# Family rituals and traditions

**Which family rituals and traditions do we want?**

The regular practices that make your family yours, such as holidays, meals and bedtime customs, and whether you inherit them, blend both families' or invent new ones.

In short: Parents choose between 3 main approaches: Inherit traditions; Blend both families'; Create new ones. Evidence: evidence leans one way. Research or guidance points in a direction, but it's thin, small or correlational. Best settled: around the birth.

- Area: Values, character and family culture
- Evidence: Evidence leans one way
- Best settled: Around the birth
- First published: 2026-10-03
- Last updated: 2026-10-05
- Page: https://www.raisingyourchild.com/topics/values-character-and-family-culture--family-rituals-and-traditions

## Family rituals and traditions: what are the options?

1. **Inherit traditions**: You carry on the traditions you grew up with.
2. **Blend both families'**: You combine traditions from both your families.
3. **Create new ones**: You invent your own.

## Family rituals and traditions: what does the evidence say?

**Evidence leans one way.** Research or guidance points in a direction, but it's thin, small or correlational. (Leans (correlational))

A review of 50 years of research found that predictable family routines are associated with parental competence, child health, parent-child harmony and academic achievement, and that the symbolic and emotional side of rituals is linked to marital satisfaction and adolescents' sense of identity. Shared dinners are the best-studied ritual: in a national sample of nearly 18,000 US adolescents, family dinners went with better well-being even after controls and some tests of causation, though the benefits did not carry into adulthood. Which traditions to keep, blend or invent is a values choice

Sources:

- [Fiese et al., 2002](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12561283/)
- [Musick & Meier, 2012](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2012.00973.x)

## What else is worth knowing?

Rituals are the things a family does regularly, from holiday customs to Friday pizza. They give children a sense of belonging. Each of you brings traditions, and you choose which to keep.

## Questions to ask each other

- What traditions from our childhoods do we want to keep?
- What would we like to create ourselves?
- How do we blend two families' traditions?

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General information, not medical advice. Two parents can each answer this and compare: https://www.raisingyourchild.com/explore?cat=values-character-and-family-culture&topic=values-character-and-family-culture--family-rituals-and-traditions