Maternal Meta-Emotion Philosophy Across Cultures: How Beijing Chinese,Hong Kong Chinese,and European American Mothers Make Sense of Dismissing Children’s Negative Emotions

Abstract

Mother’s beliefs about negative emotions (i.e., meta-emotion philosophy) are deeply influential to how they socialize emotions in their children and can vary across cultures. However, existing frameworks of meta-emotion philosophy, such as emotion coaching and dismissing, was developed primarily based on families from the Minority World, including European Americans. The present study adopted an emic approach to explore the meta-emotion philosophy of three cultural groups: Chinese mothers living in Hong Kong, Chinese mothers living in Beijing, and European American mothers in Midwest United States. This study aimed to expand our knowledge in emotion socialization across diverse cultural contexts. Specifically, we investigated how mothers in these cultures made sense of their dismissing behaviors. We analyzed meta-emotion interview responses of 30 mothers (10 from each cultural group) thematically. We identified four themes, including “For their own good: Training philosophy,” “Avoiding perceived social judgment,” “Trapped in a vicious circle,” and “Effective in ending an inconvenience.” The implications of these themes across cultures were discussed within the framework of meta-emotion philosophy and the cultural models of independence and interdependence. Overall, the present qualitative study highlighted the importance of investigating the applicability of frameworks developed with European Americans to other cultural groups.