Socializing Positive Emotion: A Qualitative Study of African American Single Mothers and Their Adolescent Youth

• Author: Laura G. McKee,Alyssa L. Faro,Jessica L. O'Leary,Kelsey H. Spratt,Deborah J. Jones
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12160
• Published date: 01 December 2015
• Date: 01 December 2015

L G. MK University of Georgia

A L. F, J L. O’L,  K H. S Clark University∗

D J. J University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill∗∗

Socializing Positive Emotion: A Qualitative Study

of African American Single Mothers and Their

Adolescent Youth

This study addressed limitations of emotion

socialization (ES) research and is the rst to

explore socialization of positive emotion (PE)

in 20 single African American (AA) mothers

and their adolescents. Considering the dearth of

research on ES with AA adolescents, an induc-

tive, qualitative approach was warranted. A

portion of mothers reported elevated depressive

symptoms, which is important given their preva-

lence in AA women and that very few studies

of ES have considered parental mental health.

Although PE is gaining warranted attention in

the scientic community based on recent data

linking it to mental and physical health, PE has

traditionally been a cornerstone of AA interac-

tional style. The results suggest that AA mothers

use complementary and contradictory responses

to youth PE, often sharing and expanding, other

times diminishing or teaching lessons. The

Department of Human Development and Family Science,

University of Georgia, Family Science Center II (House D),

405 Sanford Dr., Athens, GA 30602 (lmckee@uga.edu).

∗Department of Psychology, Clark University, 950 Main St.,

Worcester,MA 01610.

∗∗Department of Psychology, University of North

Carolina, 267 Davie Hall, Campus Box 3270, Chapel

Hill, NC 27599-3270.

Key Words: adolescence, African American culture, child

and parent psychopathology,qualitative research.

ndings emphasize the importance of racial

and cultural considerations in ES practices

and highlight the potential impact of elevated

maternal depressive symptoms.

Despite the recent proliferation of research

exploring emotion socialization (ES) processes

in the family, there remain a number of impor-

tant questions and contexts that merit attention.

First, although investigators are increasingly

examining ES in samples inclusive of racial

and ethnic minorities and diverse family struc-

tures (e.g., Morelen, Jacob, Suveg, Jones, &

Thomassin, 2013; Nelson, Leerkes, O’Brien,

Calkins, & Marcovitch, 2012), the majority of

research has been conducted with European

Americans (EA) and often two-parent families.

Second, investigators have largely focused on

how parents teach young children about emo-

tions, with less attention paid to how these

processes unfold as youth transition into ado-

lescence (Klimes-Dougan et al., 2007). Third,

most studies have examined parent socialization

of negative emotions, such as sadness and anger,

with little regard to the messages provided by

parents about positive emotions (PEs), such

as happiness and joy (Fredrickson, 1998; Katz

et al., 2014; see Yap, Allen, & Ladouceur,2008,

for a notable exception). Finally, little work has

explored variables that may predict or inuence

Family Relations 64 (December 2015): 635–650 635

DOI:10.1111/fare.12160

636 Family Relations

parent socialization strategies (except the body

of research on parental beliefs), with very little

attention paid to parental mental health (see Silk

et al., 2011, for an exception).

We designed the current study to address

these gaps by exploring socialization of PE in

single African American (AA) mothers and their

adolescent youth while considering the potential

impact of elevated maternal depressive symp-

toms on ES strategies. Furthermore, the present

study augments the primarily quantitative body

of work by taking a qualitative stance, with

the intention of describing these processes in

the participants’ voices and adding to the small

body of literature on parent socialization of

PE (Lunkenheimer, Shields, & Cortina, 2007).

In the sections that follow, we review litera-

ture foundational to our thesis, namely, that AA

mothers respond to youth PE in unique and

often intentional ways, highlighting the impor-

tance of PE as well as the specic cultural (AA),

developmental (adolescence), individual (men-

tal health), and familial (single-mother-headed)

contexts in which these socialization messages

are conceived and received. Our data build on

this prior work and advance it by describing how

AA single mothers, some with a history of ele-

vated depressive symptoms, use complementary

and seemingly contradictory responses to ado-

lescent youth PE, often sharing and expanding

but other times diminishing or teaching lessons.

ES P  O  D

F

Caregivers play a crucial role in the socialization

of youth emotion understanding, competence,

and regulation (e.g., Eisenberg, Cumberland,

& Spinrad, 1998; Halberstadt & Eaton, 2002).

Conceptual and empirical models have explored

associations between emotion-relevant par-

enting behaviors (ERPB)—including parental

response to child emotional displays, dis-

cussion of emotion, and parental emotional

expressiveness—and youth emotional and

behavioral outcomes such as emotional

adjustment, empathy development, and social

competence (Eisenberg et al., 1998; see Katz,

Maliken, & Stettler, 2012, for a review). Given

that the studies that comprise these models were

conducted primarily with EA samples, research

describing ERPB among other racial/ethnic

groups and family structures is of paramount

importance.

To amass a literature that is inclusive and

representative, attention to specic practices of

AA mothers is necessary.Knowledge about fam-

ily processes within ethnic minority families is

needed not only to counterbalance a Eurocen-

tric literature (Hughes et al., 2006), but also to

highlight the developmental tasks and processes

particular to AA parents and youth. For example,

AA youth face unique challenges regarding nav-

igation of the mainstream majority (i.e., dis-

crimination) while also tendering acceptance

by the AA community (i.e., triple quandary

theory; Boykin, 1986), which likely inuences

how their parents socialize them to be suc-

cessful (Hughes et al., 2006; Tamis-LeMonda,

Briggs, McClowry, & Snow, 2008). Further,

there is no consensus regarding the maternal

ES behaviors that are optimal for AA youth

development. Research inspired by Gottman,

Katz, and Hooven’s (1996) meta-emotion phi-

losophy suggests that youth of parents with an

emotion-coaching philosophy are more likely to

be socially, emotionally, and academically com-

petent compared with youth whose parents are

more typically emotion dismissing or disapprov-

ing (see Katz et al., 2012, for a review); how-

ever,the underrepresentation of AAs in this work

requires that one be cautious about generalizing

the results to AA mothers and youth. Finally,

ES practices of single mothers may differ from

mothers in dual-headed households. Although

research on father ES is scant, availabledata sug-

gest that caregivers play different socialization

roles with differential impacts on youth. Sin-

gle mothers may internalize the responsibility

as the sole socializer and thus include messages

and behaviors in their repertoire that might, in a

dual-parent home, be typically in the purview of

another caregiver (see Brand & Klimes-Dougan,

2010, for a review). Giventhat 67% of AA youth

are estimated to live in single-mother homes,

focus on a single-mother sample is timely and

important (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2014).

Several studies that have examined ES pro-

cesses in U.S. racial/ethnic minority samples

suggest there may be important ways that

racial, ethnic, and cultural contexts distinguish

parental beliefs and behavior, whereas others

have reported few differences. Nelson and col-

leagues (2012) found that AA mothers were

less approving than EA mothers of expressing

negative emotion in public. They also were

more likely to respond to youth displays of neg-

ative emotion with control and admonishment