Abstract:

Parental meta-emotion philosophy (PMEP), the organized set of feelings and thoughts parents have about their own and their children’s emotions, has received increasing scholarly attention in the past decades. In the present paper we summarize extant empirical studies on the evolution of the construct of the PMEP and on the mechanism of the PMEP in relation to children’s psychosocial adjustment. We also discuss the effect of its covariates such as age, coaching and interventions from the perspective of emotional parenting. In the future, more studies with domestic Chinese samples should be conducted to explore the universality and validity of the PMEP among Chinese parents. Diversified measurements need to be developed to assess the PMEP more accurately. In addition, the research on PMEP should be expanded and put into application, through ways such as parental emotion coaching and interventions, especially among children with special needs.

Key words: parents, emotional parenting, meta-emotion philosophy, children, psychosocial adjustment