Journal of Latinx Psychology, Vol 12(3), Aug 2024, 228-244; doi:10.1037/lat0000250
Prior literature has identified parents’ emotion-coaching philosophy, a form of emotion socialization, as beneficial for children’s socioemotional development. To date, most research in this domain has failed to proportionally represent Latinx families in samples, and as a result, less is known about the unique ways that Latinx families may teach children about emotion. In the present study, we focused on Latina mothers’ patterns of emotion-related beliefs and behaviors. Further, we explored how consejos, or sayings in Latinx culture that convey advice and wisdom, were linked to these patterns. Participants were 40 Latina mothers of daughters. Mothers reported on their demographics, beliefs about emotion, and emotion socialization behaviors and participated in an open-ended interview about consejos in the family. Interviews were coded for presence/absence of identified themes: women’s roles, morality, cautionary, and inspirational. Cluster analysis identified three patterns of Latina mothers’ emotion-related beliefs and behaviors: value yet uninvolved, guiding and supportive, and wary and nonsupportive. Mothers’ use of women’s roles themes was linked to less likelihood of membership in the guiding and supportive cluster. Higher maternal education increased the odds that mothers belonged in the value yet uninvolved and decreased the odds that mothers belonged in the wary and nonsupportive cluster. Results suggest that Latina mothers may engage in emotion coaching differently than what prior literature on European American parents has indicated and that consejos are a culturally relevant socialization tool that Latina mothers may use to teach their daughters about emotion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)