How does parental involvement influence students’ wellbeing? A moderated mediated model

TL;DR

This study explores how parental involvement affects Chinese adolescents' wellbeing, finding that psychological wellbeing and gender play key roles in this relationship.

Contribution

The study introduces a moderated mediation model linking parental involvement, psychological wellbeing, and subjective wellbeing, with gender as a moderator.

Findings

Parental involvement positively correlates with both psychological and subjective wellbeing in adolescents.

Psychological wellbeing partially mediates the relationship between parental involvement and subjective wellbeing.

Gender moderates the indirect effects, especially for behavior-oriented parental involvement, with stronger effects in girls.

Abstract

Parental involvement has been widely associated with adolescents’ wellbeing, yet the psychological mechanisms underlying this association remain incompletely understood. Drawing on self-determination and family-school system perspectives, the present study examined the mediating role of psychological wellbeing and the moderating role of gender in the association between parental involvement and subjective wellbeing among Chinese adolescents. Participants were 450 junior middle school students recruited through stratified cluster random sampling. Structural equation modeling and conditional indirect effect analyses were used to test a moderated mediation framework. The results showed that parental involvement was positively associated with both psychological wellbeing and subjective wellbeing. Psychological wellbeing partially mediated the association between overall parental involvement and subjective wellbeing and fully mediated the effect of adolescents’ attitudes toward parental involvement. Gender significantly moderated the strength of the indirect effect in the overall model, particularly for behavior-oriented forms of parental involvement, with stronger indirect associations observed among girls. In addition, several demographic characteristics, including grade level, parental marital status, co-residence status, and parental education, were associated with levels of parental involvement and wellbeing. These findings underscore the importance of adolescents’ subjective interpretations of parental involvement and highlight gender as a boundary condition in the psychological processes linking family involvement to wellbeing. Although the findings are correlational, they contribute to a more differentiated understanding of parental involvement and adolescent wellbeing from a developmental perspective.

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