About This Project

Harsh parenting casts a long shadow on developing children and may cause psychopathology across the lifespan[1]. Forgiveness may help adults who experienced this childhood adversity reduce risk for aggression, depression, anxiety, or other problematic symptoms, as earlier studies have shown that forgiveness is associated with improved mental health and well-being [2].

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Without a doubt, negative parenting behaviors can put children at risk. Because the parent-child relationship might be the most enduring and emotionally close relationship that a person has [3], without healing childhood wounds caused by parents, emotional pain and suffering can negatively affect an adult's overall wellbeing.
Forgiveness might protect children in disadvantaged situations against negative parental behaviors [4]. What’s more, forgiveness might influence an individual’s capacity to withstand aversive emotional states (distress tolerance ability)[5]. However, there is little research about the influences of forgiveness in a specific family context. This study will fill in the gap of literature and contribute to the theory of forgiveness in parent-child relationships.

What is the significance of this project?

According to the 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health[6], 51.5 million Americans aged 18 or older had a mental illness. This study will focus on the most common mental issues, such as depression, anxiety, aggressiveness, and other related symptoms, and may help to improve understanding of broad liabilities to psychopathology. Furthermore, by investigating the effects of different dimensions of parenting behaviors on adult children's distress tolerance ability, and the beneficial effects of forgiveness, this study will not only lead to more efficient and effective intervention approaches that reduce the prevalence of a wide range of psychiatric disorders among adults, but also provide insights into prevention programs for child mental illness.

What are the goals of the project?

The primary purpose of this study is to study whether forgiveness toward parents could mitigate the effects of negative parenting on adult offspring's distress tolerance ability and mental illness symptoms through self-report measures. We will distribute an online survey to get data from around 900 adults who are currently living in the US. We will ask about people’s perceived parenting behaviors when they were young, the levels of forgiveness toward their parents, their distress tolerance ability, and their mental health state. With the data, we will run statistical analyses to examine the interactive effect between parenting and forgiveness on adult children’s distress tolerance and mental health. Hopefully, the results could be published in a peer-reviewed journal.