Reconsidering emotion socialization research using case studies of naturally-occurring parent–child interaction

ABSTRACT

This paper examines emotion socialization in naturally-occurring interaction between parents and children as a situated and negotiated interaction process. While previous research has primarily used quantitative methodologies to study emotion socialization this project takes an interactionist perspective to investigate case studies of naturally-occurring emotion socialization between parents and their children in everyday life. The analyses show that emotion socialization is intertwined with the current activities and immediate action goals in progress. Furthermore, the ideologies conveyed about emotion are tied to the particulars of the event that precipitate the conversation and also anticipate future emotion events. The case studies show that parent reframe children’s understanding of past events to mitigate current negative emotions and that they engage children to think about strategies to manage emotions in future interactions by modeling possible language use. The analyses offer new perspectives on emotion socialization that complicate the straightforward, binary constructs that are frequently mobilized in the extant literature.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion socialization
• parent-child interaction
• conversation analysis
• emotion management
• emotion coaching

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the Alfred P. Sloan foundation who funded the UCLA Sloan Center on the Everyday Lives of Families where video data of family life was collected and archived through the enormous and collective efforts of many staff, faculty, postdoctoral and graduate students that participated in the overall project. Over my time participating in that center, many mentors and colleagues informed my thinking about emotion, talk about emotions and family emotion work, some of which have been crystalized in this writing. In particular I want to thank Candy Goodwin, Heather Willihnganz Huffman, Elinor Ochs and Rena Repetti who encouraged me in this work. At San Francisco State University, several graduate students contributed to this work including David Nalos, Laura Marchini with transcriptions and discussion of analyses and Alyssa Van Sebille assisted with work on literature reviews. I am further immensely grateful to anonymous reviewers who offered valuable commentary at several stages of revision. Finally, I thank the CELF families themselves who graciously welcomed us into their homes to film their everyday lives.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leah Wingard

Leah Wingard is interested in emotion and affect and uses Discourse Analysis and Conversation Analysis to study face to face interaction in a variety of settings, including parent-child interactions and doctor-patient interaction. She is Associate Professor of Communication Studies and teaches courses in Language and Social Interaction.