The Role Of Different Social Support In Predicting Adolescents’ Future Orientation

Future orientation is defined as how individuals construct their future. Therelationship with family and peers play important roles in adolescents’futureorientation, particularly the positive interaction dimensions. Previous research whichexamined the relationship between parental support and adolescents’developmentusually focus on maternal support or combine maternal support and paternal supportas parental support. In fact, fathers play unique role which mothers cannot replace inadolescents’daily life. Taking into account these circumstances, this study distinguishthe social support from mothers and fathers. In addition, previous research mainlyfocus on the influence of family factors. However, the influence of peers is usuallyneglected. For this reason, this study also examines the relationship between friendsupport and adolescents’future orientation. Meanwhile, whether gender couldmoderate the relationship between social support and adolescents’future orientationor not is also an important question. What should be noted is that few studiesinvestigated the impact of family and peers on adolescents’future orientation at thesame time. Be influenced by ecological systems theory and developmentalcontextualism, this study is not only concerned about the independent impact of socialsupport on the future orientation, but also concerned about the interaction.A sample of 1859 Chinese adolescents from five junior high schools and fivesenior high schools in Jinan City and Laizhou region, Shandong Province wereemployed to complete the questionnaires. The self-reported questionnaires whichwere administered include Future Orientation Questionnaire and Network ofRelationships Inventory. The indicators of future orientation included adolescents’exploration, commitment, personal value, positive expectations and attitudesconcerning individual development in three life domains (future education, occupation and marriage/family). The dimensions of NRI included companionships,instrumental help, affection, intimacy, as well as annoyance and conflict. The mainfindings were as follows:(1) Paternal support and maternal support played positive roles in adolescents’planning and evaluation regarding education and occupation, as well as commitmentand evaluation regarding marriage/family. Friend support positively predictedplanning, positive expectations and attitudes regarding education, as well as planningand evaluation regarding occupation and marriage/family.(2) Paternal support and maternal support was still the most powerful predictorsof planning and evaluation concerning education and occupation. However, friendsupport showed stronger influence on exploration concerning marriage/family thanparental support.(3) Gender didn’t moderate the relation between maternal support andadolescents’future planning and evaluation; gender moderated the relation betweenpaternal support and adolescents’commitment, personal value, positive expectationsand attitudes regarding family/marriage: paternal support had a greater impact on girls;gender moderated the relation between friend support and adolescents’personal valueand attitudes regarding family/marriage: friend support had a greater impact on boys.(4) Maternal support moderated the relation between friend support and boys’attitudes concerning education: when boys perceived higher maternal support, theirattitudes concerning education would be more positive, along with the increase offriend support; however, when boys perceived poor maternal support, their attitudesconcerning education was not affected by friend support. Paternal support moderatedthe relation between friend support and boys’positive expectations concerningmarriage/family: Regardless of the paternal support, friend support positivelypredicted boys’positive expectations concerning marriage/family, but with poorpaternal support, the prediction of friend support was significantly enhanced.