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What Parents and Children Say When Talking about Children’s Gratitude: A Thematic Analysis

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Abstract

Parent-child conversations are a widely recognized socializing mechanism, linked to children’s developing moral agency, empathy, and emotional competence. Similarly, parent-child conversations about gratitude have been linked to growth in children’s gratitude. However, the messages that parents and children exchange in conversations about children’s gratitude have yet to be investigated in depth. In the current study, we investigate the types of events that parents discuss with their children during times when they saw displays of children’s gratitude and events when the children missed the opportunity to display gratitude, along with the messages that parents and children share during these conversations. The study involved a thematic analysis of the gratitude conversations of 43 parent-child dyads (88% mothers, 77% European American, 51% boys, child Mage = 10.62, SD = 1.15) living in the United States. Gratitude and missed opportunity events primarily involved situations in which the child had the opportunity to attend an event or to receive a material gift, food, or assistance. Three themes characterized parent and child messages. First, parents suggested that being happy was a sign of being grateful, a way to make others happy, and the goal of benefactors’ behavior. Second, parents suggested that children should focus on what they receive rather than on what they did not receive. Finally, children conveyed that they could not always be grateful, but that in several cases they were able to both feel and display their excitement and gratitude. In particular, children reported feeling grateful when they received something they thought was special or enjoyable, unique or unexpected, that they knew would make their parent happy or that they felt lucky to have since others did not have it. Together these findings suggest the importance of future research investigating how children and parents coordinate and prioritize the various elements of gratitude moments in deciding how to be grateful and to socialize children’s gratitude.

Highlights

  • When talking about gratitude parents often note how the child’s gratitude affects them (e.g., makes them feel good).

  • Parents encourage children to notice and appreciate what they do have, even if the child does not like some aspect of a situation.

  • Children note that they cannot always be grateful.

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Data Availability

De-identified data are available from the last author upon request.

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Funding

Funding for this project was provided by the Expanding the Science and Practice of Gratitude Project run by UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center in partnership with UC Davis and by the John Templeton Foundation for earlier waves of data collection. The writing of this manuscript was supported in part by a postdoctoral fellowship provided by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (T32-HD007376) to the first author through the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute & Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Allegra J. Midgette & Andrea M. Hussong

  2. University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Greensboro, NC, USA

    Jennifer L. Coffman

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  1. Allegra J. Midgette
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  2. Jennifer L. Coffman
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  3. Andrea M. Hussong
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception, design, and analysis. Writing of first draft: Allegra Midgette. All authors commented on and edited subsequent versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Allegra J. Midgette.

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The authors declare no competing interest.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. In addition, for participating children informed consent was obtained from legal guardians.

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This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the Institutional Review Board at the University of North Carolina at Chapel.

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Midgette, A.J., Coffman, J.L. & Hussong, A.M. What Parents and Children Say When Talking about Children’s Gratitude: A Thematic Analysis. J Child Fam Stud 31, 1261–1275 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-021-02222-9

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