About this session

Friday, 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM

Parenting & Adolescents’ Mental Health & Envisioning Meaningful Futures: Perspectives from Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and the US

Parents across nationalities aim to help adolescents envision a meaningful future, balancing mental health and achievement. Scientific and popular discourse contrasts strict parenting in Asian cultures with democratic parenting in the US, while debated costs and benefits. Parental pressure is associated with mental health issues in Asian countries and the US (Ma et al., 2018; Luthar 2013). Conversely, parents’ help in seeing the benefits of education supports goalsetting and purpose, but only when economic stress is absent (Hill et al., 2018ab).

How much pressure is too much and how does parental linking education to the future impact youths’ mental health and ability to envision a meaningful future (e.g., future orientation & sense of purpose) among Vietnamese, Sri Lankan, & US youth? Common analyses were conducted, exploring cross-national patterns, and followed by detailed analyses within countries.

In all three countries, parents’ linking education to the future positively predicted well-being, future orientation, and purpose commitment. For Vietnamese and US youth, it also positively predicted purpose exploration. Parental pressure showed greater complexity: In Sri Lanka, it was not related to quantitative outcomes but emerged as a key focus group theme. In Vietnam, it predicted lower mental health but not purpose or future orientation. In the US, it positively predicted future orientation and purpose exploration, but also higher anxiety and lower wellbeing. Some parental pressure seems useful in the US for focusing on the future and committing to a sense of purpose, though it came with costs. The factors that shape cross-national variations will be explored.

Paper #1
Title	Parenting, Mental Health, and Envisioning a Meaningful Future among Sri Lankan Youth
Presenting author	Nigel Gray, Harvard University, United States

Paper #2
Title	Parenting in Rural and Urban Vietnam: Adolescent Mental Health and Envisioning a Meaningful Future
Presenting author	My Hong Hoang Do, M.Ed., Harvard University, United States

Paper #3
Title	Parenting, Well-Being, Envisioning a Meaningful Future in the U.S.: Considering Youth’s Identification with Parents
Presenting author	Yixuan Cui, Harvard University, United States

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Session chair
Dr. Nancy E. Hill, Ph.D., Harvard University, United States

Discussant
Jennifer E. Lansford, Ph.D., Duke University, United States

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