Journal of Family Psychology Copyright 1996 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 1996, Vol. 10, No. 3, 243-268 O893-32O0/9OT3.OO Parental Meta-Emotion Philosophy and the Emotional Life of Families: Theoretical Models and Preliminary Data John M. Gottman, Lynn Fainsilber Katz, and Carole Hooven University of Washington This article introduces the concepts of parental meta-emotion, which refers to parents' emotions about their own and their children's emotions, and meta-emotion philosophy, which refers to an organized set of thoughts and metaphors, a philosophy, and an approach to one's own emotions and to one's children's emotions. In the context of a longitudinal study beginning when the children were 5 years old and ending when they were 8 years old, a theoretical model and path analytic models are presented that relate parental meta-emotion philosophy to parenting, to child regulatory physiology, to emotion regulation abilities in the child, and to child outcomes in middle childhood. The importance of parenting practices for refers to executive functions of emotion. In this children's long-term psychological adjustment article, we discuss the evolution of the meta- has been a central tenet in developmental and emotion construct and describe its relationship family psychology. In this article, we introduce to various aspects of family and child function- a new concept of parenting that we call parental ing. We present a parsimonious theoretical meta-emotion philosophy, which refers to an model of the role of parental meta-emotions in organized set of feelings and thoughts about children's emotional development, operational- one's own emotions and one's children's emo- ize this model, and present some path analytic tions. We use the term meta-emotion broadly to tests of the model. In this model, we argue (a) encompass both feelings and thoughts about that parental meta-emotion philosophy is re- emotion, rather than in the more narrow sense lated to both the inhibition of parental negative of one's feelings about feelings (e.g., feeling affect and the facilitation of positive parenting; guilty about being angry). The notion we have (b) that it directly affects children's regulatory in mind parallels metacognition, which refers to physiology; and (c) that this, in turn, affects the executive functions of cognition (Allen & children's ability to regulate their emotions— Armour, 1993; Bvinelli, 1993; Flavell, 1979; hence, parental meta-emotion philosophy has an Fodor, 1992; Olson & Astington, 1993). In an impact on a variety of child outcomes. analogous manner, meta-emotion philosophy Background John M. Gottman, Lynn Fainsilber Katz, and Car- ole Hooven, Department of Psychology, University The Concept of Meta-Emotion of Washington. The research of this article was supported by Na- Research in developmental psychology on the tional Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Research effects of parenting has focused on parental Grants MH42484 and MH35997, by an NIMH Merit affect and discipline, selecting variables such as Award to extend research in time, and by Research warmth, control, authoritarian or authoritative Scientist Award K2MH00257. styles, and responsiveness (see Ainsworth, Bell, This research received a great deal of support from & Stayton, 1971; Baumrind, 1967, 1971; Michael Guralnick, director of the Center for Human Becker, 1964; Cohn, Cowan, Cowan, & Pear- Developmental Disabilities (CHDD), and CHDD's son, 1992; C. P. Cowan & P. A. Cowan, 1992; core facilities, particularly the Instrument Develop- Maccoby & Martin, 1983; Patterson, 1982; and ment Laboratory at the University of Washington. Correspondence concerning this article should be Schaefer, 1959). Little attention has been placed addressed to John M. Gottman, Department of Psy- on examining the parents' feelings and cogni- chology, Box 351525, University of Washington, tions about their own affect or their feelings and Seattle, Washington 98115. cognitions about their child's affect. 243 244 GOTTMAN, KATZ, AND HOOVEN Our review of popular parenting guides also sadness was important information that some- revealed that the overwhelming majority of thing was missing in one's life. these parenting guides are based on obtaining This area of meta-emotion is probably char- and maintaining child discipline. However, one acterized by great variability even in laboratory genre of parenting guides focuses on children's experiments that elicit emotions. Researchers emotions and on how to make immediate and have reported large variability in results from everyday emotional connections with a child laboratory experiments designed to elicit emo- that are not critical and contemptuous, but ac- tion, such as the startle response. Ekman, cepting. These kinds of parenting guides can be Friesen, and Simons (1985) reported a consis- traced to the seminal influence of one child tent set of responses across participants to being psychologist: Haim Ginott (Ginott, 1956, 1971, startled, but there were huge