriptive statistics
Variable
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
1.
Mother’s Age
___
2.
Mother’s Education
0.68**
___
3.
Income-to-Needs Ratio
0.47**
0.55**
___
4.
Depressive Symptoms
0.23**
0.25**
0.24**
___
5.
Difficulty in Emotion Regulation
0.05
0.00
−0.05
0.58**
___
6.
Differential Emotions-Positive
−0.07
−0.15*
−0.10
−0.36**
−0.32**
___
7.
Differential Emotions-Negative
0.10
0.09
0.06
0.73**
0.57**
−0.19**
___
8.
Minimizing Attributions
0.13
0.12
0.15*
0.07
0.01
−0.02
0.16*
___
9.
Negative Attributions
0.15*
0.25**
0.24**
0.19**
0.16*
−0.10
0.24**
0.46**
___
10.
MO Cry Beliefs
0.24**
0.24**
0.23**
0.25**
0.15*
−0.01
0.19**
0.15*
0.41**
___
11.
Supportive Emotion Socialization
−0.14*
−0.18**
−0.24**
−0.26**
−0.24**
0.26**
−0.11
−0.09
−0.22**
−0.28**
___
12.
Non-Supportive
Emotion Socialization
0.24**
0.32**
0.26**
0.18**
0.07
−0.09
0.14*
0.08
0.29**
0.46**
−0.15*
___
13.
MSens Toy Removal
−0.42**
−0.41**
−0.37**
−0.13
0.04
0.04
0.00
−0.17**
−0.22**
−0.41**
0.19**
−0.38**
__
14.
MSens Novel Character
−0.45**
−0.39**
−0.38**
−0.20**
0.00
0.12
−0.03
−0.10
−0.16*
−0.33**
0.20**
−0.24**
0.63**
___
N
258
257
242
225
225
225
225
211
211
226
225
224
207
205
Mean
−25.05
−3.8
2.94
10.69
1.71
3.37
1.79
1.42
1.29
2.54
5.5
2.62
4.66
5.5
SD
5.41
1.79
2.09
9.54
0.45
0.59
0.57
0.42
0.29
0.55
0.77
0.85
1.96
2.09
Skewness
−0.78
−0.30
−0.49
1.69
1.59
−0.25
1.19
1.46
1.39
0.36
−0.64
0.21
0.27
−0.02
Kurtosis
0.12
−0.94
−0.69
2.97
3.58
0.18
1.65
2.74
1.82
1.10
0.87
−0.19
−0.79
−2.01
Msesns maternal sensitivity
*p < 0.05. **p < 0.01
As expected, mothers’ age, education, and income were significantly associated with depressive symptoms, negative attributions, mother-oriented cry beliefs, and all the indicators of supportive emotion socialization. As expected, negative attributions and mother-oriented cry beliefs were positively associated with non-supportive emotional socialization and were negatively associated with supportive emotion socialization and maternal sensitivity during toy removal and novel character approach. Path coefficients for the hypothesized structural model are shown in Fig. 1. Associations between covariates and the outcome are not included in the figure, and in fact only one of the covariates was significantly associated with emotion socialization at 14 months. Specifically, mothers who resided with a partner engaged in higher supportive emotion socialization (β = 0.17, SE = 0.08, p = 0.03). The chi-square of goodness-of-fit test for the hypothesized model was significant, (χ2 = 229.608, df = 142, p = 0.000), however a significant chi-square is expected in more complex models with larger sample size (West et al., 2012). In addition to Chi square (χ2) p value, a range of standard fit indices were employed to assess fit. RMSEA values below 0.08, SRMR values less than 0.08 and CFI values greater than 0.90 demonstrate good model fit (Hu & Bentler, 1999). These included RMSEA = 0.05, 95% CI [0.04, 0.06], SRMR = 0.06, and CFI = 0.92.
