The Relationship between Parents moral Character and Children's Social Skills: The Mediating Role of Parents' Styles in Coping with Children's Negative Emotions

Introduction One of the most important tasks of the family is to socialize children, and the family provides the first social context for children. Parents can socialize their children emotionally by recognizing children's emotions, discussing the importance of emotions, modeling emotional behaviors, and Help to regulate the emotional atmosphere of the family. Therefore the aim of this study was to causal explaining the social skills of children based on the moral characters ‎of parents with respect to the mediating role of coping styles with children's negative emotions. Method This ‎research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-correlation in terms of method. In the present study, the structural equation modeling method was used. In this study, the variables of parents coping styles with children's negative emotions, parents' moral backgrounds and children's social skills were measured as latent variables. Population included all parents of ‎84314‎ elementary school students in Yazd who were studying in the academic year 2019-2020. In the present study, according to both statistical criteria of sample size and criteria of multivariate analysis, the number of 400 participants, including parents of elementary school students, were selected by cluster (multistage) random sampling method. In the present study Social skills questionnaire, parent’s coping with children’s negative emotions scale (CCNES) ‎and moral ‎characters questionnaire were used to collect data and‎ were distributed among all study participants, of which 381 completed the questionnaires. Smart PLS software was used to analyze the ‎data by structural equation modeling with the partial ‎least squares. Results Findings showed that the measurement model after correction has acceptable validity and reliability. Results of structural equations showed that the direct path of supportive coping styles with children's negative emotions to social skills is significant. The direct path of non supportive styles of dealing with emotion to social skills is significant; The direct path of moral character to social skills is significant; The direct path of moral character to the suportive parent’s coping with children’s non supportive emotions‎ is not significant and the direct path moral character with non supportive ‎parent’s coping styles with children’s negative emotions are significant Indication of the indirect path of moral character to social skills is not significant due to the mediating role of suportive parent’s coping styles with children’s negative emotions and Indirect path of moral origins to social skills are significant due to the mediating role of non supportive parent’s coping styles with children’s negative emotions ‎. It showed that moral character, both directly and in a process by reducing the non supportive parent’s coping styles with children’s negative emotions‎ can lead to the social skills in children. Conclusion Finding of this study suggests that positive moral character (affirmation of altruistic values and rejection of selfish values) can play a significant role in explaining how parents deal with their children's emotions and in some way affect their children's emotional socialization. Thus, the moral character‎ of parents play a significant role in explaining the emotional ‎socialization and social skills of children.‎