WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In March 2024, the Walton Family Foundation and Gallup surveyed 10- to 18-year-olds and their parents to gain insight into their relationships with each other, including how they experience and cope with emotions, how they converse with one another, and what each wishes the other understood about them.
Here are five of the most interesting takeaways from the survey of 1,675 children and one of their parents:
1. Kids Are Most Likely to Wish Their Parents Better Understood Their Feelings
When asked to provide an open-ended response to the prompt, “What is the most important thing you wish your parents understood about you?”, 19% of Gen Zers mentioned their feelings and opinions, and 10% cited their need for independence. Between 3% and 6% of children mentioned nine other distinct topics, while 17% said they already felt their parents understood them well.
Specific quotes of what children wish their parents better understood about their emotional lives include:
That my feelings may not be logical, but they’re still real and important.
That when I yell at them, I’m not trying to hurt them; I just have strong emotions sometimes.
I wish they would be kinder about my feelings and understand that I don’t know what I’m feeling or why I feel like this.
2. Children’s Emotions Are Connected to Their Parents’ Emotions
When asked whether they felt several specific emotions during a lot of the prior day, 63% of Gen Zers said they felt both positive and negative emotions. The results suggest that the emotional lives of preteens and teenagers are complex: 94% said they felt happy a lot of the prior day, but 45% also felt stressed, 38% anxious and 23% sad.
While these highs and lows may be an inevitable effect of being a teenager, parents’ negative emotions also appear to be interrelated with their children’s emotions. At least half of children whose parents felt stressed or anxious a lot of the prior day felt stress (53%) or anxiety (50%) themselves; among those whose parents did not feel stressed or anxious, around one in three children felt stressed or anxious (34% and 31%, respectively).
Children whose parents felt angry a lot of the prior day are twice as likely to also have felt angry (49% vs. 24%), and children whose parents felt sad the prior day are nine percentage points more likely to have felt sad themselves (30% to 21%).
3. Children Value Their Parents’ Opinions and Enjoy Spending Time With Them
While some Gen Z children wish their parents understood that they want more space or greater independence to make their own choices, this does not mean they do not enjoy their parents’ company or want to please them. More than nine in 10 children say they like spending time with their parents (93%) and care what their parents think about them (91%). These percentages do not vary meaningfully by the child’s age, gender or race/ethnicity.
4. Less Than Half of 10- to 18-Year-Olds Look Forward to School Most Days
About one in 10 Gen Z students (12%) look forward to going to school every day, and an additional one in three (34%) look forward to school on most days. Some of this lack of enthusiasm may reflect relatively low classroom engagement levels among Gen Z.
Some segments of Gen Z are more excited about school than others. Elementary school students are the group most likely to look forward to going to school at least most days, and more than half of Black (54%) and Hispanic students (52%) look forward to school on most days. Meanwhile, four in 10 high school students (40%) say the same.
5. Parents Rarely Find Unsolicited Advice to Be Helpful
Most parents say they have received unsolicited advice about raising their children at some point. However, among the 46% of parents who receive that advice very often, often or sometimes, just 2% say it is often helpful, and 28% say it is sometimes helpful.
Learn more about how the Walton Family Foundation Voices of Gen Z survey works.
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