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• Posted August 14, 2024

One Key to Better Parenting: Laughter

Want to be a better, more effective mom or dad? Trying sharing a good laugh with your kid.

New research among folks ages 18 to 45 found many citing humor as one of the reasons they had, and continue to have, a positive relationship with their parents.

“My hope is that people can learn to use humor as an effective parenting tool, not only to diffuse tension but develop resilience and cognitive and emotional flexibility in themselves and model it for their children,” said study senior author Benjamin Levi. He's a professor of pediatrics and humanities at Penn State College of Medicine in University Park, Pa.

Levi explained there's been a lot of research into how humor helps people in many areas of life.

“Humor can teach people cognitive flexibility, relieve stress and promote creative problem-solving and resilience," he said in a Penn State news release.

But there hasn't been much investigation into laughter's role in parenting.

“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 became, how does one constructively use humor?”

To find out, he and his colleagues conducted a pilot study survey of 312 adults age 45 and younger.

More than half felt they'd been raised by people who'd used humor in their daily lives, and nearly three-quarters (about 72%) thought it could be an effective parenting tool.

There was a "pass it on" effect, too: Most who'd had mirthful parents said they hoped to adopt the same attitude raising their own kids.

Humorous parents tended to reap dividends as their kids got older, the study also found.

Among folks who said their parents had good senses of humor, more than 44% thought mom and dad had done a good job raising them, and 50.5% said they maintained a good rapport with their parents today.

Compare those percentages to the dismal 3.6% and 2.9%, respectively, of those surveyed who said their parents were relatively humorless during their upbringing.

The findings were published recently in the journal PLOS ONE.

That humor seemed to make such a difference in long-term parent-child relationships was unexpected, Levis team said.

Study lead author Lucy Emery believes looking at the funny side can reap rewards in other aspects of life.

“There’s an interesting parallel between business and parenting, which are both hierarchical. In business, humor has been shown to help reduce hierarchies, create better environments for collaboration and creativity and diffuse tension,” said Emery, who was a medical student at Penn State College of Medicine at the time of the research. She is now a pediatrics resident at Boston Children’s Hospital.

“While parent-child relationships are more loving than business relationships, stressful situations happen a lot when parenting," she noted. "Humor can help diffuse that tension and hierarchy and help both parties feel better about a stressful situation.”

More information

The American Academy of Pediatrics has tips on good parenting.

SOURCE: Penn State, news release, Aug. 12, 2024