Children’s Life Satisfaction: Developmental Trajectories and Environmental and Personality Predictors

Developmental trajectories of positivity from mid‐childhood to early adolescence: Family and school environmental predictors

“…The emergence of a subgroup in this study displaying decreasing positivity is consistent with previous studies showing that positivity may decline with age (e.g., Luengo Kanacri et al, 2017). This finding further provides longitudinal support for previous notion that levels of life satisfaction and self-esteem (lower-order components of positivity) are relatively high in mid-childhood but decline in adolescence (Chung et al, 2017;Xu et al, 2022). Most Chinese children attend elementary school for 6 years, starting at age six.…”

“…Family and school environments represent two of the most proximal and influential environments that directly affect youth's development (Xu et al, 2022). Within the family environment, parental warmth is defined as parental behavior that is affectionate, approving, loving, and caring; youth who perceive more warmth from their parents are more likely to confide in and seek help from them (MacDonald, 1992).…”

“…Positivity integrates personal beliefs that are crucial for the adaptive functioning and personal well‐being in different life domains. However, existing research has focused mainly on the three lower‐order components separately (Cenk & Demir, 2016; León & Núñez, 2013; Xu et al, 2022). Previous research demonstrates that positivity accounts for more variance in the positive adaption of youth than accounted for by the unique or combined variance associated with the three components (Caprara et al, 2012).…”

“…For example, some studies reported that higher levels of parental education were positively associated with positivity (and self‐esteem) in children and adolescents (Jeon & Neppl, 2016; von Soest et al, 2016). However, one study found that neither maternal education level nor paternal education level significantly related to the development of life satisfaction (lower‐order component of positivity; Xu et al, 2022). Thus, parental education levels should be considered further in research on the development of positivity trajectories.…”