Peer-reviewed article
Positive Parenting, Prosocial Behavior, Meaning in Life, and Subjective Well-being in Adolescents: a Parallel and Serial Mediation Analysis
Gökmen Arslan ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined how positive parenting practices influence adolescent well-being in Turkey. The research tested whether meaning in life and prosocial behavior explain the link between parenting and subjective well-being. Both factors were found to mediate this relationship, with prosocial behavior also linking parenting to adolescents' sense of meaning. The effects differed between boys and girls.
Key points
- Positive parenting practices directly and indirectly promote adolescent subjective well-being
- Meaning in life and prosocial behavior both mediate the relationship between positive parenting and well-being
- Prosocial behavior serves as a mediator between parenting and adolescents' sense of meaning in life
- The mediating effects of meaning in life and prosocial behavior differed between female and male adolescents
- Study involved 408 Turkish high school students aged 13-18 years (69.5% female, 30.5% male)
Limitations
This is a cross-sectional study with no comparison group, so it cannot establish causal relationships or determine temporal ordering of variables. The sample is limited to high school students in Turkey and is predominantly female, which may limit generalisability to other populations.
Abstract
Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate the direct and indirect relationships among positive parenting, meaning in life, prosocial behavior, and subjective well-being using a parallel and serial mediation model. We sought to examine whether meaning in life and prosocial behavior mediate the association between parenting and subjective well-being, and whether prosocial behavior mediates the relationship between this positive parenting and adolescents’ sense of meaning in life. This research involved 408 high school adolescents who were registered in a Turkish high school. The student composition was 30.5% male and 69.5% female, with ages ranging from 13 to 18 years ( mean = 15.80, standard deviation = 1.27). Parallel mediation analyses indicated that meaning in life and prosocial behavior mediated the relationship between positive parenting (i.e., strength-based parenting) and adolescent subjective well-being. Furthermore, the serial mediation model revealed that these variables mediated this relationship, and prosocial behavior served as a mediator in the association between parenting and meaning in life. Additional results also suggested that the mediating role of meaning in life and prosocial behavior may differ between female and male adolescents. As a result, the study provides evidence that positive parenting practices are a significant factor in increased subjective well-being and that meaning in life and prosocial behaviors, in turn, enhance parents’ impact on adolescent well-being.