Fairness, Forgiveness and Families

Fairness is an easily recognised property of everyday interactions among family members. All parents will have heard their children complain that something is “just not fair!” Children are clearly sensitive to experiences of unfairness and react to them with negative emotions such as anger and sadness. It is possible – though not yet well-established – that repeated experiences of unfairness, particularly unfair punishment and unfair lack of deserved reward, may make children hostile and less likely to forgive.

In our previous research (Yamaguchi, 2005) we noted an interesting aspect of young children’s response to unfairness, namely that they were more likely to forgive a parent than a sibling. This raised intriguing questions regarding factors possibly relating to forgiveness, in the sense of tolerance of parental mistakes. We wondered whether there were aspects of parent behaviour that might contribute to the development of these forgiving tendencies in children. Thus the purpose of the present study was to:

(a) replicate the observed relationship between unfairness and a tendency to retaliate against the perpetrator
(b) explore children’s understanding of forgiveness (the opposite reaction to retaliation)
(c) assess whether aspects of parents’ disciplinary style might relate to their children’s willingness to forgive.

Primary schools from a variety of socio-economic regions in the central North Island of New Zealand agreed to be involved in supporting this research, provide time and space and circulate an invitation to families to participate. The participants selected for the study were 82 children in Year 4 (9-year-olds) and Year 6 (11-year-olds) of primary school, whose parents had consented to their involvement in the research. In addition, 53 of the parents of these children agreed to participate as well.