Parents’ General Emotion Beliefs Matter: Exploring the Links to Parental Emotion Socialization Beliefs and Practices

Parents’ emotion-related beliefs are widely recognized as key precursors to their emotion socialization practices, which, in turn, influence children’s social-emotional development. However, few studies have explored the role of parents’ general emotion beliefs in shaping their emotion socialization beliefs and practices. The present study aimed to 1) validate the Emotion Beliefs Questionnaire (EBQ), a measure assessing individuals’ general beliefs about emotions, in Chinese culture, and 2) examine whether parents’ general emotion beliefs would relate to how they support children’s emotion regulation, with their beliefs about children’s emotions acting as a mediator in between. Data were collected from 1,069 fathers and 1,495 mothers of preschool children in China. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a three-factor structure of the EBQ in the Chinese context. Measurement invariance was established across parent gender. Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that parents’ general beliefs about the controllability of emotions were negatively related to their beliefs about children’s abilities to control emotions. Furthermore, parents’ beliefs about the usefulness of positive (negative) emotions were positively related to their beliefs about the value of children’s positive (negative) emotions. Parents’ beliefs about children’s emotions were further associated with their support for children’s use of adaptive or maladaptive emotion regulation strategies. These findings have demonstrated the applicability of the EBQ in Chinese culture and underscored the critical role of parents’ general emotion beliefs in parental emotion socialization.