Linkages Between Parenting Practices and Adolescents’ Life Satisfaction: The Mediating Role of Resilience

BACKGROUND: Life satisfaction is a critical antecedent of adolescents’ positive development in many domains. To promote adolescents to feel more satisfied with their lives, it is important to identify the factors influencing life satisfaction and to further investigate the inner mechanisms. The purpose of this research was to examine whether parenting practices were closely associated with life satisfaction among Chinese adolescents and whether these associations were mediated by adolescents’ resilience. METHODS: In this one-year interval longitudinal study, 353 students (50.7% girls) in Grade 7 and Grade 10 were recruited as participants. At the first wave of assessment, they reported parenting practices and resilience; at the second wave of assessment, they rated the level of life satisfaction. RESULTS: The results of this study revealed that parental responsiveness, demandingness, and autonomy granting promoted adolescents’ life satisfaction. Additionally, parental responsiveness and demandingness positively predicted adolescents’ life satisfaction through the mediating effect of adolescents’ resilience; however, resilience did not significantly mediate the relation between autonomy granting and adolescents’ life satisfaction. CONCLUSION: Adolescents’ resilience plays a mediating role in the relations between parental responsiveness and demandingness and adolescents’ life satisfaction. The present study highlights the significance of providing adolescents with positive parenting practices and promoting adolescents’ development of resilience to elevate their life satisfaction.