title: Parent-child relationships and offspring's positive mental wellbeing from adolescence to early older age.
abstract: We examined parent-child relationship quality and positive mental well-being using Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development data. Well-being was measured at ages 13-15 (teacher-rated happiness), 36 (life satisfaction), 43 (satisfaction with home and family life) and 60-64 years (Diener Satisfaction With Life scale and Warwick Edinburgh Mental Well-being scale). The Parental Bonding Instrument captured perceived care and control from the father and mother to age 16, recalled by study members at age 43. Greater well-being was seen for offspring with higher combined parental care and lower combined parental psychological control (p< 0.05 at all ages). Controlling for maternal care and paternal and maternal behavioural and psychological control, childhood social class, parental separation, mother's neuroticism and study member's personality, higher well-being was consistently related to paternal care. This suggests that both mother-child and father-child relationships may have short and long-term consequences for positive mental well-being.
authors.affiliation: MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at UCL , 33 Bedford Place, London WC1B 5JU , UK.
authors.forename: Mai
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Stafford
authors.affiliation: MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at UCL , 33 Bedford Place, London WC1B 5JU , UK.
authors.forename: Diana L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Kuh
authors.affiliation: MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK; Department of Psychology, Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
authors.forename: Catharine R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Gale
authors.affiliation: School of Population Health, University of Queensland , Brisbane , Australia.
authors.forename: Gita
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Mishra
authors.affiliation: MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at UCL , 33 Bedford Place, London WC1B 5JU , UK.
authors.forename: Marcus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Richards
keywords: birth cohort study; life satisfaction; longitudinal; well-being