Wellbeing
Does strengths-focused parenting predict teens' later wellbeing?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Teens who felt their parents recognised their strengths were happier at the same moment, but that parenting did not predict how their wellbeing changed months later.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cohort — Three-wave panel survey of students in one Australian public secondary school (May 2016, November 2016, July 2017), analysed with a latent growth model and random-intercept cross-lagged panel models using Bayesian estimation
- N
- N=202 · 202 students aged 12 to 15 who completed all three waves; they were compared with non-returners on baseline measures to check attrition bias
- Population
- Year 7 to 9 students aged 12 to 15 at a public secondary school in Victoria, Australia, with a socio-economic index near the national average
- Outcome
- Teen-reported strength-based parenting (parents' knowledge of the teen's strengths) and subjective wellbeing: life satisfaction, positive affect and negative affect
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Key findings
On average, teens reported declining strength-based parenting, falling life satisfaction and positive feelings, and rising negative feelings over the study. Teens whose strength-based parenting declined more also showed larger drops in life satisfaction and positive affect, though not in negative affect. Within each wave, strength-based parenting was positively linked to wellbeing, but none of the cross-lagged paths were significant: parenting at one wave did not predict wellbeing at the next, or the reverse. Most variance in each measure was within-person rather than stable across time.
Methodology
Students in years 7 to 9 at one Australian school completed the same online survey three times over roughly 14 months, rating how well their parents knew their strengths and reporting their life satisfaction and positive and negative feelings. The analysis used 202 students who completed all three waves. A latent growth model tested whether parenting and wellbeing declined and whether they changed together, and random-intercept cross-lagged panel models separated stable differences between teens from within-person changes to test whether earlier parenting predicted later wellbeing.
Limitations
The null cross-lagged result does not show that parenting has no causal effect; the gaps between waves (about 6 and 9 months) may have been too long to catch short-term effects, and the whole study covered only part of adolescence. All data are teen self-reports from a single school, so shared-method bias is likely and the findings may not generalise to other communities. The sample was small relative to the many model parameters, and the negative affect measure had poor measurement properties, which the authors say calls for caution. The lead author has a professional and commercial interest in strength-based parenting, which readers should note.
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