Most experts agree that parents with a sense of humour are better at raising their kids.
A recent study that emphasised the value of laughing with your children found that parents who use humour have much better relationships with their kids.
Two key findings emerged from the US pilot study conducted by Penn State University: first, children of parents with good humour sense thought more favourably of their connection as adults, and second, parents who utilised humour had better relationships with their children.
Benjamin Levi, the study’s lead author, claimed that humour can help people become more resilient, creative problem solvers, and cognitively flexible.
In depth
312 respondents between the ages of 18 and 45 were polled by the researchers for the study that was published in the journal PLOS One.
More than half of those surveyed felt their parents were humorous. Furthermore, 71.8% of respondents said humour may be a useful parenting strategy. The majority of respondents think that humour has more potential benefits than drawbacks and either use it now or plan to use it with their kids.
According to ScienceDaily’s article on the study, of the kids who had humorous parents, 50.5% claimed they had a good relationship with them and 44.2% said they thought their parents raised them well. Those whose parents did not utilise humour were in sharp contrast to this. Just 2.9% of respondents who said their parents didn’t utilise humour later in life said they had a good relationship with them. Merely 3.6% of the participants expressed their belief that their parents raised them in an effective manner.
In addition to defusing conflict, Levi expressed his hope that parents will be able to model resilience, emotional and cognitive flexibility, and self-control in their children by learning to utilise humour as a useful parenting technique.
Take away
There’s an intriguing similarity between parenting and business hierarchy.
According to Lucy Emery, the study’s primary author, humour has been demonstrated to help lower hierarchies, improve collaboration and creative settings, and ease tension in the workplace.
Parenting involves a lot of stressful situations, even though parent-child connections are more caring than professional relationships. A difficult situation can be made less stressful for both parties by using humour to ease tension and establish a sense of authority.
