A blog about human brains and behavior for students of psychology.
What makes a good parent? That’s a complex question, maybe an impossible one. But warmth doesn’t seem to hurt. A new study from researchers at Harvard University suggests that children who experience more parental warmth go on to flourish in
We think of “parenting” as something that’s done for children, but of course you don’t simply stop being a parent the moment your children reach adulthood. The quality of a parent-child relationship can make a real difference for emerging adults,
Touch can be a powerful means of communication, especially between parents and children. As the authors of a recent study explain it, “the sense of touch develops in utero and enables parent-child communication from the earliest moments of life.” Maybe
Hover mothers, helicopter parents. Call them whatever you want: we’ve all seen examples of parents who closely monitor their children’s lives – sometimes even as their children stop being children and head off to college. Parenting is always a topic
Having a child is one of the biggest changes you can experience in life, so it seems reasonable to guess that parenthood could bring all kinds of psychological changes. Recently, a group of researchers dived into the question of what
Parental rejection may be an important catalyst for emotional eating during childhood – possibly more so than peer rejection. That’s according to a new study from psychologists at Ghent University in Belgium. In the study, 55 children between the ages
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how giving children less autonomy puts them at higher risk for anxiety. Now a group of psychologists in Australia have proposed a solution to this problem: online interventions for overprotective parents. The researchers
What’s one way to make a kid anxious? Give them less autonomy, apparently. A study of 88 children and adolescents between the ages of 6 and 17 has found that youth with higher levels of anxiety tend to report being
If your intuition tells you that harsh parental discipline is likely to have opposite the intended effect, you’d be correct. But a new study by researchers in Turkey suggests that besides being counterproductive, harsh discipline can lead to a vicious
Math and science learning isn’t just something that happens in the classroom. Several new studies have confirmed that children’s parents and home environment play an important role in shaping math and science skills. In fact, home and school learning seem
