Exploring Pathways to Middle School Students’ Life Satisfaction

Given the developmental importance of parental roles in early adolescence, research in the etiology of adolescents’ life satisfaction begins at the family level. Therefore, this study investigates whether inconsistent parenting influences young adolescents’ life satisfaction through the mediating roles of other individual-related variables, including self-esteem and behavioral regulation, for male and female adolescents. Data were extracted from the Korean Child Youth Panel Survey (KCYPS), which is a longitudinal panel study of 1802 middle school students in South Korea. This study demonstrated that the relationship between inconsistent parenting and life satisfaction was mediated by self-esteem in both gender groups and by behavioral regulation only in the male group. It also showed evidence of serial mediation when the paths included behavioral regulation as a distal mediator in male adolescents. The findings of the study support that negative cognitive schema partially formed by inconsistent maternal parenting predisposes an adolescent to negative self-evaluation and emotions, leading to dissatisfaction with their lives.