Correlates of parental satisfaction: a study of late life family relationships in a rural county in China

Abstract

This study aims to identify correlates of satisfaction in late life parental role, using a sample of 432 older parents (not couples) aged 60 to 79 with 1,223 adult children living in one of the least developed counties of northern China. Drawing upon the symbolic interactionism perspective and Chinese cultural emphasis on filial piety, we tested a parental satisfaction model including a set of variables capturing parental perceptions of relationship quality with each of their grown children (hereafter offspring), expectations of various forms of support from offspring, and evaluations of offspring's filial piety (being filial). Most parents in our sample were satisfied with their parental role. Logistic regression analysis indicated that getting along with offspring, offspring met parental expectations in terms of providing emotional, practical, and financial support, and offspring being filial were significantly associated with parental satisfaction, respectively, net of parent and offspring characteristics. When simultaneously examined in the full model, however, only two correlates remained significant: getting along with offspring and offspring being filial. Offspring's filial piety was associated with parental satisfaction in a dose-response manner, indicating the importance of considering multiple children in a family on parental wellbeing. Findings underscore the significance of parental perceptions of relationship quality with offspring and offspring's filial piety for parental satisfaction. Findings suggest that filial piety, a multifaceted concept deeply rooted in Confucianism, continues to exert a strong influence today on Chinese family relationships despite the dramatic socioeconomic and cultural transformation China has been experiencing in the past three decades.

Parental Dissatisfaction, Health, and Well-Being Among Older Chinese Adults: The Mediating Role of Self-Esteem and Feeling Useless

“…That said, evidence from Western studies has shown that single item of positive affect measures such as happiness or satisfaction are often sufficient (e.g., Scarpello & Campbell, 1983;Wanous, Reichers, & Hudy, 1997). Although little is known as to what degree the single item of parental satisfaction is sufficient to capture the construct in the Chinese settings, a previous study by the authors (Yang & Wen, 2016) found that this single item of parental dissatisfaction was significantly associated with several conceputally relevant constructs such as getting along with offspring; offspring meeting parental expectations in terms of providing emotional, practical, and financial support; and offspring being filial, supporting this single item's construct validity. Second, no causal inferences can be made due to the cross-sectional nature of the survey design, and reverse causality and the bidirectionality of the relationships are also likely.…”