The Contributions of Indigenous Personality and Parenting Style to Life Satisfaction Development in Chinese Adolescents

Abstract

The present three-wave longitudinal study examined the contributions of indigenous personality traits and parenting style to life satisfaction in Chinese adolescents. Seven hundred and ten junior high school students (Mage = 11.39, SDage = 0.53; 53.2% girls) were administered self-report measures of personality, parenting styles, and life satisfaction in Grade 6. Data on life satisfaction were collected again in Grades 7 and 8, respectively. Latent growth model analyses indicated that life satisfaction decreased over time. Regression analyses showed that the initial level of global life satisfaction was positively predicted by personality factors of dependability and interpersonal relatedness; the slope of global life satisfaction was positively predicted by personality factors of emotional stability whereas negatively predicted by interpersonal relatedness. The initial levels and slopes of different domains of life satisfaction were predicted by personality factors and parenting styles to different extents. Meanwhile, paternal and maternal parenting styles had different effects on adolescents’ life satisfaction. The study provided valuable information about the contributions of indigenous personality and both paternal and maternal parenting styles to psychological adjustment in the Chinese context. The implications of the findings concerning the associations among personality, parenting styles, and life satisfaction were discussed.

Effect of paternal-maternal parenting styles on college students’ internet addiction of different genders: The mediating role of life satisfaction

“…In contrast, the mental health of adolescents is negatively associated with parental rejection [48]. Meanwhile, some studies are focused on how different parenting styles of fathers and mothers affect children's life satisfaction [49][50][51]. Abubakar et al [51] reported that the authoritative parenting style of fathers rather than mothers positively predicts the life satisfaction of adolescents.…”

“…Meanwhile, recent studies have shown that parenting styles are closely related to life satisfaction [ 16 , 17 ]. The way parents educate their children can significantly predict their life satisfaction [ 18 ]. Moreover, life satisfaction has been frequently investigated as a mediating factor [ 19 ].…”

“…Abubakar et al [ 51 ] reported that the authoritative parenting style of fathers rather than mothers positively predicts the life satisfaction of adolescents. However, a study found that [ 49 ] in adolescents who perceived a lower paternal authoritarian style, their satisfaction sharply decreased over 2 years in China. These studies illustrate the differences in influence between mothers and fathers, but there is still controversy.…”

Understanding the Relationship between Extraversion and Life Satisfaction, with Special Emphasis on the Interaction with Age

“…While comprehensive meta-studies report statistically significant associations between extraversion and satisfaction with correlations between 0.25 and 0.35 (Heller et al, 2004;Steel et al, 2008), others point out that many included studies suffer the problem of rather special samples, such as only from western nations or with small sizes. To give some examples, Jovanović (2019) reports a correlation of 0.26 for 500 US high-school students, other student samples, also from different cultural backgrounds, report similar effect sizes (Li, 2021). Another study used a sample of 158 Amazon's Mechanical Turk Service and reports a correlation of 0.41 (Smith & Konik, 2022).…”

The impact of parenting styles on undergraduate students’ emotion regulation: The mediating role of academic-social student-faculty interaction

“…Overprotective parenting refers to parents' excessive attention and control over their children's daily behavior. The overprotection is detrimental to individual's independence (Segrin et al, 2012;Li, 2021).…”