A literature review of gratitude, parent–child relationships, and well-being in children

Abstract

Positive psychology has highlighted the importance of personal positive qualities such as gratitude for human thriving. Reviews of research on gratitude are predominantly based on work with adults. We address this gap by considering the familial roots and well-being implications of gratitude in children. We conducted two systematic reviews examining children’s gratitude as it relates to parent–child relationships (N = 10) and children’s gratitude and well-being (N = 38). Children’s gratitude was higher when parents modeled gratitude, there was a more secure parent–child attachment, and parents employed more supportive, autonomy granting, and warm parenting. These findings align with attachment theory, social learning and emotion socialization theories, and the find-remind-and-bind theory. Additionally, children’s gratitude was positively related to greater life satisfaction, positive affect, and mental well-being in cross-sectional and intervention studies. These findings provide some support for the broaden-and-build theory, the adaptive cycle model, and the schematic hypothesis. The reviewed theoretical frameworks and empirical findings formed the basis of our proposed model whereby children’s gratitude is posited to mediate the relation between parent–child relationship factors and children’s well-being. Further, we identified several testable mechanisms that might explain why gratitude is related to well-being. Our proposed model is an important contribution to the current literature because it provides a novel, overarching synthesis of existing work on children’s gratitude that is intended to be a framework for future research to test potential mechanisms relevant to children’s gratitude development and well-being outcomes.