Family life quality and emotional quality of life in Chinese adolescents with and without economic disadvantage

Chinese secondary school students (N = 2758) responded to measures of perceived family life quality (parenting quality and parent-child relational quality) and emotional quality of life (hopelessness, mastery, life satisfaction and self-esteem). Parenting quality included different aspects of parental behavioral control (parental knowledge, expectation, monitoring, discipline and demandingness as well as parental control defined in terms of indigenous Chinese concepts), parental psychological control, and parental responsiveness whereas parent-child relational quality included satisfaction with parental control, child's readiness to communicate with the parents, parental trust of the child, and child's trust of the parent. Results showed that parenting quality and parent-child relational quality in poor families were generally poorer than those of non-poor families and the differences were more pronounced in paternal parenting quality and father-child relational quality than in maternal parenting quality and mother-child relational quality. Emotional quality of life of adolescents experiencing economic disadvantage was also found to be poorer than that of adolescents not experiencing economic disadvantage. The present findings replicate the previous research findings in the literature and generate a pioneering dataset based on Chinese adolescents at Secondary 2 level in Hong Kong.