Maternal and paternal emotion socialization practices and psychosocial adjustment from early- to mid-adolescence among urban Chinese families.

Longitudinal studies of emotion socialization are still lacking in the Majority World. Studies with father data are particularly scarce. The present study drew data from a 15-year longitudinal project of urban Chinese families and examined both concurrent and longitudinal associations between parental emotion socialization (ES) practices and youth psychosocial adjustment from early- to mid-adolescence. Youths (N = 272, 52.9% boys, Mage = 9.77 years, SD = 0.22) and their parents (247 mothers and 191 fathers) participated in the sixth wave of data collection when children were 10 years old (Year 10). Majority of them continued to participate 5 years later for the seventh wave of data collection (Year 15). Both mothers and fathers reported on their ES practices, and adolescents reported on their psychosocial adjustment outcomes at both waves. To examine how maternal and paternal ES were uniquely linked to adolescent psychosocial outcomes concurrently and across time, a series of multiple regression models were tested. Results showed that concurrently, maternal supportive ES (i.e., emotion encouragement, emotion talk or sharing, and emotion teaching) was positively linked to girls' self-esteem at Year 10, whereas paternal ES was inversely associated with boys' depressive symptoms at Year 15. Longitudinally, maternal supportive ES practices were uniquely related to girls' increases in self-esteem and decreases in depressive symptoms for all adolescents. Our findings suggest long-lasting associations between parental ES practices and adolescent psychological adjustment and unique roles of maternal and paternal ES in adolescent girls' and boys' development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).