individual differ- 1975). Although many psychological systems ences in the emotional response to having been of thought (e.g., attachment theory, psychoanal- startled, that is, in people's meta-emotions to ysis) have written about the importance of the the startle; Levenson and Sutton (personal com- child's affect, Redl (1966) and Ginott both em- munication, June 15, 1994) reported a similar phasized intervening with a child's strong neg- set of results. Meta-emotion may be a pervasive ative emotions while the child is having the and understudied dimension in emotion re- emotions. They also emphasized intervening di- search. rectly, dealing with the child's conscious thoughts and actions. This difference was so important, in our view, that it amounted to a revolution in "how one deals with children," to An Emotion-Coaching Meta-Emotion use Redl's (1966) words. Philosophy Our initial interest was in this concept of In our pilot work, we noticed that there are parents' awareness of their children's emotional some parents who are aware of the emotions in lives and their attempts to make emotional con- their lives (particularly the negative emotions), nections with their children. This interest led to who can talk about those emotions in a differ- the development of our meta-emotion interview entiated manner, who are aware of these emo- (Katz & Gottman, 1986). All the parents were tions in their children, and who assist their separately interviewed about their own experi- children with their emotions of anger and sad- ence of sadness and anger, their philosophy ness, acting like an emotion coach. This is a of emotional expression and control, and their parental meta-emotion philosophy we call an attitudes and behavior about their children's emotion-coaching philosophy. We found that an anger and sadness. In our pilot work, we dis- emotion-coaching meta-emotion philosophy covered a great variety in the emotions, experi- had five components: parents (a) said that they ences, philosophies, and attitudes that parents were aware of low intensity emotions in them- had about their own emotions and the emotions selves and in their children; (b) viewed the of their children. For example, one pair of par- child's negative emotion as an opportunity for ents said that they viewed anger as "from the intimacy or teaching; (c) validated their child's devil," and that they would not permit them- emotion; (d) assisted the child in verbally label- selves or their children to express anger. Some ing the child's emotions; and (e) problem solved parents were accepting of sadness and anger but with the child, setting behavioral limits, and did not engage in problem solving with their discussing goals and strategies for dealing with child. Other parents were not disapproving of the situation that led to the negative emotion. anger but, instead, in laissez-fairre fashion, ig- We hypothesized that these parents have a nored anger in their children. Still other parents greater ability than other parents to maneuver in encouraged the expression and exploration of the world of emotions, that they are more com- anger. There was similar variation with respect fortable with the world of emotions, and that to sadness. Some parents minimized sadness in they are better able to regulate emotions. We themselves and in their children, saying such expected them to be more affectionate with their things as, "I can't afford to be sad," or "What children and less autocratic than other parents. does a child have to be sad about?" Other par- However, it was our observation that an ents thought that emotions like sadness in their emotion-coaching meta-emotion philosophy children were opportunities for intimacy, that was different from parental warmth, and we META-EMOTION 245 tested this notion in the current study. Very emotion; for example, we might only be study- concerned, generally positive and warm parents ing how parents feel about getting angry at their can be oblivious to the world of emotion, and an children (e.g., feel guilty about getting angry). emotion-coaching meta-emotion philosophy is However, we use the term broadly to encom- something additional that these parents bring to pass feelings and thoughts about emotion. As their roles as parents. Perhaps warmth and limit the examples just provided suggest, the con- setting are correlated with these meta-emotion struct being tapped involves parents' feelings variables, but we think that they are not the and thoughts about their own and their chil- same dimensions of parenting. dren's emotions, their responses to their child's In contrast, we found that a dismissing meta- emotions, and their reasoning about these re- emotion philosophy was one in which parents sponses (i.e., what the parent is trying to teach felt that the child's sadness or anger were po- the child when responding to the child's anger). tentially harmful to the child, that it was the This broader construct indexes a fundamental parents' job to change these toxic negative emo- attitude or approach to emotion.