Irina L. Mokrova

Methods for Studying the Virtue of Gratitude Cross-Culturally:

Considering gratitude as a virtue, rather than a positive emotion, requires measures different from those more commonly used and which conflate gratitude with appreciation. We here describe those measures, explaining why they are appropriate to the study of gratitude as a virtue. We then discuss how each measure was coded for this special issue, the manner of recruitment of our participants across the seven research sites (Brazil, Guatemala, the United States, Russia, Turkey, China, and South Korea), the overall hypotheses, and the analytic strategies used.

Grateful parents raising grateful children: Niche selection and the socialization of child gratitude

ABSTRACT Given that children’s exposure to gratitude-related activities may be one way that parents can socialize gratitude in their children, we examined whether parents’ niche selection (i.e., tendency to choose perceived gratitude-inducing activities for their children) mediates the association between parents’ reports of their own and their children’s gratitude. Parent-child dyads (N = 101; children aged 6–9; 52% girls; 80% Caucasian; 85% mothers) participated in a laboratory visit and parents also completed a 7-day online diary regarding children’s gratitude. Decomposing specific indirect effects within a structural equation model, we found that parents high in gratitude were more likely to set goals to use niche selection as a gratitude socialization strategy, and thereby more likely to place their children in gratitude-related activities. Placement in these activities, in turn, was associated with more frequent expression of gratitude in children. We describe future directions for research on parents’ role in socializing gratitude in their children.

Diverging Destinies in Rural America

This chapter extends McClanahan and Jacobsen’s (Chap. 1) arguments to rural America with an emphasis on better understanding the converging downward destinies of women without a high-school education and those with a high school education in contrast to the increased gains in wealth and life circumstances of college-educated women. We examine how the 24-h economy has transformed the lives of less-educated women with more and more of them working nonstandard hours in rural America in comparison with college-educated women who work very few nonstandard hours. The impact on family life is explored using the Family Life Project , a representative sample of rural children followed since birth . Data suggest that parenting , including parental talk to children, is similar and much lower for women who have less than a college degree in comparison with the higher levels of parenting and talk to children for the college-educated mothers.

The Wishes and Expression of Gratitude of Youth

Pocos estudios han examinado el desarrollo de gratitud en los jovenes, y ninguno ha relacionado su gratitud a sus deseos. Por lo tanto, pedimos a 358 participantes de America del Norte de 7 a 14 anos de edad (55% femenino, 55% blanco) a escribir su mayor deseo y lo que harian por su benefactor. Utilizando un distribucion ji-cuadrado y estimacion curva lineal, encontramos que los mas jovenes (de 7 a 10 anos de edad) fueron significativamente mas propensos a expresar los deseos hedonistas (deseo de ganancia inmediata) y la gratitud de concreto (no tomar los deseos del benefactor en cuenta); los jovenes mayores (de 11 a 14 anos de edad) fueron significativamente mas propensos a desear sea para algo relacionado con el bienestar futuro para si mismos o para el bienestar de los demas y gratitud conectivo (tomando en cuenta los deseos del benefactor). Dentro de ambos grupos de edad, existe una relacion inversa significativa entre los deseos hedonistas y gratitud conectivo. Esta investigacion tiene implicaciones para fomentar el sentimiento y la expresion de gratitud conectivo.

Placental CpG methylation of HPA-axis genes is associated with cognitive impairment at age 10 among children born extremely preterm

HIGHLIGHTSPlacental CpG methylation in relation to cognition at age 10 was evaluated.Ten HPA axis‐associated genes were associated with cognitive function.The transcriptional regulator MECP2 was enriched within the ten HPA axis genes.Placental CpG methylation in the context of fetal development is discussed.This study relates to the developmental origins of health and disease hypothesis.

Wishes, Gratitude, and Spending Preferences in Russian Children

Gratitude is an important virtue in any cultural group. In Russian culture, gratitude is a salient and highly promoted trait that is seen as one of the cornerstones of social cohesion. In this study, we investigate wishes, expressions of gratitude, and self-reported spending preferences in 305 Russian 7- to 14-year-olds. Using logistic regression analysis, we found that the younger Russian children were more likely to express concrete gratitude, whereas the older children more frequently expressed connective gratitude. The younger children were also more likely to express wishes for immediate gratification, whereas the older children focused more on self-oriented wishes. Moreover, we found that about one in every six children expressed wishes for well-being of others as their greatest wish. The children’s intent to donate money to charity/poor was predicted by children’s wishes for others’ well-being. These findings are discussed through the lens of Russian culture and history.

