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

This study has limitations that provide directions for future research. First, this study is a local-
ly conducted small-scale study. Although our sample fit the profile of Chinese aged 60 to 79 living in
townships in terms of sex and education composition according to the 2010 Census (National Bureau
of Statistics, 2012, Forms 3-1b and 4-1b), future studies with nationally representative data or
large-scale sample are needed to ascertain our study findings’ generalizability. Future research could
also explore the definition of “a filial child” among older Chinese adults to ascertain its various di-
mensions. Second, longitudinal analyses are warranted to provide more rigorous hypothesis testing on
directionality of the associations, as components of parental satisfaction may change over time even in
late adulthood, and longitudinal studies can help detect whether reciprocal effects exist. Third, we
measured parental satisfaction using a single item. Research has indicated that single-item meas-
ures can be almost as effective, especially when the construct is unambiguous, as multiple items (e.g.,
Cheung and Lucas, 2014). For a complex rather than straightforward construct like parental satisfac-
tion, however, multiple-item scales if constructed appropriately might be better than a single-item
measure.

5. Conclusions
Despite the limitations, this study is the first to identify correlates of parental satisfaction in late life
and in a Chinese setting. It examines a range of relationship quality, interaction and exchange with
offspring variables regarding parent – adult child ties across multiple children in the context of China,
along with offspring’s filial piety. A particular strength of this study is the use of a rich data set re-
cently collected from one of the least developed counties in China, which offers unusually rich in-
formation about relationship quality, interaction, and exchange with each adult child in a family. The
data set provides us a rare opportunity to go beyond the commonly used parent – focal child infor-
mation or aggregated measures viewing children as a composite to study parent-child relationship and
exchange. The key take-home message from this study is that relationship quality and offspring’s filial
piety are the most essential positive factors promoting parental satisfaction among older Chinese
parents in our sample whereas specific forms of support and exchange are less important. Moreover,
offspring’s filial piety was associated with parental satisfaction in a dose-response manner. That is,
having none of the children meeting parents’ filial piety expectations was more detrimental on pa-
rental satisfaction than having at least one but not all children meeting expectations. Future work
using data from different regions in China and different countries is needed to further test these hy-
potheses.
Overall, findings of this study have implications for the development and implementation of ap-
propriate interventions aimed to reduce parental dissatisfaction. For example, we might extend gov-
ernment funded family-strengthening programs aiming to enhance the quality and stability of the
relationships with children (mainly focusing on parents with a young child with behavioral problems,
though; e.g., Kumpfer, Pinyuchon, de Melo et al., 2008) to help improve parent-adult child ties in late
life. Such programs might be especially useful among older Chinese adults as getting along with all
adult children apparently reduces parental dissatisfaction. Moreover, for Chinese practitioners, such
educational intervention programs should pay particular attention to understanding the life histories,
filial piety expectations, and values of both generations, considering that offspring’s filial piety in the
family can clearly enhance parental satisfaction among older Chinese parents as evidenced in this study.

Conflict of Interest and Funding

No conflict of interest was reported by all authors.
Acknowledgements

The data collection was supported by the University of Utah Center on Aging Pilot Grant issued to
Ming Wen in 2014. We are grateful to Shujun Tian, Xia Sun, Wen Li, and Yang Yang for their valuable

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