Fig. 1
Model predicting 14-month supportive emotion socialization from prenatal sociodemographic disadvantage via 6-month psychological distress and mother-oriented cry processing. Values are standardized coefficients. N = 259. Covariates included in model specified as predicting outcome variable, but not illustrated include: Maternal race, infant gender, number of people in household, presence of partner at home, mother-reported child negative affect and observed infant distress. The path between presence of partner at home at 6 months and supportive emotion socialization was significant (β = 0.17, p = 0.03). Covariates included in model specified as predicting mediator variables, but not illustrated include: Maternal race and the number of people in household. The path between race and mother-oriented cry processing was significant (β = 0.31, p = 0.00). Model fit: χ2 = 229.608 (142), p < 0.1; RMSEA = 0.05, 95% CI [0.04, 0.06]; SRMR = 0.06; CFI = 0.92. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01
×
Consistent with prediction, there was a significant direct effect of sociodemographic disadvantage on supportive emotion socialization, such that higher sociodemographic risk was associated with lower supportive emotion socialization (β = −0.48, p = 0.00). Higher sociodemographic disadvantage was also associated with higher psychological distress (β = 0.17, p = 0.03) and more mother-oriented cry processing (β = 0.22, p = 0.04). Further, higher psychological distress was associated with more mother-oriented cry processing (β = 0.22, p = 0.03). Finally, more mother-oriented cry processing was associated with lower supportive emotion socialization (β = −0.64, p = 0.00). However, the relation between psychological distress and supportive emotion socialization was not statistically significant (β = 0.05, p = 0.69), ruling out the possibility of an indirect effect of sociodemographic disadvantage to supportive emotion socialization through psychological distress.
Consistent with prediction, the indirect pathway from sociodemographic disadvantage to supportive emotional socialization through mother-oriented cry processing was significant (β = −0.14, B = −0.01, SE = 0.01, 95% CI [−0.029, −0.001]). Additionally, the indirect pathway from psychological distress to supportive emotion socialization through mother-oriented cry processing was also significant (β = −0.14, B = −0.00, SE = 0.00, 95% CI [−0.017, −0.001]). However, the indirect path from sociodemographic disadvantage to psychological distress to mother-oriented cry processing to supportive emotion socialization was not significant (β = −0.02, B = −0.00, SE = 0.00, 95% CI [−0.008, 0.000]).
Discussion
The primary goal of this study was to test an extension of the Family Stress Model in which we explored the possibility that mother-oriented cry processing, in addition to psychological distress, would explain the association between sociodemographic disadvantage and supportive emotion socialization. The results underscore that socioeconomic disadvantage is a robust predictor of supportive emotion socialization in early childhood and illustrate the value of including social cognition as an explanatory mechanism. The current study contributes to the literature on the Family Stress Model by examining the model from prenatal period through infancy. Identifying prenatal predictors of subsequent parenting is important as it can inform strategies to screen for parenting risk and begin preventative intervention prior to the onset of maladaptive parenting.
In support of hypotheses, sociodemographic disadvantage had an indirect effect on supportive emotion socialization via psychological distress and mother-oriented cry processing. Consistent with prior research on first-time mothers of young children, mothers with higher depressive symptoms, negative emotionality, and difficulties regulating their emotions were more likely to hold self-oriented cry-processing beliefs (i.e., focus on their own needs by holding negative beliefs about and making more negative and minimizing causal attributions about their infants’ crying; Leerkes et al., 2015). In turn, mother-oriented cry processing predicted lower supportive emotion socialization. It may be that when mothers experience psychological distress, they feel overwhelmed by their child’s negative emotions resulting in more negative social information processing about distress. These findings are highly consistent with the proposed extension of the Family Stress Model (Conger & Conger, 2002) that economic hardship undermines supportive parenting practices via psychological distress and self-oriented cry processing.
Although higher sociodemographic disadvantage was linked with higher psychological distress as predicted, psychological distress was not related to supportive emotion socialization. Therefore, psychological distress in and of itself did not explain the association between sociodemographic disadvantage and supportive emotion socialization. The third indirect pathway was consistent with the prediction such that mothers experiencing higher sociodemographic disadvantage engaged in more self-oriented cry processing, which in turn predicted their less supportive responses to child’s distress. It may be that due to the lack of financial resources combined with additional stressors, mothers can miss children’s important cues which lead to mothers’ negative social cognition regarding children crying. These negative social cognitions might pose difficulty for mothers to understand children’s perspective, hence undermining their supportive responses to children’s crying (Leerkes et al., 2015). Over and above these indirect effects, there was a robust direct effect of sociodemographic disadvantage on supportive emotion socialization. In other words, mothers who were younger with lower education levels and lower income-to-needs ratio were less supportive in response to their toddler’s distress. This direct effect is consistent with previous studies on mothers of young children and supports the view that disadvantage may undermine parenting by affecting the quality and quantity of mothers’ emotion-related conversations with their young children (Raikes & Thompson, 2008). A potential reason could be that limited time, resources, and opportunities, which are often characteristic of sociodemographic disadvantage, challenges a mothers’ ability to give supportive responses during the children’s distress.
