Frontiers in Health & Happiness

Frontiers in Health & Happiness

Raising Caring Children with Richard Weissbourd

Jul 6, 2026 · 24 min · 11 segments

In this episode of *Frontiers in Health and Happiness*, host Ayla Fudala speaks with Richard Weissbourd, senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and director of the Making Caring…

In this episode of *Frontiers in Health and Happiness*, host Ayla Fudala speaks with Richard Weissbourd, senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and director of the Making Caring Common Project, about what it means to raise caring, moral, and thriving children in today’s world. Weissbourd explains why moral development is not just about beliefs, but about capacities like empathy, perspective-taking, justice, and caring for people beyond our immediate circles. He discusses how parents and schools can help children develop these capacities, why achievement and happiness often crowd out caring, and how an over-focus on children’s moment-to-moment emotions can unintentionally undermine their well-being. The conversation also explores Making Caring Common’s work with families and schools, the Turning the Tide initiative to reform college admissions, the impact of social media and public life on children’s moral growth, and why caring for others is essential not only for children’s happiness, but for the health of our communities and democracy. **Resources related to Richard Weissbourd's work:** - Making Caring Common Project: https://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/ - Resources for families: https://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/resources-for-families - Resources for educators: https://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/resources-for-educators - Turning the Tide / college admissions work: https://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/resources-for-colleges **Stay connected with the Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness:** - Website: https://hsph.harvard.edu/research/health-happiness/ - Newsletter: https://harvard.us15.list-manage.com/subscribe?id=35add2adf1&u=3ea9a13653576b4d74c77a0dc - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/harvard-chan-health-happiness - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harvardchan\_healthhappiness/ - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HarvardCenterHealthHappiness/ - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ095u5aSCFD8Wv0zxcGs5A

In this episode of *Frontiers in Health and Happiness*, host Ayla Fudala speaks with Richard Weissbourd, senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and director of the Making Caring…

Defining Caring & Moral Capacities1:39 – 5:45

Ayla FudalaHost

1:39

My first question is, what does it mean to be a moral, caring person, and how do you define and measure these qualities?

Richard WeissbourdGuest

1:49

Well, let me take up the first one.

Richard WeissbourdGuest

1:52

When I think about morality and in our work on morality, it's not about moral beliefs.

Richard WeissbourdGuest

1:58

It's not about whether you're pro-life or pro-choice, for example.

Richard WeissbourdGuest

2:01

It's about certain moral capacities.

Richard WeissbourdGuest

2:03

So the capacity, the motivation to care for other people, the motivation to pursue justice, we call that moral identity.

Richard WeissbourdGuest

2:13

the capacity to manage destructive feelings like shame, jealousy, envy, arrogance, things that can cause you to transgress.

Richard WeissbourdGuest

2:22

It's empathy, it's the ability to take other perspectives, feel how other people feel, care about other people.

Richard WeissbourdGuest

2:28

So we're really talking about certain moral capacities.

Richard WeissbourdGuest

2:32

You define each one in different ways.

Richard WeissbourdGuest

2:35

You measure each one in different ways.

Richard WeissbourdGuest

2:37

And they're hard to measure.

Richard WeissbourdGuest

2:38

I mean, all of these are hard to measure to some extent.

Richard WeissbourdGuest

2:41

But there's certainly ways that you can measure them.

Richard WeissbourdGuest

2:44

And in our school work, we measure them by proxy.

Richard WeissbourdGuest

2:47

So we are really looking at whether we're changing school environments.

Richard WeissbourdGuest

2:51

Is it an environment that kids experience as caring and fair, as committing to reducing bigotry and bias and bullying? And our assumption is if kids are in environments like that, they are more likely to develop these capacities.

Ayla FudalaHost

3:06

How would you measure if a child was caring? Is there a way to measure that at all?

Richard WeissbourdGuest

3:12

Well, you know, we do this on surveys.

Richard WeissbourdGuest

3:14

You know, there are altruism scales that are validated.

Richard WeissbourdGuest

3:17

There are empathy scales that are validated.

Richard WeissbourdGuest

3:21

All of these have problems, but there are ways you can do that.

Richard WeissbourdGuest

3:27

I tend to think that the best way to do this is often by looking, you know, behavioral observations that teachers make, that other students make.

Richard WeissbourdGuest

3:36

Hopefully you can get other people, you know, and rarely you can get sort of 360 evaluations but that are looking at people's actual behavior day to day, and whether they are attuned to other people, supporting other people, helping other people, all those are meaningful indicators.

Ayla FudalaHost

3:52

Right.