REVIEW article
Front. Dev. Psychol.
Sec. Social and Emotional Development
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancing positive youth development: Aligning contextual features, youth strengths, and developmental outcomesView all articles
Parental Beliefs about Children's Emotions Within and Across Sociocultural Contexts
Provisionally accepted
- University of Houston, Houston, United States
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Beliefs about emotion may guide parents' socialization behaviors and shape the overall family environment. Research specifically addressing parental beliefs about children's emotions has expanded in the past three decades. Much of this research addresses variations in emotion-related parental beliefs within and across sociocultural contexts, demonstrating how these beliefs may represent a confluence of the macrosystem and microsystem, or m(ai)crosystem. In this paper, we review the body of research on parental beliefs about emotions. We describe the array of emotion-related parental beliefs that have been studied and discuss associations of these beliefs with parenting behaviors and child outcomes that are linked to positive youth development. We extend the field's consideration of sociocultural contexts for parental beliefs by addressing how cultural socialization, racial socialization, and gender socialization may influence and be influenced by parents' beliefs about children's emotions. We identify areas of strength in the literature and gaps in knowledge that are important areas for growth. We conclude by suggesting future directions for theory and research on the role of parental beliefs in family processes and positive youth development.
Keywords: emotion socialization, Parents, beliefs, childhood, culture, race/ethnicity, gender
Received: 22 Aug 2025; Accepted: 31 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Brown and Dunsmore. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Deon Brown, dbrown32@cougarnet.uh.edu
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