When Parents Lie: Links to Honesty and Adjustment in Adulthood

What is it about?

Parents sometimes tell lies to influence their children’s behaviour or emotions—for example, saying, “If you don’t behave, I’ll call the police” or “If you don’t come with me now, I’ll leave you here.” This practice is known as parenting by lying. Santos and colleagues examined whether adults who remembered experiencing more parenting by lying during childhood also reported greater dishonesty toward their parents and more psychological or behavioural difficulties in adulthood. The study included 50 female university students. Participants reported how many types of lies they remembered their parents telling them during childhood, how often they currently lied to their parents, and their current levels of internalizing problems, such as anxiety and depression; externalizing problems, such as aggression and rule-breaking; and antisocial personality problems. Adults who remembered greater exposure to parenting by lying also reported lying to their parents more frequently. More frequent lying to parents was associated with greater problems in all three areas. Greater recalled exposure to parenting by lying was also associated with more antisocial personality problems, even after accounting for participants’ own lying to their parents.

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Photo by Derek Thomson on Unsplash

Photo by Derek Thomson on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Parents often teach children that honesty is important while also sometimes lying to manage their children’s behaviour. This study was the first to examine whether experiencing parenting by lying during childhood might be associated with outcomes extending into adulthood. The findings suggest that parental lying may be related to how children learn about honesty and dishonesty: adults who remembered experiencing more parenting by lying also reported lying to their parents more often themselves. The findings also suggest that parenting by lying may be associated with longer-term social and emotional difficulties. However, the study cannot show that parental lying caused these outcomes. Participants were asked to remember experiences from childhood, all measures were based on self-report, and the sample was small, all female, and primarily Asian. The authors therefore called for larger and more diverse studies, particularly longitudinal research that follows children over time, to better understand whether and how parenting by lying affects development.