Parental self-efficacy: Examining its mediating and reciprocally predictive roles in supportive emotion socialization.

Abstract

This longitudinal study examined the associations between child negative affect, parental self-efficacy (PSE), and parents approaches to the provision of supportive socialization. It also investigated the bidirectionality between PSE, problem-focus socialization, and emotion-focus socialization across two time points separated by one year. Participants were 757 Hong Kong Chinese parents (47.4% fathers) of kindergarten children. At both time 1 and time 2, parents reported their PSE, problem-focus socialization, and emotion-focus socialization. Additionally, parents rated their child s negative affect at time 1. Results from the cross-lagged panel model revealed that, controlling for the effects of school s socioeconomic strata, child gender, parental age, and educational level, PSE at time 1\xa0mediated the indirect links of child negative affect at time 1 with problem-focus (indirect effect: β\xa0=\xa0-.02, SE\xa0=\xa0.02, p\xa0<\xa0.05) and emotion-focus (indirect effect: β\xa0=\xa0-.02, SE\xa0=\xa0.01, p\xa0<\xa0.05) socialization at time 2 and that PSE (β\xa0=\xa0.10, SE\xa0=\xa0.06, p\xa0<\xa0.01) and problem-focus socialization (β\xa0=\xa0.15, SE\xa0=\xa0.03, p\xa0<\xa0.05) were reciprocally associated with each other. Findings underscored the role of PSE in understanding parental provision of supportive socialization and the co-development of belief about parenting and parenting behaviors.