Life satisfaction, religiosity/spirituality, and the relationship with parents in adolescents and young adults

This study examines the relationships among life satisfaction, religiosity/spirituality, and adolescents' perceptions of their parents' style of relating, in a large, diverse sample of adolescents and young adults (12--23). Subjects were ascertained by purposive and snowball sampling, predominately in New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and California. In order to overlap with the literature of positive psychology, adolescents within the top quartile of life satisfaction scores were separated to form the Very Satisfied group, and compared via regression beta weights with the Rest of the sample. Univariate and simultaneous regressions were employed with the Satisfaction with Life Scale as an outcome, and as independent variables, the Fetzer Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality, four single-item proxies for religious involvement and behavior, the Parental Bonding Instrument, and the newly developed Parental Spiritual Transparency Scale. The Very Satisfied had significantly higher means than the Rest of the sample on all of the religious/spiritual and parenting variables except for Congregational Problems, and Mother and Father Overprotection. Pearson correlations found that none of the independent variables included were significantly correlated with life satisfaction for the Very Satisfied, though regression analyses did uncover some small to moderate effects for proximal religious/spiritual variables, such as Daily Spiritual Experiences and Frequency of Prayer on high life satisfaction. Perhaps due to a restricted range of scores, or ceiling effect in the Mother and Father Care dimensions and the Parental Spiritual Transparency Scale scores (overall the adolescents reported very good parenting), there were no significant patterns of association found between parenting variables and high life satisfaction.However, for the Rest of the sample, regression analyses found significant associations with Life Satisfaction from Daily Spiritual Experience, Forgiveness, Positive Religious Coping, Congregational Benefits, and three of the single items. Similarly, Mother and Father Care (positively) and Mother and Father Overprotection (negatively), as well as Parental Spiritual Transparency, were all significantly associated with life satisfaction in the Rest of the sample. A post-hoc, Sobel's test of mediation was performed with the only set of associations which fit criteria, and Paternal Spiritual Transparency was found to significantly mediate the association between Mother Care and Life Satisfaction. Results are considered for their theoretical and methodological implications for the Psychology of Religion/Spirituality and Positive Psychology, which include the necessity of treating positive functioning as distinct, theoretically and empirically, from the relationships found between predictors and the functioning of psychopathological or population-representative research participants.