Raising grateful children one day at a time

ABSTRACT We examined micro developmental processes related to the socialization of childrens gratitude by testing whether parents who engage in more frequent daily socialization practices targeting childrens gratitude reported more frequent gratitude displays by their children after controlling for potential confounds. 101 parent-child dyads completed a baseline lab visit followed by a seven-day diary study. Using multi-level modeling, we found that parents who engaged in more frequent gratitude socialization acts reported more frequent displays of gratitude by their children across the seven-days (between-dyad effect) and that on days when a parent engaged in more socialization acts than usual parents reported relative increases in gratitude displays by their children (within-dyad effect). These findings show that parent socialization acts are associated with children’s displayed gratitude and point to the need for future work to explore reactive and proactive parent-child interactions that may underlie these associations as well as associations between micro-developmental and macro-developmental processes.

Rural Parenting: Cumulative Risk and Parenting Process

In this chapter, we describe the Family Life Project, a large-scale longitudinal study that chronicles the lives of African American and non-African American children and their families living in two poor rural areas of the US: Appalachia and the Black South. The breadth of the Family Life Project data allows us to expand the previous literature on rural poverty and to highlight the notion that the effects of poverty are not limited to low levels of income, but are rather fused with several “correlated constraints” that co-occur with poverty: low maternal education, low job prestige, non-standard work hours, single parenthood, residential instability, and neighborhood safety. We use a cumulative risk perspective as a comprehensive way to describe the life in rural poverty and the disproportionate burden it puts on rural families as they navigate day-to-day life. We also look at two examples of parenting—the quality of mothers and fathers language input and the quality of mothers and fathers emotion talk—as we examine (1) parenting as a mediating link in the relation between cumulative risk and children’s literacy skills, and (2) the role of fathers in the process of child development.

Rural families’ use of multiple child care arrangements from 6 to 58 months and children’s kindergarten behavioral and academic outcomes

Non-parental child care prior to kindergarten is a normative experience for the majority of children in the United States, with children commonly experiencing multiple arrangements, or more than one concurrent child care arrangement. The experience of multiple arrangements has predominantly been shown to be negatively related to young childrens health and behavioral outcomes. The present study examined the use of multiple concurrent arrangements for children in the Family Life Project, a representative sample of families living in six high-poverty rural counties. Using the full sample of 1,292 children who were followed from six months to kindergarten, this study examined the associations between the number of child care arrangements averaged across six time points and childrens behavioral and academic outcomes in kindergarten. After including a number of control variables, regression results suggested that a greater number of arrangements prior to kindergarten were related to higher levels of teacher-reported negative behaviors, but not positive behaviors, and letter-word decoding skills, but not mathematics skills, though effect sizes were small. Moderation analyses by child care type and quality were conducted, with no evidence emerging that findings varied by type or quality of care.

Os Desejos e a Expressão de Gratidão dos Jovens

Pocos estudios han examinado el desarrollo de gratitud en los jovenes, y ninguno ha relacionado su gratitud a sus deseos. Por lo tanto, pedimos a 358 participantes de America del Norte de 7 a 14 anos de edad (55% femenino, 55% blanco) a escribir su mayor deseo y lo que harian por su benefactor. Utilizando un distribucion ji-cuadrado y estimacion curva lineal, encontramos que los mas jovenes (de 7 a 10 anos de edad) fueron significativamente mas propensos a expresar los deseos hedonistas (deseo de ganancia inmediata) y la gratitud de concreto (no tomar los deseos del benefactor en cuenta); los jovenes mayores (de 11 a 14 anos de edad) fueron significativamente mas propensos a desear sea para algo relacionado con el bienestar futuro para si mismos o para el bienestar de los demas y gratitud conectivo (tomando en cuenta los deseos del benefactor). Dentro de ambos grupos de edad, existe una relacion inversa significativa entre los deseos hedonistas y gratitud conectivo. Esta investigacion tiene implicaciones para fomentar el sentimiento y la expresion de gratitud conectivo.