Twenty-two American and 25 Chinese mothers and their 3-year-old children participated in this study. Mothers were instructed to discuss with their children at home four specific one-point-in-time events in which they both participated and during which the child experienced happiness, sadness, fear, or anger. American mother-child conversations showed an ''emotion-explaining style'' in which mothers and children provided rich causal explanations for antecedents of emotions. Chinese mother-child conversations employed an ''emotion-criticizing style'' that focused on installing proper behavior in the child and gave few explanations for the emotion itself. American mother-child conversations were also more likely to center on personal themes, were more elaborative, and were more focused on the child's roles and predilections than the conversations of Chinese. Findings are discussed in light of the impact of early family narrative practices on children's acquisition of emotion situation knowledge, which may in turn affect the development of autobiographical memory.