About This Project

Family relationships have a significant impact on our health (Chen et al., 2017). But what makes those relationships healthier? Previous findings have found that interacting with a humble person could improve well-being (Porter et al., 2022). But nobody has studied humility (i.e., being non-defensive, self-aware, open, and other-oriented; Chancellor & Lyubomirsky, 2013) from a parent's perspective. I am looking into this - is humility important for parenting, and why?

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Parents can have a large impact on their children. Parenting approaches are often summarized into 4 types (e.g., authoritative, authoritarian; Baumrind, 1991), and parents themselves have developed styles (e.g., gentle, panda; Lascala, 2023), though these are often a rebranded form of Baumrind's 4 types (Pezalla & Davidson, 2024). An authoritative style - characterized by high expectations and high warmth/support - often results in the best child outcomes.

But styles don't acknowledge that parents are multi-faceted. So, scientists look into more specific characteristics. Humility is one of these - but it has not yet been studied.

Humility is linked to many benefits (e.g., empathy, forgiveness, gratitude, relationship quality; Farrell et al., 2015; Porter et al., 2022; Reid et al., 2018), and theoretically could have a significant impact on parenting, children, and familial health.

What is the significance of this project?

Humility within parenting is a crucial area that needs investigating. In addition to improved interpersonal interactions that come with humility, parents that are humble may also:

1) Be more likely to engage in healthy behavior (Porter et al., 2022), subsequently improving the physical and mental health of their children. This is unique from current parenting types.

2) Model/teach humble behavior to their children, supporting their relational and individual well-being throughout development and outside of the family

But the impact, and measurement, of humility could be dependent on context (Hoyle et al., 2016). Some parents suggest that nothing has humbled them more than parenting. Other parents assume that child difficulties have nothing to do with them. And other parenting characteristics may matter more than humility. But we will not be able to clarify any of these possibilities, nor how to increase humility of parents, until we've collected initial data from parents.

What are the goals of the project?

We will be sending a survey to 250 parents who are currently raising a child between the ages of 4-18 with a partner. They will be recruited from across the U.S., using an online platform, which has been shown to result in the highest-quality responses (e.g., honest, attentive, representative; Douglas et al., 2023).

They will answer various already-established measures related to their humility, mental health, parenting, relationship with their partner, and child's mental health. We should have all responses collected within days after obtaining funding. After we collect and clean the data, we'll run statistical analyses (hierarchical regressions, SEM, and correlations) to determine if humility is distinct from parenting behaviors, if humility predicts familial health beyond parenting practices, and if the parenting context is important to consider when measuring humility. This will lead to at least one publication in a peer-reviewed journal and direct future research.