Emotion Talk Among Mexican American and Anglo American Mothers and Children From Two Social Classes

Ethnic, social class, and gender differences in mothers\u27 and children\u27s references to emotions were examined. Twenty middle-class and 20 working-class Anglo American and 20 middle-class and 20 working-class Mexican American mothers audiotaped conversation with their 4-year-old children during car rides. Analyses of 1,226 references to emotions confirmed the existence of many patterns of emotion talk identified in prior studies of mother-child conversations about emotions, including gender differences in the frequency of emotion mentions and the use of a more varied emotion vocabulary. The study also established that social class is associated with the context in which feeling states are discussed, whereas ethnicity is related to the content of such talk. Implications for development are discussed