Page 66 - IJPS-2-1

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

Table 2. Bivariate correlations matrix (N=432)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
1 1.00
2 0.06 1.00
3 −0.02 –0.17*** 1.00
4 0.00 –0.20*** –0.37** 1.00
5 −0.15** 0.00 0.10* –0.07 1.00
6 0.23*** 0.07 –0.19** 0.09* –0.23*** 1.00
7 0.23*** 0.08 –0.05 0.09 –0.20*** 0.22*** 1.00
8 0.32*** −0.11* –0.03 0.04 –0.06 0.14** 0.26*** 1.00
9 0.23*** −0.13** –0.01 0.10* –0.07 0.14** 0.13** 0.38*** 1.00
10 0.13** −0.16*** –0.02 0.01 –0.08 0.03 –0.01 0.20*** 0.15** 1.00
11 0.21*** –0.13** –0.05 0.03 –0.13** 0.13** 0.17*** 0.36*** 0.51*** 0.12** 1.00
12 0.30*** –0.16*** –0.00 0.05 –0.05 0.11* 0.16*** 0.50*** 0.39*** 0.20*** 0.34*** 1.00
13 0.16*** –0.09 –0.02 –0.00 –0.04 0.07 0.19*** 0.29*** 0.24*** 0.15** 0.23*** 0.26*** 1.00
* P<.05; **P<.01; ***P<.001; two-tailed
Note:
1=Parental satisfaction,2=Age, 3=Female, 4=Married, 5=Financial strain, 6=Self-rated health, 7=Offspring’s SES, 8=Getting along with offspring, 9=Emotional
support from offspring, 10=Practical support from offspring, 11=Financial support from offspring, 12=Offspring’s filial piety, 13=Offspring’s marriage.

of parental satisfaction in this sample, respectively; net of parent and offspring characteristics.
The finding regarding the association between offspring’s emotional support and parental satisfac-
tion is in line with Western research that indicated older parents’ satisfaction improved when children
gave emotional support (Lang and Schütze, 2002). Our findings that offspring’s practical support and
financial support were positively associated with parental satisfaction, respectively, are consistent
with Chinese cultural emphasis on filial piety. Filial piety in Confucian culture represents “a life-long
responsibility” for offspring to demonstrate their dedication and efforts to their parents’ wellbeing by
making parents free from worry (Kim, Cheng, Fringeman et al., 2015). In contrast, filial obligation
required in Western cultures is primarily need-driven as older parents expect adult children to step in
to help only when they are “at times of need” (Gans and Silverstein, 2006). Previous work documented
no or only weak associations between exchanges of assistance and parental well-being in some
Western settings (Lowenstein, Katz, and Gur-Yaish, 2007; Umberson, 1992). This contrast may help
understand our study findings of why expectation of practical and financial support from offspring
plays a significant role, respectively, in deciding parental satisfaction in late life in a sample of
able-bodied older Chinese parents.
Meanwhile, we found that the significant effects of parental satisfaction with offspring’s emotional,
practical, and financial support disappeared in the full model when examining relationship quality
with offspring and offspring’s filial piety simultaneously. This result indicates that child-to-parent
support, in general, plays a less salient role than better relationship quality with offspring and
offspring being filial among older adults who were satisfied with their parental role, suggesting spe-
cific forms of support from offspring in these dimensions may become less important even in one of
the least developed counties in contemporary China. Contrary to this finding, the significant
dose-response relation between offspring’s filial piety and parental satisfaction detected in the current
study indicates that filial piety is a multidimensional concept. Its meanings go above and beyond
various forms of support and this complicated and all-embracing concept remains influential in
terms of affecting older Chinese adults’ wellbeing, manifesting that the parental role in late life is
embedded in the cultural context in which the parent-adult child interaction and exchange occurs.
These findings are consistent with the symbolic interactionism perspective underscoring role and
relationship quality and the Chinese cultural norms emphasizing filial piety. In addition, the

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