Solicitation and emotion socialization in Turkish adolescents' socioemotional adjustment: A combined predictive model

Previous research has indicated that parental emotion socialization (ES) and solicitation may support socioemotional adjustment especially during adolescence. However, the literature still does not have a sufficient answer to how these two parenting behaviors operate together in relation to adolescent socioemotional adjustment. This thesis comprises of two survey studies that examined how parental solicitation, supportive and nonsupportive ES separately and combined predict socioemotional adjustment in a sample of Turkish adolescents. ES practices' role as a moderator the relation between parental solicitation and adolescent outcome variables was also investigated. The first study consisted of 183 mothers (Mage=42.11, SDage= 5.04) who reported their parenting behaviors and their adolescents' adjustment. Results from this study indicated that when considering all parenting behaviors together, nonsupportive ES negatively predicted prosocial behaviors and positively predicted internalizing and externalizing problems significantly. Supportive ES and solicitation each significantly predicted prosocial behaviors positively. Marginally significant interactions between solicitation and nonsupportive ES in the prosocial behaviors model and solicitation and supportive ES in internalizing problem were explored. The second study consisted two socioculturally and socioeconomically representative samples of 376 (Mage=40.24, SDage= 5.34) mothers and 323 fathers (MAge= 43. 06, SDAge = 5.48). Results showed that solicitation was marginally significantly related to externalizing behaviors in both paternal and maternal models and significantly related to prosocial behaviors in the paternal model. Significant interactions between solicitation and supportive ES in the internalizing problems model and solicitation and nonsupportive ES in the prosocial behaviors model for the maternal dataset. Results are discussed with regards to sociocultural and socioeconomic contexts and the self-determination theory.