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. 2025 Mar 5:16:1497007.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1497007. eCollection 2025.

Association between maternal emotion socialization and emotion regulation in early adolescents with elevated internalizing symptoms: insights from multi-informant discrepancies

Junxuan Zhao  1 , Elena Pozzi  2   3 , Sylvia Chu Lin  2   3 , Christiane E Kehoe  4 , Sophie S Havighurst  4 , Sarah Whittle  2   3
Affiliations

Association between maternal emotion socialization and emotion regulation in early adolescents with elevated internalizing symptoms: insights from multi-informant discrepancies

Junxuan Zhao et al. Front Psychiatry. .

Abstract

Introduction: Although the relationship between parental emotion socialization and emotional competence, including emotion regulation, in children and adolescents has been extensively explored, there is a lack of research investigating this association in adolescents at high risk for mental health problems. The present study examined the association between maternal emotion socialization and emotion regulation in adolescents with high levels of internalizing symptoms, using multi-informant measurements (mother-reported, adolescent-reported, observer-reported). The study also explored whether discrepancies in the report of parental emotion socialization by different informants were related to adolescent emotion regulation, in addition to factors that may contribute to informant discrepancies.

Methods: Participants were 70 female adolescents (mean age = 11.46 years, SD = 0.77) with high levels of internalizing symptoms and their mothers. Maternal emotion socialization (i.e., emotion dismissing and emotion coaching) was assessed using mother- and adolescent-reported questionnaires, and via observation during an emotion discussion task. Adolescent emotion regulation was reported by mothers and adolescents, while maternal emotion regulation was self-reported.

Results: Adolescent-reported maternal emotion coaching and dismissing were significantly related to adolescent-reported adolescent emotion regulation. Informant discrepancies were not related to adolescent emotion regulation. Mothers higher in emotion regulation difficulties reported that their emotion coaching was more congruent with adolescent- and observer-reported emotion coaching, although this effect did not reach statistical significance.

Discussion: Our findings highlight the value of adolescent-reported variables in parenting and adolescent emotion research. Additionally, mothers' emotion regulation may influence their assessments of their emotion socialization behaviors.

Keywords: early adolescence; emotion regulation; informant discrepancy; maternal emotion socialization; multi-measurement.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Bivariate Correlations. Non-significant coefficients are left blank in this figure. AR, adolescent-reported; MR, mother-reported; OR, observer-reported; EC, emotion coaching; ED, emotion dismissing; ER, emotion regulation; Mother. ER, self-reported maternal emotion regulation; IS, internalizing symptoms.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Distribution plots for maternal emotion socialization, adolescent emotion regulation, mother emotion regulation, and internalizing symptoms. AR, adolescent-reported; MR, mother-reported; OR, observer-reported; EC, emotion coaching; ED, emotion dismissing; ER, emotion regulation; Mother.ER, self-reported maternal emotion regulation; IS, internalizing symptoms.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The association between mother- and adolescent-reported emotion coaching at high and low levels of maternal difficulties in emotion regulation.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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