The Impact of Family Context on Early Adults’ Psychological Well-Being

[[abstract]]Double ABC-X Model of Family Stress provides a main framework to test the model of the associations among family context and psychological well-being (psychological distress and self-esteem satisfaction). The purpose of this study is to examine the long-term impact of family stressors, economic resources, family affective resources, the perception of economic strain and the perception of parent-child relationship satisfaction on offspring’s psychological well-being; there are group differences involved in the direct and indirect links between family resources, the perception of family resources and offspring’s psychological well-being. Our analysis was based on an 8-year panel study (1996-2003) of long-term Taiwanese adolescent development and adaptation, containing 644 students. The data is analyzed by structural equation models (Amos 7.0 program) with latent variables. The results support the hypothesis shows that (a) parent marital discord predicts later early adults’ psychological well-being. (b)There is consistency between three groups of parent marital interaction family (low discord family, high discord family and divorce family)-- the family economic resources decrease the perception of economic strain directly; the family economic resources increase family affective resources directly; the family affective resources increase the perception of parent-child relationship satisfaction. (c) Family affective resources decrease offspring’s psychological distress directly at divorce family; on the contrary, family affective resources increase offspring’s psychological distress directly at high discord family. (d) Economic resources and family affection resources have a direct positively effect on self-esteem satisfaction at low discord family; however, the family resources have no such direct effect at both divorce family and high discord family; it only affects self-esteem satisfaction indirectly by positively affecting the perception of family resources. (e) The early family resources and family resources perception have long-term effects on later psychological well-being; and economic resources, family affective resources, the perception of economic strain and the perception of parent-child relationship satisfaction can be used to explain offspring’s psychological well-being with effectiveness from 17% to 49%. (f)The overall fit of the model was good at the three groups of parent marital interaction family. Finally, according to the results of this study, suggestions are proposed for early adults, parents, schools, family education, other promotion organizations, the public and government, and the research studies in the future.