Developing children’s humanity: the unique and interactive role of parents’ and peers’ humanity

Abstract

The present study investigated the unique and interactive role of parents’ and peers’ humanity virtue (i.e. kindness, love, and social intelligence) in association with children’s humanity. The participants were 761 fourth- to ninth-graders (M_age = 12.62; 45.2% boys) and their biological parents. The humanity subscale of the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Adults (VIA-IS) and Youth (VIA-Youth) was used to measure the humanity of each party. The results showed that mothers’ and fathers’ kindness were associated with children’s kindness, mothers’ love and fathers’ social intelligence were associated with children’s love and social intelligence, respectively. All three dimensions of the humanity of peers were positively related to that of children. Two-way interactions were found between mother and peer systems and displayed distinct interaction patterns in terms of kindness and love. Possible explanations and directions for future research are discussed.

Keywords:

• Humanity
• virtue
• unique role
• interactive role
• parent
• peer

Authors’ contributions

Lisha Liu carried out the design of the study, performed the statistical analysis, and drafted and revised the manuscript. Qian Wang drafted and revised the manuscript. Yanfang Li supervised the project and were in charge of overall direct and planning. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported National Natural Science Foundation of China; the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities;