- Research found that parents who promote selfishness fail to pass on their values
- Parents who focus on prosocial values are more aware of their children’s needs
- These parents establish a stronger bond with their children, the study found
- This means they are more likely to pass down their values than parents who promote striving for power and achievement
Colin Fernandez
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Harry Pettit For Mailonline
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It’s easy to teach your children to be kind, according to a new study.
Research has found parents who practice altruism are more likely to pass down their values to their children, compared with parents who are selfish.
This may be because parents who focus on ‘pro-social’ values, like being caring, are more sensitive to their children’s needs.
As a result, they establish a stronger bond with their children, making their child more likely to follow their parents’ values.
Parents who want their children to be kind are more successful in passing on all of their values, research has found. Parents who promote selfishness, on the other hand, pass on their values poorly, the study showed (stock image)
PASSING VALUES DOWN
In explaining the results, the researchers suggest that parents who focus on ‘prosocial’ values may be more sensitive to their children’s needs.
These parents establish a stronger bond with their children, the researchers said, meaning they are more likely to successfully pass on their values.
Children are even likely to adopt values that are not related to kindness, like values of curiosity or tradition, the research found.
By being more empathetic and supportive, these parents also demonstrate the importance of these values directly in their relationships with their children.
As such, offspring are more likely to wish to replicate these positive experiences through their own values.
Researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London and the universities of Westminster, Vienna and Bern assessed 418 German and Swiss families.
They included children aged between 7-9 in Switzerland and aged 6-11 in Germany.
They examined the values the parents were trying to teach their little ones, and how successful they were.
To assess values, parents and children were shown pictures of adults and children respectively.
Alongside each picture was a statements such as ‘It is important to her to be rich.
She wants to have a lot of money and expensive things’, or ‘She believes that people should do what they are told’. They were then asked how much they identified with the picture.
The parents were also asked how much they wanted their children to grow up to be like the person in the picture they were shown.
Parents who were keen on their children growing up to be kind and caring were found to be more likely to have caring, kind children.
Those who were keener on striving for power and achievement were less likely to have children who replicated these values.
By being more empathetic and supportive, these parents also demonstrate the importance of these values directly in their relationships with their children. As such, offspring are more likely to wish to replicate these positive experiences through their own values.
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There was a difference between parents.
The test found mothers were more likely to teach children to be caring – and also to be more conservative – while fathers were more interested in children achieving material success or power, as well as being more open to change.
Professor Anat Bardi from Royal Holloway’s Department of Psychology and co-author of the study explained: ‘Ours is a test of how far the apple falls from the tree, or in other words, how similar are children to their parents in the values they hold?.
‘We often take for granted ‘like father, like son’ and this is especially interesting when it comes to the inheritance of destructive values such as power-seeking and selfishness.
‘We’ve now demonstrated that parents who foster more altruistic values, such as helping and caring more strongly pass on all their values down the family line.
Dr Anna Doehring from the University of Westminster ‘This is the first time a study that examined similarity between the values of children and their parents has actually assessed children’s values when they are at the formative time of childhood, whereas previous research only asked teens and young adults to reflect back on their experiences.
‘We are able to understand this key building block in the development of individual values, which are then taken forward through schooling and other important stages of value development.’
The research found that children whose parents wanted them to value helping, supporting and caring for others, were more similar to their parents in their values than those whose parents promoted striving for power and achievement (stock image)
In conclusion, Professor Bardi said: ‘This research really shows that where parents nurture positive, supportive and altruistic values their children will also take these characteristics to heart.
‘Where being ‘the best’ is among the dominant interests of the parents, children tend not to express such connection to their parent’s values.
‘This research brings a positive message to the world: prosocial parents breed a prosocial next generation, but parents who endorse selfishness do not breed a selfish next generation.
‘While there are always other influences on how we develop the values that make us who we are, there is no doubt that our parents have a huge role to play. How we then decide to take their values through our lives is, of course up to us as individuals.’
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