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Compassion is known to predict prosocial behavior and moral judgements related to harm.Despite the centrality of compassion to social life, factors predicting adulthood compassion are largely unknown. We examine whether qualities of parent -child relationship, namely emotional warmth and acceptance, predict offspring compassion decades later in adulthood.We used data from the prospective population-based Young Finns Study. Our sample included 2,761 participants (55.5% women). Parent-child relationship qualities were reported by the participant's parents at the baseline in 1980 (T0) when participants were from 3 to 18 years old. Compassion was self-reported three times (in 1997 [T1], 2001 [T2] and 2012 [T3])with the Temperament and Character Inventory. By using age at the assessment as a timevariant variable, we applied multilevel modeling for repeated measurements to examine developmental trajectories of compassion from ages 20 (the age of the youngest cohort at T1) to 50 (the age of the oldest cohort at T3). On average, compassion increased in a curvilinear fashion with age. Higher acceptance (p = .013) and higher emotional warmth (p < .001) were related to higher compassion in adulthood. After adjusting for childhood confounds (participant's gender, birth cohort, externalizing behavior, parental socioeconomic status and parental mental health problems), only emotional warmth (p < .001) remained as a significant predictor of compassion. Quality of the parent-child relationship has long-term effects on offspring compassion. An emotionally warm and close relationship, in particular, may contribute to higher offspring compassion in adulthood.

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