Parental Happiness Socialization and Youth Adjustment in Italy and Azerbaijan in the COVID-19 Pandemic Era.

This study aims to cross-culturally identify the parental socialization strategies in response to a child's happiness and their associations with youth academic and socio-emotional adjustment, controlling for the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were a convenient sample of Italian (N = 606, 81.9% mothers) and Azerbaijanis (N = 227, 61.4% mothers) parents of youths (Mage = 12.89, SD = 4.06; 51% girls). Parents filled out an online survey to assess their socialization strategies in response to their children's happiness, their children's negative emotion regulation and dysregulation, academic performance, and prosocial behavior. Exploratory factorial analysis showed the presence of two factors that enclosed supportive and unsupportive parental socialization strategies. A multiple-group path analysis model showed that similarly across countries, supportive parental strategies were positively related to youths' prosocial behavior and that unsupportive parental strategies were positively related to youths' negative emotion dysregulation, and negatively related to youths' academic performance and negative emotion regulation. Those results emerged controlling for parents' and adolescents' gender and age, parents' educational level, social desirability, and Covid-related problems. This study advances cross-cultural knowledge about the impact of the strategies that parents use to socialize their children's happiness in the unique context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 Impact on Parental Emotion Socialization and Youth Socioemotional Adjustment in Italy.

This study examines the change and associations in parental emotion socialization strategies in response to children's negative emotions and youths' adjustment, comparing before the Covid-19 pandemic hit Italy and since the pandemic began. Participants were convenient cross-sectional/normative (Study 1) and clinical/longitudinal (Study 2) samples of Italian parents whose children were in middle childhood and adolescence. In Study 1, self-reported socialization strategies, youths' maladjustment, and emotion dysregulation increased since the pandemic began. Whereas, in Study 2, socialization strategies and youths' maladjustment decreased since the pandemic started. In both studies, unsupportive parental emotion socialization predicted youths' maladjustment and emotion dysregulation, while supportive parental emotion socialization predicted adaptive emotion regulation. This study advances knowledge about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the family context.