Parental racial trauma and Black preschoolers’ socioemotional health: Socialization processes as risk and protective factors.

OBJECTIVE: Although racial trauma is increasingly recognized as a public health concern, its intergenerational impact during early childhood remains understudied. This study examines whether Black parents' racial trauma symptoms are associated with internalizing and externalizing behaviors in preschool-aged children and whether emotion and racial socialization parenting practices moderate these associations. METHOD: = 34.03) of children ages 3-5 years (57.7% boys) living in New York City. Parents completed self-report measures of racial trauma symptoms, supportive emotion socialization, four types of racial socialization (i.e., cultural socialization, preparation for bias, promotion of mistrust, and egalitarianism), and child internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Path analyses tested main effects and moderation. RESULTS: Higher parental racial trauma symptoms were associated with greater child internalizing and externalizing behaviors. High supportive emotion socialization attenuated the association between racial trauma symptoms and internalizing behaviors, whereas high promotion of mistrust messages strengthened this association. No other racial socialization types significantly moderated these links, and no moderators emerged for externalizing behaviors. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that associations between parents' racial trauma and child behavior problems may be present in early childhood, with the strengths of these links varying, in part, by parenting socialization processes. Addressing parental racial trauma while promoting developmentally sensitive emotion and racial socialization practices may promote child well-being within Black families. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).