Learning about Emotion: Cultural and Family Contexts of Emotion Socialization

The term ‘emotion socialization’ conveys the essential idea that children learn to understand, express and self-regulate emotions in social contexts. Consistent with this view, researchers across disciplines tend to engage in three interrelated lines of discourse about emotion socialization. What are the processes by which children learn about emotions? What do children need to learn about emotions in order to be emotionally competent? How does the social context shape these processes and outcomes, at multiple levels of social complexity? This special issue focuses on the last of these questions, examining a range of social contexts in which emotion socialization occurs. The idea that children’s emotional wellbeing may be influenced by socialization is not new. The term ‘socialization of emotion’ appeared as early as 1928 in the psychological literature (Jastrow, 1928). But the systematic study of emotion socialization, and of children’s emotional competence as distinct from general competence, is a relatively recent development. In various fields there has been a shift away from more cognitive and biological views of emotion to a view of emotion as contextualized in the social world. Empirical studies on emotion socialization began appearing in psychology journals in the 1980s. The American Sociological Association established a section on Emotion (and another on Culture) in 1988, with the first sociological papers on emotion socialization appearing during that same decade (Thoits, 1989). The 1980s also saw an increased focus on emotion in cultural anthropology, with emotion seen as a social rather than individual experience, often mediated by language (Lutz & White, 1986). Interestingly, ideas about emotion socialization have received little attention in the field of education, with the exception of Hyson’s (1994) book and related papers on the ‘emotion-centered curriculum,’ and Ahn’s studies of teachers’ emotion-related beliefs and practices in the classroom (e.g. Ahn, 2005). The 1980s and 1990s also saw the popularization of the term ‘emotional intelligence’ and the development of conceptual models of skills thought to constitute this construct (e.g. Salovey & Mayer, 1989). In the past twenty or thirty years there has been a sharp increase in research on the topic of emotion socialization in many fields. The articles in this special issue are examples of the most recent research on emotion socialization, and in particular the social context of emotion socialization, from multiple disciplinary perspectives. The research was conducted in eight countries, using a range of methodologies. Having this diversity in conceptualization and analysis within a single journal issue has heuristic value in that readers are challenged to revisit their basic assumptions about how best to study and understand emotion socialization. The diversity also provides the opportunity to detect general patterns of results and understandings that transcend any one methodology or social context. As in any intellectual endeavor, we continue to search for rules and exceptions to rules, for universals and specifics. The articles in this special issue highlight several themes that underscore the possibilities for identifying commonalities across disciplines and social contexts. First, Rachael Stryker’s article on the socialization of attachment in Russian children’s homes, and Barbara McNeil’s article on using indigenous children’s literature to teach children about emotions, both highlight the importance of the historical, economic and political contexts in which socialization is enacted. Stryker examines shifts in caregivers’ practices during the uncertain period