The current study did yield a surprising finding, such that there was no direct effect of psychological distress on mothers’ supportive responses to their children’s distress. This finding is in contrast with previous research, which show that higher levels of parents’ psychological distress is related to unsupportive responses to toddlers’ negative affect because distressing contexts can be particularly triggering and can elicit negative responses to infants’ distress (Havighurst & Kehoe, 2017). Though we found an indirect effect of psychological distress on supportive emotion socialization via mother-oriented cry processing. Our findings highlight that mothers’ negative social cognitions about infant crying is a more robust predictor of supportive emotion socialization and psychological distress does not predict variation in supportive emotion socialization independent of its effect on mothers’ negative social cognition about infant crying. This finding is consistent with Lemerise and Arsenio’s (2000) view that mood and background emotions influence the social information processing of parents, which in turn predict their parenting behavior. Future research should examine the potential role of mother-oriented cry processing in the Family Stress Model under various acute and chronic environmental stressors.
Applied Implications
The indirect effect of psychological distress and mother-oriented cry processing in the association between sociodemographic disadvantage and supportive emotion socialization may have implications for mothers experiencing sociodemographic disadvantage. First, it highlights the need to provide mothers with resources and financial assistance to alleviate the stressors associated with sociodemographic disadvantage. Evidence from Baby’s First Year, a random control trial poverty intervention program, has shown more engagement of mothers with their children after receiving unconditional monthly cash transfers during the first few years of child’s life (Magnuson et al., 2022). Second, given the prevalence of psychological distress among mothers experiencing sociodemographic disadvantage (Oh et al., 2018), these findings have important implications for policies to prioritize routine psychological care and assessment of postpartum mothers. Previous studies have shown the effectiveness of universal home visits in attenuating mothers’ psychological distress postpartum (Brugha et al., 2011). Third, mother-oriented cry processing can be targeted through intervention programs. For example, existing intervention programs aimed to train mothers in accurate interpretation of child cues and child-centered appropriate responses to those cues, such as Video-Feedback Intervention to Promote Positive Parenting (Juffer et al. 2017) and Maternal Sensitivity Program (Alvarenga et al., 2021), can be augmented to enhance parents’ knowledge of normative emotional development, such as autonomy struggles which make child frustration more common in toddlerhood.
Strengths and Limitations
The study has several strengths and contributes to the existing literature in many ways. Methodological strengths include the moderately large, racially and socioeconomically diverse community sample, longitudinal design with the use of multiple methods, including self-reports and observation in multiple distress-eliciting contexts to assess emotion socialization, to address the issue of mono-method bias (Shadish et al., 2002), and the inclusion of multiple covariates. Further, we assessed multiple indicators of sociodemographic disadvantage, which are less subject to change by external factors (e.g., loss of employment) and remain fairly stable over time, such as mothers’ education, unlike previous studies testing the Family Stress Model which have predominantly relied only on family income to assess economic hardship (Gard et al., 2020a, 2020b). Conceptually, we tested a novel application of the Family Stress Model with parental emotion socialization as the parenting outcome and we extended the model to include social cognition as an additional intermediary mechanism between disadvantage and emotion socialization. Limitations of the current study include using a community sample as opposed to a sample recruited based on various levels of disadvantage or psychological distress, the brief observations of emotion socialization, and the sole focus on mothers/biologically female parents. Future research should determine if results replicate in various at-risk samples, such as the mothers experiencing higher levels of sociodemographic risk and psychological distress. Future work also needs to cross-validate the findings of the current study on various populations including refugee and immigrant families as well as various cultural settings such as collectivist cultures. Future work should also replicate the model among fathers and among parents of older children. Although the majority of the parenting literature is focused on mothers, recently there has been an increase in the breadth of literature on the role of fathers in child development (Kuhns & Cabrera, 2020). However, the research has largely been done with White, middle-class fathers, hence more research needs to be done on diverse samples of low-income fathers. Future studies should also examine if the associations between the various indicators of the latent variables included in the proposed model vary, for example, the indicators of sociodemographic risk may be associated differently with the indicators of psychological distress or mother-oriented cry processing. Although there was short-term time ordering such that psychological distress was measured prior to cry processing, that both were measured within days of one another at the 6-month wave is another limitation.
Summary and Conclusion
In conclusion, our study was one of the first to use a longitudinal application of the Family Stress Model to predict supportive emotion socialization. Our results extend prior research by demonstrating the role of mothers’ social cognitions about infant crying as an additional mechanism that predicts supportive parenting practices. These findings provide potential points of intervention, such as alleviating sociodemographic risk and enabling positive maternal cognitions about infant distress, to promote positive parenting. Additionally, policies need to provide greater attention to improved access to income, education, and social support (i.e., the social determinants of health) for low-income mothers.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the participating families for their time and Dr. Regan Burney and project staff for their dedication. The contents of this manuscript are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development.
Compliance with Ethical Standards
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare no competing interest.
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