Emily Blunt says the parenting value she most wants her daughters, Hazel, 12, and Violet, 9, to carry into adulthood is empathy, a lesson she and husband John Krasinski actively work to model in their daily home life.
The actress shared her reflections publicly, and her comments on raising empathetic daughters have resonated with parents everywhere.
For Blunt, kindness and empathy are not abstract ideals to be discussed at the dinner table once in a while. They are the through-line of how she and Krasinski approach raising their two girls, and she has said she hopes it becomes a value Hazel and Violet will one day pass on to their own families.
Why Empathy Cannot Be Left To Chance
Child development researchers are clear on one point: empathy is not a trait children simply arrive with fully formed. According to a Psychology Today contributor whose work was reviewed by Gary Drevitch, empathy develops through experience and practice, not automatically.
As the piece explains, empathy is not something a child simply “has” or “doesn’t have” by a certain age, and there is no definitive checklist parents can use to confirm their child is on track.
That same research makes clear that empathy is not a developmental checkbox parents can tick off at a certain age. It is shaped by genetics, temperament, environment, and the quality of relationships a child experiences, and it continues evolving well into adolescence.
A three-year-old who seems indifferent to a sibling’s tears is not necessarily lacking empathy; they may simply be at an earlier stage of a long, complex developmental arc.
The emotional roots of empathy actually begin in infancy. Babies start mirroring the emotional states of caregivers almost immediately, and early attachment relationships, the bonds formed between infants and the adults who care for them, are among the strongest predictors of empathetic behavior later in life.
Children who feel consistently safe and loved are, over time, more attuned to the emotional needs of others.
What Parents Can Actually Do At Home
Blunt’s instinct to make empathy a daily practice rather than an occasional conversation aligns closely with what practitioners recommend.
Playworks, an organization focused on youth development, outlines eight strategies for building empathy in children, and several of them are remarkably simple to weave into ordinary family life.
One of the most accessible starting points is teaching children a vocabulary for emotions. When kids can name what they are feeling, whether that is disappointment, jealousy, or shock, they become better equipped to recognize those same feelings in others.
Parents can build this vocabulary gradually, starting with basic emotions and expanding as the child matures.
Playworks also notes that “Empathy, the ability to put oneself in another person’s shoes, is learned through practice. And with empathy, children become better team members and are less likely to bully.” That framing matters for parents who sometimes treat empathy as a soft skill.
Research consistently links it to reduced bullying behavior and stronger peer relationships, outcomes that affect children’s school experience in concrete ways.
Other practical strategies include looking at photographs together and discussing what the people in them might be feeling, using a mirror to practice making and reading facial expressions, and, when conflict arises, gently prompting children to consider how the other person might be feeling.
Pretend play, particularly in small groups, also gives children low-stakes opportunities to inhabit perspectives other than their own. Even strategy games like chess or checkers require a child to consider what another person might be thinking, which is a foundational empathy skill.
Modeling Is The Most Powerful Tool Parents Have
Across both the research and the practitioner guidance, one theme surfaces repeatedly: children learn empathy primarily by watching the adults around them.
As the Psychology Today piece puts it, “empathy is caught, not taught,” a phrase attributed to Mary Gordon, the founder of Roots of Empathy. No curriculum or structured lesson replaces what children absorb from observing how their parents treat a frustrated cashier, a struggling neighbor, or each other after a hard day.
This is precisely the territory Blunt is describing when she talks about what she and Krasinski are building at home.
The goal is not to lecture their daughters about kindness but to live it visibly enough that Hazel and Violet internalize it as a natural way of moving through the world.
Developmental psychology also points out that cognitive empathy, the ability to genuinely take another person’s perspective and imagine what might help them, does not fully come online until around age six or seven, and it deepens considerably through middle childhood and the teen years.
That means parents of kids Hazel’s and Violet’s ages are working with children who are at very different developmental stages, even within the same household. What works for a twelve-year-old requires more nuance and conversation; what works for a nine-year-old may still rely heavily on modeling and guided reflection.
Teaching Empathy Matters
What stands out about Blunt’s public reflection is not that she has discovered something new. It is that a high-profile parent is naming empathy, not achievement, not resilience, not grit, as the value she most hopes her children will carry forward and eventually pass on.
In a cultural moment when parenting conversations are often dominated by performance and outcomes, that framing is worth pausing on. Empathy is the skill that makes all the other values, kindness, fairness, and generosity, actually functional in relationships.
Teaching it deliberately, as Blunt describes doing, is one of the most durable investments a parent can make.
For parents looking to start, the research suggests the bar is lower than it might seem. You do not need a structured program or a perfect moment. You need consistency, patience, and a willingness to let your children see you practicing empathy yourself, every single day.
