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

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2023 Feb 17;20(4):3604. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20043604.

Abstract

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.

Keywords: COVID-19; academic performance; cultures; early adolescence; happiness; parental emotion socialization; socio-emotional adjustment.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Azerbaijan
  • COVID-19*
  • Child
  • Emotions / physiology
  • Female
  • Happiness
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Pandemics
  • Parent-Child Relations
  • Socialization*

Grants and funding

Ateneo 2022 Sapienza University of Rome to Laura Di Giunta, grant number RP1221816C98AF04.