Background and Aims

Promoting flourishing families is one of the pillars of positive psychology; however, more research is needed to investigate positive psychological processes and family well-being. Drawing on the robust literature demonstrating the emotional and relationship benefits of gratitude, we present two studies demonstrating the benefits of gratitude for parents’ well-being and family functioning using daily experience and experimental designs.

Method and Results 

First, in a 9-day daily diary study (N=270 parents; 65% women), parents described a daily caregiving experience and reported daily gratitude, well-being, and family functioning. In this study, daily gratitude predicted greater well-being (positive emotions, negative emotions, life satisfaction, meaning in life, and psychological need satisfaction) and family functioning (parent-child closeness, diary-coded conflict and support), controlling for daily happiness, coder-rated caregiving challenges, and sociodemographic characteristics.

Second, in a longitudinal experiment, we evaluated the effects of parents’ gratitude expression on well-being and family functioning. Parents (N=619; 72.5% women) were randomly assigned to: 1) write a gratitude letter to someone who was kind to them (general gratitude), 2) write a gratitude letter to someone who made them feel cherished, protected, or accepted (safe haven gratitude), or 3) write about their daily activities (control). Both general and safe haven gratitude led to increases in felt gratitude relative to control, which in turn predicted greater well-being (subjective happiness, positive emotions, negative emotions, psychological need satisfaction, meaning in life) and improved family functioning (greater parent-child closeness, parenting satisfaction, and more positive perceptions of child’s behavior and adjustment; less parental overcontrol) one week later. 

Conclusion

Many parenting interventions encourage greater effort, energy, and attention to one’s children, which may backfire for several reasons, such as the negative effects of over-involved parenting strategies. Alternatively, in our studies, neither felt nor expressed gratitude referenced participants’ children, suggesting that simple activities to promote parents’ gratitude in general may benefit the entire family.