Peer-reviewed article
Parental influence on subjective child well-being in Hungary
Péter Róbert, Nikolett Geszler, Beáta Nagy ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined how parental well-being and family characteristics influence the subjective well-being of adolescents aged 12-16 in Hungary. The research used data from 852 families and measured life satisfaction across multiple life domains for both parents and children. The findings show that parents' overall life satisfaction, particularly their satisfaction with family and work relationships, strongly predicts their children's well-being. Material circumstances in the family were found to be more important than parental education in affecting children's well-being.
Key points
- Strong relationship found between parental subjective well-being and children's subjective well-being
- Parental satisfaction with family and work relations particularly influences adolescent well-being
- Family material situation matters more than parental education for child well-being
- Age variation among adolescents shows more variation in results than gender differences
- Findings highlight importance of familial aspects and informal status transmission between generations
Limitations
This is an observational study that identifies associations rather than causal effects, so the direction of influence between parental and child well-being cannot be definitively determined. The study does not evaluate an intervention and cannot tell us what policies or programmes would improve child well-being.
Abstract
The paper extends the scope of social mobility research to family processes and family cohesion. The analysis aims to detect how various objective and subjective parental features influence subjective well-being (SWB) of adolescents in a dataset of 852 Hungarian families with 12–16-year-old children. SWB was operationalized by 14 comparable items on satisfaction with different domains of life, for both generations. The dependent variable is an aggregate SWB index, based on adolescents’ evaluations and OLS regression method is applied to uncover the association between parental well-being and children’s satisfaction. For a better understanding of this intergenerational process, we also control for parental education and material situation. The statistical model reflects gender, age and regional variation, as well. Results reveal a strong relationship between children’s and parents’ subjective well-being. Parental satisfaction with life and family- and work relations particularly affect offspring’s aggregate well-being. Material situation in the family matters more than parental education in the whole process. There is more variation in the results by the age of the adolescents than by gender. Findings reflect the importance of familial aspects and call attention to the relevance of soft, less intentional forms of status transmission.