Parental Lies: Socialization, Legitimacy, and Consequences

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Honesty is a highly valued virtue promoted by parents in all societies (Evans & Lee, 2022). However, many parents do not practice what they preach. Sometimes, they lie to their children, purportedly for parenting purposes (Heyman et al., 2013). Parental lies are a common but understudied parenting practice. Recent studies have revealed this practice may be harmful and have long-term negative developmental consequences in adulthood (Setoh et al., 2020). However, how parental lies impact on development in childhood is largely unknown.
This symposium aims to fill this important knowledge gap in the literature. It presents new findings from three recent studies involving children and their parents to examine how parental lying in childhood is linked the socialization of honesty and children’s psychosocial adjudgment. Paper 1 outlines a measure of parental socialization of lying that considers parental modelling of dishonesty to capture how parents socialize children about lying and honesty. Paper 2 finds that children’s age and the type of parental lie are associated with children’s evaluations and justifications of the legitimacy of parental lies. Paper 3 finds that children report parental lies at similar levels to their parents, and their reports of parental lies are associated with greater lying to parents, poorer parent attachment, and more psychosocial adjustment problems. Taken together, these three studies offer novel insight into the important role of parental lies in children’s psychosocial adjustment and moral socialization in childhood. These studies also highlight new paths for further research on the impact of parental dishonesty on development.

Sub Unit

• Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Chair

• Peipei Setoh, Nanyang Technological University

Discussant

• Kang Lee, University of Toronto

Individual Presentations

• Parent Socialization of Lying and Moral Identity - Presenting Author: Ipek Isik, McGill University; Jennifer Lavoie, University of Edinburgh; Angela M Crossman, City University of New York; Victoria Talwar, McGill University

• Assessing the Legitimacy of Parental Lies: Children’s Judgements by Age and Type of Lie - Presenting Author: Matthew Gingo, Wheaton College

• Parenting by Lying and its Correlates of Psychosocial Outcomes in Singaporean Children - Presenting Author: Petrina Hui Xian Low, Nanyang Technological University; Kang Lee, University of Toronto; Michael Meaney, McGill; Peipei Setoh, Nanyang Technological University