Abstract
The present study primarily aimed to examine whether self-esteem serves as a mediator in the associations between parent–child relationships, including parental support and parent–child conflict, and resilience among adolescents. Three hundred and four Chinese adolescents were surveyed with questionnaires and structural equation modeling was adopted to test the mediational hypothesis. The results indicated that the associations between parent–child relationships and adolescent resilience were primarily mediated by self-esteem and that parental support was more robustly linked with adolescent resilience than parent–adolescent conflict. The current study also tested a competitive mediational model in which resilience was the mediator and self-esteem was the outcome variable, and observed that this model was also well-established but inferior to the hypothesized mediational model. These findings extend our insight into the mechanisms underlying the associations among parent–child relationships, self-esteem, and resilience among adolescents and suggest that adolescent resilience promotion programs should focus on improving parental support in a family context and developing individual self-esteem.
Highlights
Adolescence is characterized by rapid physical changes along with social and psychological challenges
The structural models were tested with structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine the relationship between the independent and the dependent variable and the mediating roles of self-esteem/resilience when the mediator was entered into the model
In model 2, the standardized path coefficient either from parental support or from parent–adolescent conflict to resilience was not statistically significant. Both the indirect effect of parental support and the effect of parent–child conflict via self-esteem were statistically significant (β = 0.19, p < 0.01, 95% CI [0.11, 0.31]; β = −0.17, p < 0.01, 95% CI [−0.28, −0.07]) and greater than their direct effects on resilience among adolescents, the former explaining approximately 63.33% of total effects (0.30) and the latter even bigger than its total effect (−0.12). These findings indicated that the association between parent–child relationships, either support or conflict, and adolescent resilience was primarily mediated by self-esteem and that parental support was more strongly linked with resilience than parent–adolescent conflict
Summary
Adolescence is characterized by rapid physical changes along with social and psychological challenges. Resilience, as a foundation for positive development in adolescence (Wright and Masten, 2005), is likely to facilitate young people’s mental health (Hu et al, 2015) and well-being (Liu et al, 2012). It is essential to explore the factors that may predict adolescent resilience and the mechanism underlying their relationships, which would help to develop interventions aimed at improving adolescents’ positive development. According to the ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) and the resilient systems model (Mandleco and Peery, 2000), both environmental factors (e.g., family) and individual characteristics play vital roles in adolescent development. The present study examined the associations of parent–child relationships (as an important environmental factor) and self-esteem (as a critical individual characteristic) with adolescent resilience and the mechanism underlying them
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