The Associations Between Family Socioeconomic Status And Adolescents’ Life Goals

What individuals consider meaningful and strive to pursue in daily life is called life goals.It has an important leading role for personal development and the choices they make in the present and future.Adolescence is the period of transition from childhood to adulthood and an important time for individuals to form goals for their lives.Different goals may lead to different behavior patterns and hence different directions of development.Research has shown that life goals have an impact on adolescents’ behavioural performance,psychological well-being and perceived happiness,so it is essential to guide adolescents to set positive life goals,which will help junior high school students to form the right values and reduce problematic behaviour,leading to a greater sense of well-being.However,little research has been conducted on the influencing mechanisms of adolescents’ life goals.Based on a review of relevant literature,this study starts from the environment most closely connected to adolescents-the family-and proposes to construct a chain mediation model to study the influence of family socio-economic status,parental expectations and parenting behaviour on adolescents’ life goals from the family perspective,in order to complement the research on the factors influencing adolescents’ life goals.In this study,a total of 466 junior high school students in Muping District,Yantai City,Shandong Province,including grades 6,7,8 and 9,were selected as subjects to investigate the mechanisms of family socio-economic status on junior high school students’ life goals,and to examine the mediating effects of parental expectations and parenting behaviour on junior high school students’ life goals.The study also examined the mediating role of parental expectations,parenting behaviour and the chain mediating role of the two variables.The main findings of the study are as follows:(1)The group of junior high school students focused more on intrinsic goals,with a mean score of intrinsic goals(6.03)and a mean score of extrinsic goals(3.85).(2)There is a significant gender difference in the dimension of father rejection in parental rearing behavior,with boys experiencing a higher level of father rejection than girls.There were no significant age differences on all dimensions of parental expectations,parenting behaviour and life goals.Examining the interaction between the two showed that there was no significant interaction between parental expectations,parenting behaviours and life goals across all dimensions.(3)Parental expectations mediated between family socio-economic status and adolescent life goals.(4)Positive parenting behavior plays a mediating role between family socioeconomic status and adolescents’ life goals.Negative parenting behavior has no significant mesomeric effect between family socioeconomic status and adolescents’ life goals.(5)Parental expectations and parenting behaviour mediated the chain between family socio-economic status and adolescent life goals.This study examined the differences in adolescent life goals,parental expectations,and parenting behaviours by gender and grade level,and confirmed that the mediating role of parental expectations and positive parenting behaviours in family socioeconomic status and adolescent life goals was valid,and that there was a chain mediating role between parental expectations and positive and negative parenting behaviours in family socioeconomic status and adolescent life goals.This can reveal that although family socio-economic status is a more stable objective environmental factor,parents can still influence adolescents to prefer intrinsic goals through expectations and positive parenting behaviours in order to promote good psychological adjustment and the pursuit of greater well-being.