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Correlates of parental satisfaction: a study of late life family relationships in a rural county in China

with any degree of certainty regarding satisfaction in the parental role” due largely to “the paucity of
research efforts expended in this direction”. Twenty-four years after Goetting’s review, Mitchell (2010)
extended this work to further explore components of midlife parental satisfaction using the par-
ent-focal child information. She found that income satisfaction, emotional closeness to the study child,
parents’ main activity (e.g., paid work, retired, or other), health, age, ethnic background, and percep-
tions of how children “turn out” influence midlife Canadian parents’ subjective levels of satisfaction.
In light of these developments, which aspects of the parent-adult child ties account for parental sa-
tisfaction in late adulthood remain to date unstudied.
Identifying correlates of satisfaction in parental role is particularly important for older adults be-
cause intergenerational relations (and parent – adult child ties in particular) become increasingly
important in old age (Bengtson, 2001). Longer life expectancy of both parents and their children is
enabling parent and adult children today to share extended “linked lives,” a span of time commonly
lasting as long as 50 years for the first time in human history (Umberson, 1992). Such extendedly
shared lifespans make it possible for longer periods of interactions and increased exchanges of sup-
port between generations, as aging parents across the world all rely on family members taking pri-
mary responsibility to provide support and care (Angel, 2011). Indeed, empirical studies on parenting
adult children have documented that the interdependent life course trajectories of parents and
adult children remain an important influence on parental wellbeing across the life course (Umberson,
Crosnoe, and Reczek, 2010). A better understanding of correlates of parental satisfaction in late life
would help the development of evidence-based strategies to reduce parental dissatisfaction among
older adults and in turn enhance their odds of experiencing healthy aging.
Similarly, little evidence is available on correlates of parental satisfaction in late life in a Chinese
setting. A China-based study examining this issue is of great significance for several reasons. First,
China is experiencing rapid population aging, with more than 110 million people aged 65 or older in
2010, more than 240 million in 2030, and 370 million in 2050 according to projections (United Na-
tions, 2015). Second, family support from adult children remains a primary source of support for
older adults in China (Shen and Yeatts, 2013), where social welfare and health insurance systems are
quite limited and are still being developed. Third, traditionally in Chinese culture, filial piety — the
virtue of respect for, taking care of, and obeying one’s parents — has shaped the expectations
and behaviors of Chinese families for thousands of years as a central value of family life (Ikels,
2004). Older Chinese adults under the regulation and guidance of filial piety beliefs may have dif-
ferent expectations for the parental role in late life as well as for the interaction and exchange with
offspring relative to their counterparts in other cultural contexts. They may thus likely be more sen-
sitive to adult children’s non-filial behaviors compared to those living in other cultures. Yet, little
attention has been paid in previous studies to the cultural context in which parental roles are expe-
rienced (Mitchell, 2010). The current study aims to address these gaps in the literature by identifying
factors associated with parental satisfaction in late adulthood using a sample of 432 older Chinese
parents with 1,223 grown children living in a “below poverty level” county in northern China. Taking
advantage of a rich and recent data set self-collected in 2014, information from each of the
grown children in a family (hereafter offspring is used to represent each of the grown children) are
utilized when measuring variables of interest (see Section 2.3.2 for details), as research indicated
that it was important to consider multiple children when examining parent-adult child relationships
(e.g., Fingerman, Cheng, Birditt et al., 2012).
We identified relevant variables that might explain and contribute to parental satisfaction in
the context of China and formulate our hypotheses by drawing upon the symbolic interactionism
perspectives and Chinese cultural emphasis on filial piety and reviewing previous studies of parenting.
According to the symbolic interactionism perspective, social roles such as being a parent, a worker,
or a friend, are positions or statuses in the social structure regulated by a set of normative rights and
obligations, which give identity, guidance, purpose and sense of meaning to life through role in-
volvements (Berkman, 2000; Thoits, 1983, 2011). The parental role is ranked at the top of most par-

54 International Journal of Population Studies | 2016, Volume 2, Issue 1