Social Change in Parenting Practices and Emotional Development of Children

Abstract

Social change has significantly influenced parenting practices, which in turn affect children's emotional development. These changes reflect evolving societal norms, economic conditions, and cultural landscapes. The goal of this study was to investigate the impact of different parenting styles on the development of children’s emotion regulation capacities. This research is a cross-sectional study on the correlation between parenting styles, Parenting Behavior Inventory (PBI) (Lovejoy et al., 1999), and Child-Parent Relationship Scale (CPRS) (Rinaldi et al., 2023). More than 300 respondents from Hong Kong and Mainland China responded to the survey. Structural Equation Modeling was adopted to investigate the relationships between various parenting practices and children’s emotional development. Parents’ beliefs about children’s emotions and parental stress were identified as the independent study variables. These specific variables were chosen because of the increased potential for these parental factors to influence the way parents emotionally socialize their children, thereby influencing children’s overall emotional development (Root & Denham, 2010), characteristics on the development of children’s emotion regulation capacities. Findings from this study highlighted the significant effect of emotion socialization on children’s emotion regulation and liability.