Socializing Language, Behavior, and Emotion in Parent-Child Interaction: A Review of Literature

Abstract

This article reviews research on how parents socialize children’s language, behavior, and emotion through everyday interaction. Drawing on the framework of language socialization, alongside work in psychology, child development, and conversation analysis, it examines how parents use communicative practices to guide children’s development and participation in culturally meaningful ways. The review is organized around explicit and implicit practices across the three domains of language, behavior, and emotion and highlights how these dimensions of socialization are interrelated rather than treated as isolated skills. Across studies, parents’ multimodal and culturally patterned interactions reveal how children learn not only linguistic forms but also culturally appropriate ways of behaving and feeling. Together, these findings underscore that socialization is a multimodal process through which children become competent members of their communities. Finally, the article suggests that naturalistic, longitudinal, and conversation-analytic research can further illuminate how socialization unfolds across diverse family structures and how children actively participate in shaping these processes.