WEDNESDAY, Aug. 14, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Want to be a better, more effective mom or dad? Try sharing a good laugh with your child.
A new study of people ages 18 to 45 found that many of them cite humor as one of the reasons they had and continue to have a positive relationship with their parents.
“I hope that people will learn to use humor as an effective parenting tool, not only to relieve tension, but also to develop their own resilience and cognitive and emotional flexibility and to be a role model for their children,” said the study’s lead author, Benjamin Levi, a professor of pediatrics and humanities at Penn State College of Medicine in University Park, Pennsylvania.
Levi explained that there is a lot of research on how humor helps people in many areas of life.
“Humor can teach people cognitive flexibility, reduce stress, and promote creative problem solving and resilience,” he said in a Penn State press release.
However, the role of laughter in raising children has hardly been studied so far.
“My father used humor and it was very effective,” Levi said. “I use humor in my clinical practice and with my own children. The question was how to use humor constructively.”
To find out, he and his colleagues conducted a pilot study among 312 adults aged 45 and younger.
More than half felt they had been raised by people who used humour in their daily lives, and almost three-quarters (about 72%) thought it could be an effective educational tool.
And there was also a “pass-on effect”: Most who had had cheerful parents said they hoped to adopt the same attitude when raising their own children.
The study also found that parents with a sense of humor tended to benefit as their children grew older.
Among people who said their parents had a good sense of humor, more than 44% thought mom and dad did a good job raising their children, and 50.5% said they have a good relationship with their parents today.
Compare these percentages to the dismal 3.6% and 2.9% of respondents, respectively, who said their parents had a relatively humorless attitude during their upbringing.
The results were recently published in the journal PLUS ONE.
The fact that humor seemed to make such a big difference in the long-term parent-child relationship was unexpected, Levi’s team said.
Lead study author Lucy Emery believes that seeing the funny side of things can pay off in other areas of life as well.
“There is an interesting parallel between business and parenting, both of which are hierarchical. In business, humor has been shown to help break down hierarchies, create better environments for collaboration and creativity, and reduce tension,” said Emery, who was a medical student at Penn State College of Medicine at the time of the study. She is now a pediatric resident at Boston Children’s Hospital.
“Parent-child relationships are more loving than business relationships, but parenting often involves stressful situations,” she noted. “Humor can help reduce these tensions and hierarchies and help both parties feel better in a stressful situation.”
More information
The American Academy of Pediatrics offers tips for good parenting.
SOURCE: Penn State, press release, August 12, 2024
