The Role of Family Emotional Expressiveness in the Development of Children's Social Competence

Social competence is important for obtaining and maintaining social and academic success, and for mental health and personal adjustment in childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. Problematic peer relationships have been shown to predict such extreme outcomes as school drop out, criminality, and psychopathology (Parker Hubbard Parke, Cassidy, Burks, Carson, MacDonald Putallaz, 1987). It may be that through engaging in affectarousing encounters such as physical play, the child learns the communicative value of affect and how to use such displays to understand and regulate others (Parke et al., 1992). Physical play allows for many opportunities to learn to encourage or discourage interaction through affective expression. Past research has focused on the type of affective display used by parents during their interactions with their children. Several studies have found that children who are exposed to higher levels of parental negative affect are less well accepted by their peers, while high levels of parental positive affect are associated with greater peer acceptance (Carson, 1991; MacDonald Parke, 1984). It is assumed that children who learn to use high levels of negative affect in interaction with peers are less well accepted. Those who use more positive affect are more accepted by their age mates (Hubbard Gottman Sroufe, 1979). …