Adolescents’ Subjective Well-Being: The Unique Contribution of Fathers

Caregiver relationships are associated with adolescent subjective well-being. Yet, little is known about the contributions of father-adolescent relationship quality to well-being including perseverance, connectedness, and happiness or the specific contributions of father-adolescent relationship quality to these outcomes after accounting for covariates.

This study aimed to understand how father-adolescent relationships and school connectedness interact with one another when positive adolescent functioning are the outcomes.

Adolescents (N = 2,509; M_age = 15.5; 51.8% male; Black and African American (47.9%), Hispanic (24.8%), and white (17.7%) participating in the FFCWBS provided cross-sectional data. A series of hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine direct associations between father-adolescent relationship quality and each of the three adolescent subjective well-being outcomes (perseverance, connectedness, and happiness), and to evaluate the moderating role of adolescent biological sex in these associations. Covariates included race, household income, father’s residential status, the adolescent’s relationship with the mother and school connectedness.

Regressions showed that father-adolescent relationship quality was significantly associated with each well-being outcome beyond the contributions of demographics, mother-adolescent relationships, and school connectedness, and had similar associations with the outcomes by sex.

Our conclusions highlight the priority of including and retaining fathers in research and interventions.