Parents Can Pass Empathy Skills to Their Children

Photo by Travis Grossen on Unsplash

The 25-year KLIFF/VIDA study at the University of Virginia indicates that parents who express empathy toward their teenagers may give teens a head start in developing the skill themselves and passing it on to their own offspring.

The KLIFF/VIDA study, reported on in YouthToday online, has tracked 184 adolescents for more than 25 years, from age 13 well into their 30s. The study started in 1998, recording videos of conversations between parents and their teens, measuring empathy by rating how present and engaged mothers were in the conversation, whether they had an accurate understanding of their teen’s problem, and how much help and emotional support they offered. The teens then returned to the university each year until they were 19, where the researchers observed whether the teens showed those same types of empathetic behaviours towards their close friends.

Ten years later, those of the study cohort who now had children of their own were surveyed about their own parenting and asked about their young children’s empathy, for example, by rating how often their child “tries to understand how others feel” and “tries to comfort others”.

The research findings indicate that the more empathic a mother was toward her teenager at 13, the more empathic the teen was toward their close friends across the adolescent years and that, amongst the teens in the study who later had children themselves, the ones who had shown more empathy for close friends as adolescents became more supportive parents as adults.

The research findings suggest that “if parents hope to raise empathic teens, it may be helpful to give them firsthand experiences of being understood and supported”, but that teens also “need opportunities to practice and refine these skills with their peers”. The indication seems to be that “adolescent friendships may be an essential ‘training ground’ for teens to learn social skills such as empathy, how to respond effectively to other people’s suffering, and supportive caregiving abilities that they can put to use as parents,” particularly when those friendships are characterized by mutual understanding and support.

The study intends to continue following the participants to better understand how their experiences with parents and peers during adolescence may play a role in how their own children develop. The researchers also intend to explore what factors might interrupt intergenerational cycles of low empathy, aggression and harsh parenting, e.g. whether having supportive friends could compensate for a lack of empathy experienced from one’s own family.