Emerging adults' reports of maternal emotion socialization and their adjustment across cultures

The relationship between parental emotion socialization and offspring adjustment during emerging adulthood across cultures has been understudied. We examined emerging adults' reports of maternal emotion socialization, their subjective experience, and their own current adjustment in India (n = 238) and USA (n = 220). Indians rated their mothers as providing more explanation-oriented responses and reported feeling more positive in response, and rated their mothers as providing all four nonsupportive responses (punitive, minimizing, scolding, and not talking) more, and reported feeling less negative in response than Americans. Reports of mothers' nonsupportive responses were positively related to emerging adults' adjustment problems in both cultures. In the US, mothers' supportive responses were directly negatively related to emerging adults' adjustment problems, while in India, maternal supportive responses were indirectly related to emerging adults' adjustment problems via their subjective experience. Culture moderated the relation between maternal expressive encouragement and emerging adult adjustment problems.