A child’s propensity to be “prosocial,” or to act with kindness and empathy toward others, is greatly increased when they have a loving relationship with their parents from an early age, new research from the University of Cambridge indicates.
The study analyzed information from over 10,000 individuals born between 2000 and 2002 to determine the long-term relationship between our early relationships with our parents, prosociality, and mental health. It is one of the first studies to examine the interaction between these characteristics over a lengthy period encompassing childhood and adolescence.
The researchers found that people who experienced warm and loving relationships with their parents at age three not only tended to have fewer mental health problems during early childhood and adolescence but also displayed heightened “prosocial” tendencies. This refers to socially desirable behaviours intended to benefit others, such as kindness, empathy, helpfulness, generosity and volunteering.
Significant Prosociality Link
Although further research is required to confirm the correlation between parent-child relationships and subsequent prosociality, the study indicates a significant association. For every standard unit above “normal” levels that a child’s closeness with his or her parents was at age 3, prosociality increased by 0.24 standard units by adolescence.
Prosocial habits, on the other hand, were less likely to emerge in children whose early relationships with their parents were emotionally tense or violent.
It may not always be easy for young families to build close parent-child relationships, according to the team, because of factors like time constraints and financial strain. In such cases, the researchers contend that this makes the case for targeted policies and support.
“Our analysis showed that after a certain age, we tend to be mentally well, or mentally unwell, and have a reasonably fixed level of resilience. Prosociality varies more and for longer, depending on our environment,”
said Ioannis Katsantonis, the lead author and a doctoral researcher specializing in psychology and education.
Mental Health and Prosociality
The study also examined the extent to which mental health and prosocial behaviour are fixed characteristics in adolescents and the extent to which they fluctuate in response to circumstances such as school or interpersonal changes. It measured mental health and prosociality at ages 5, 7, 11, 14, and 17 in order to develop a comprehensive picture of the dynamics that shape these traits and their interactions.
“A big influence appears to be our early relationship with our parents. As children, we internalize those aspects of our relationships with parents that are characterized by emotion, care and warmth. This affects our future disposition to be kind and helpful towards others,”
Katsantonis said.
The study used data from 10,700 participants in the Millennium Cohort Study, which monitored the development of a large group of people born in the U.K. between 2000 and 2002. It includes survey-based information about their prosociality, “internalizing” mental health symptoms (such as depression and anxiety) and “externalizing” symptoms (such as aggression).
Further survey information revealed the extent to which the participants’ relationships with their parents at age three were marked by “maltreatment” (physical and verbal abuse), emotional conflict, and “closeness” (warmth, security, and caring). Other potentially confounding variables, such as ethnicity and socioeconomic status, were also considered.
Latent State-trait-occasion Modelling
The Cambridge team then employed a complex statistical technique known as latent state-trait-occasion modelling to determine the extent to which the mental health symptoms and prosocial inclinations of the participants appeared to be expressing fixed personality characteristics at each stage of their development.
This allowed them, for instance, to determine the extent to which a child who exhibited apprehensive behaviour during the survey was reacting to a particular experience or set of circumstances, as opposed to being an anxious child by nature.
The study discovered evidence of a connection between mental health issues and prosociality. Notably, children who manifested higher-than-average externalizing mental health symptoms at an earlier age demonstrated less prosociality than average later in life. For example, for each standard unit increase above normal in externalizing mental health problems a child manifested at age 7, their prosociality decreased by 0.11 standard units at age 11.
However, there was no convincing evidence that the opposite was true. While children with greater than average prosociality generally had better mental health at any single given point in time, this did not imply their mental health improved as they got older.
Based on this finding, the study suggests that schools’ efforts to foster prosocial behaviours may be more impactful if they are integrated into the curriculum in a sustained way rather than being implemented in the form of one-off interventions, like anti-bullying weeks.
Later Childhood and Adolescence
Children who remained closer to their parents when they were three years old not only exhibited higher prosocial behaviour but also showed fewer signs of mental illness in later childhood and adolescence.
Strong early connections between parents and children are already widely recognized as being essential to promoting children’s healthy development in other domains, and Katsantonis said that the results of the study further emphasized this point.
“So much of this comes back to parents,” Katsantonis said. “How much they can spend time with their children and respond to their needs and emotions early in life matters enormously.”
Some may require assistance in learning how to do this, but we should not overlook the significance of simply giving them time. For parents living or working in stressful or constrained conditions, there is frequently insufficient time for the development of a close relationship with their children.
“Policies which address that, at any level, will have many benefits, including enhancing children’s mental resilience and their capacity to act positively towards others later in life,”
he said.
Abstract
This study examined the association between internalizing and externalizing mental health and prosociality across four developmental transitions. The effects of parent–child interactions on mental health and prosociality were also explored. The data from a community sample of 10,703 children on mental health, prosociality, child maltreatment, parent–child relationships, parental mental health, and socioeconomic status were derived from the Millennium Cohort Study to cover the developmental periods from early childhood to late adolescence (ages 5, 7, 11, 14, 17). Adjusting for covariates, latent trait-state-occasion and cross-lag modeling were deployed. The results indicated that internalizing and externalizing mental health symptoms, and prosociality were more trait-like throughout adolescence. Only within-person increase in externalizing symptoms predicted decrease in subsequent within-person prosociality from middle childhood to late adolescence. Parent–child conflict and maltreatment had deleterious effects on children’s prosociality and mental health. Mental health professionals should screen for both possible mental health problems and deficits in prosociality. Interventions aiming to improve the quality of parent–child relationships could be beneficial for the development of child mental health and prosociality.
Reference:
- Katsantonis, I., & McLellan, R. (2023). The role of parent–child interactions in the association between mental health and prosocial behavior: Evidence from early childhood to late adolescence. International Journal of Behavioral Development, DOI: 10.1177/01650254231202444