Table 3.

Percentages of parents endorsing supplied justifications for why learning to apologize is not important

Transgression type →	Intentional Moral			Accidental Moral			Conventional
Parenting category → % rating apologies as not important →	AV 4%	AN 3%	P 5%	AV 7%	AN 9%	P 21%	AV 41%	AN 44%	P 65%
Learning apology isn’t important because…	(statistics below include only those parents who rated apologies as not important)
For amends, actions better than words	67%	60%	57%	40%	24%	53%	38%	38%	44%
Adults should let kids work it out	0%	20%	29%	20%	18%	33%	41%	36%	56%
I want child to solve problems in own way	17%	40%	29%	30%	12%	40%	40%	34%	36%
It’s kids being kids; no big deal	0%	20%	0%	20%	12%	10%	31%	29%	33%
Caring is important, but apologies not vital	33%	0%	57%	10%	35%	47%	12%	3%	15%
Apologies aren’t effective; they’re just words	33%	20%	71%	0%	0%	20%	3%	2%	12%
My focus would be more on punishing child	17%	20%	0%	0%	0%	10%	3%	1%	1%
No one was hurt in this scenario	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	29%	22%	23%
It was a mistake; no apology necessary	N/A	N/A	N/A	40%	35%	37%	N/A	N/A	N/A

Note. AV = authoritative. AN = authoritarian. P = permissive. Parenting groups were formally compared on each item within the conventional transgression type only, due to low-frequency responding in the other transgression types. Comparisons were not carried out across transgression types. Initial ANOVAs were conducted with alphas set at .005, and none of the omnibus p-values was < .005 (thus, post hoc analyses were not conducted for the Conventional scenario).