Subjective well-being and personal relationships in childhood: Comparison of Brazilian and Spanish children

Abstract

This study aims to compare personal relationships satisfaction and subjective well-being of Brazilian and Spanish children and to verify if personal relationships are associated with subjective well-being for the sample. Participants are 6,747 children aged from 11 to 14 years old (M = 12.07, DP = 0.731), 1,020 being Brazilian and the others Spanish. From the total sample 50.7% were girls. Results pointed that the items of personal relationships are grouped into three components related to family, school and friends. Spanish children had higher means than Brazilians' in the items of personal relationships and in the subjective well-being scale. There is a significant association between personal relationships and subjective well-being, and the relationships with family, school and friends are predictors of children well-being in both countries. Family relationships are those with the highest contribution to the prediction of child well-being for both countries, followed by relationships at school and with friends. Personal relationships can be considered a predictor of child well-being with approximately 40% of explained variance for both countries.

The diverging patterns of life satisfaction between families: A latent profile analysis in dual-earner parents with adolescents

“…Likewise, there were higher levels of satisfaction with family life in the three family members belonging to the balanced families. This latter finding is in line with studies that have stressed the importance of family relationships and satisfaction with family life for well-being in adults and adolescents (Castellá, Casas, Ramos, Bedin, & González, 2018;Lawler, Newland, Giger, Roh, & Brockevelt, 2017;Schnettler, Miranda-Zapata, et al, 2018). Therefore, it can be suggested that family life satisfaction in all family members must be promoted to achieve balanced families in terms of life satisfaction.…”

Satisfacción con la vida y sus correlatos socio-personales en adolescentes de secundarias públicos de Sonora, México

“…Los resultados se añaden a la evidencia que indica que se debe apostar por modelos explicativos de la satisfacción con la vida como los propuestos en otros estudios (Moreno y Vera, 2011), los cuales integran tanto variables de carácter intraindividual como factores ambientales y sociales. Este tipo de modelos son los que más se ajustan y explican la realidad de los adolescentes y su interacción con el contexto que los rodea (Crous et al, 2018;Sarriera et al, 2018;Casas, 2011).…”

Children’s Interactions with Family and Friends in Constrained Contexts: Considerations for Children’s Subjective Well-Being

“…This interest has provided the impetus for a range of empirical studies exploring macro and micro-level associations and correlates of children's SWB. Within this rapidly expanding body of empirical evidence, children's social relationships have increasingly demonstrated significant relations with their SWB (see Goswami, 2012;Gray et al, 2013;Haanpää & af Ursin, 2018;Haanpää et al, 2019;Holder & Coleman, 2009;Lau & Bradshaw, 2018;Lee & Yoo, 2015;McAuley et al, 2012;Sarriera et al, 2018;Savahl et al, 2020). Within the extant literature on positive psychology, social relationships are strongly associated with positive well-being (Holder & Coleman, 2016).…”

“…Families are an integral part of society and provide the first context within which children learn to live life, serving as their primary source of social capital (see Sarriera et al, 2018). Within this context, children learn basic social skills which are further reflected in their interactions with society.…”

“…Lee and Yoo's (2015) cross-country analysis of 12 077 children in 14 countries found that while school (9%) and community (7%) made a significant contribution to the variance in children's SWB, spending time with the family made the greatest contribution (40%) to their SWB (Lee & Yoo, 2015). In another cross-country study, Sarriera et al (2018) explored the association between SWB and personal relationships among a sample of 6747 Spanish and Brazilian children aged 11 -14 years. The study found that family, school, and friends predicted children's SWB, with family being the strongest predictor for both countries (Sarriera et al, 2018).…”