Abstract
Parents socialize their children’s emotions through discourse (Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998). Many studies have examined several sources of variations in the frequency and kind of parent-child emotion discourse, with gender being a particular focus. However, research on gender patterns in the emotion discourse were done primarily with European American families and little is known about parents from different cultures. The present study specifically examined gender patterns in (a) the ways that mothers and children talk about emotions and (b) the socialization goals that mothers mention during past events conversations. A sample of 32 Korean mother-child dyads (children’s age range: 2-5 years) was drawn from a previously collected data set containing videotaped conversations of past events that mother and child had shared. Korean mother-child emotion discourse and mothers’ socialization goals were analyzed using quantitative and qualitative methods. Findings showed that mothers and children referred to positive and negative emotions in similar amounts. They also discussed children’s emotions more than the mothers’ or others’ emotions. Mothers and children mentioned concrete causes (object, place, or activity/event) more than they mentioned person/social relational causes (child’s good/bad behavior or social relationships) and asked wh- questions (e.g., why questions) about causes. Though descriptive statistics suggested gender differences in the kinds of emotions that the dyads discussed, results of Analysis of Variance statistics did not show significant gender patterns in emotional valence, target of emotion references, and emotion causes. However, qualitative analysis of mothers’ mentions of socialization goals during the conversations indicated gender patterns. Twice as many mothers of boys mentioned socialization goals than mothers of girls. Also, the main socialization goals mentioned with girls focused on following authority and valuing relationships; in contrast, the main socialization goals mentioned with focused on controlling negative emotions during social interactions. Implications of the present findings are discussed further, in addition to suggestions for future research.