The Relationship Between Parents’ Emotional Expressiveness, Parenting Efficacy, and Children’s Social–Emotional Development: Focusing on Gender Differences

Abstract

This study confirmed the relationship between mothers’ and fathers’ emotional expressiveness, parenting efficacy, and the children’s social–emotional development, focusing on the children’s gender. A total of 471 subjects—214 pairs of parents and 43 teachers—were asked to answer the questionnaire. A social–emotional development scale for two-year-old was used to evaluate children's social–emotional development by their teachers. Parents perceived their positive emotional expressiveness as quite high and negative emotional expressiveness as intermediate, and fathers had lower levels of positive and negative emotional expressiveness than mothers did. The children in the group with a high level of mothers’ positive expressiveness and fathers’ parenting efficacy had a higher level of social–emotional development. Mothers’ positive expressiveness and fathers’ parenting efficacy were related to social–emotional development, especially in boys. This study suggests the possibility that boys will show the weakest social–emotional development in a risky environment.