Laughing is very healthy, but, in addition, laughter could be a very useful resource to improve relationships between parents and children, since a new study led by Penn State researchers has found that most people considered humor to be an effective tool for parents and that the use of humor by parents or caregivers influenced the quality of their relationship with their children and among those whose parents used humor, the majority viewed their relationship with their parents and the way who were raised in a positive way.
“Humor can teach people cognitive flexibility, relieve stress, and promote creative problem solving and resilience,” said Benjamin Levi, professor of pediatrics and humanities at Penn State College of Medicine and senior author of the study. “My father used humor and it was very effective. I use humor in my clinical practice and with my own children. The question was, how do you use humor constructively?”
While aspects of humor and play have been studied in various settings and in child development, the use of humor in parenting has not been formally studied, researchers have noted. “There is 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 the First author Lucy Emery, who was a medical student at Penn State College of Medicine at the time of the research and is currently a pediatrics resident at Boston Children’s Hospital.
“While parent-child relationships are more loving than business relationships, stressful situations often occur during parenting. Humor can help dissipate that tension and hierarchy and help both parties feel better about a stressful situation.” , adds the expert.
Using humor as an effective parenting tool
This preliminary research was a first step in examining how people view the relationship between humor, their experience, and their behavior. The study will help lay the foundation for understanding how to use humor constructively and the types of situations in which it is most risky to use it. Their findings have been published in the journal PLOS One.
They surveyed 312 people between 18 and 45 years old. More than half said they were raised by people who used humor and 71.8% agreed that humor can be an effective tool for parents. Most said they use or plan to use humor with their children and believe it has more potential benefits than harms.
The team also found a correlation between parents’ use of humor and the way their children, who are now adults, viewed the way they were raised and their relationship with their parents. Of those who reported that their parents used humor, 50.5% said they had a good relationship with their parents and 44.2% reported that they felt their parents did a good job raising them. On the other hand, of those who said their parents did not use humor, only 2.9% reported having a good relationship with their parents and 3.6% reported that they thought their parents did a good job raising them.
“Humor can teach people cognitive flexibility, relieve stress, and promote creative problem solving and resilience”
While it’s not surprising that parents would use humor with their children if they were raised by caregivers who did the same, Levi said the stark differences between the two groups were unexpected. The research team is expanding this preliminary study and surveying a larger, more diverse cohort of parents, as well as collecting qualitative research based on parents’ experience with humor.
“My hope is that people can learn to use humor as an effective parenting tool, not just to diffuse tension, but to build resilience and cognitive and emotional flexibility in themselves and model it for their children,” Levi said. Erik Lehman, a biostatistician at Penn State, and Anne Libera, director of comedy studies at Chicago’s The Second City, who also contributed to the article.
