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Parental expectations and adolescents’ happiness: the role of self-efficacy and connectedness

BMC Psychology volume 13, Article number: 24 (2025) Cite this article

Abstract

Background

A happy adolescent may live a healthy and successful life. This study focused on parental expectations in the Chinese cultural context and investigated whether and under what conditions adolescents’ perceived parental expectations are associated with their happiness, the affective component of subjective well-being.

Sample and methods

This cross-sectional study included a sample of 1510 Chinese adolescents; the average age of the adolescents was 12.39 years, and 55.40% were boys. A questionnaire including the perceived parental expectations scale, self-efficacy scale, connectedness subscale and one item that measured happiness was administered to the adolescents.

Results

The results reveal that self-efficacy moderates the relationship between perceived parental expectations and happiness. For adolescents who exhibit higher levels of self-efficacy, perceived parental expectations are negatively correlated with happiness; in contrast, for adolescents who exhibit lower levels of self-efficacy, perceived parental expectations are not related to happiness. Moreover, the results reveal that connectedness moderates the relationship between perceived parental expectations and happiness. Among adolescents who exhibit higher levels of connectedness, a nonsignificant relationship is observed between perceived parental expectations and happiness; in contrast, among adolescents who exhibit lower levels of connectedness, perceived parental expectations are negatively related to happiness.

Conclusions

This study reveals that, under conditions featuring higher levels of self-efficacy or lower levels of connectedness, perceived parental expectations are not conducive to their happiness. These findings have important implications with regard to parenting practices.

Peer Review reports

Background

Parents worldwide, especially in East Asian countries, have high expectations for their children [1]. Achieving good grades and obtaining good careers are two of the most important socialization goals that Chinese parents have for their children [2]. According to a common Chinese idiom, a parent “expect my child to be a dragon (wang zi cheng long)”, which directly reflects the great value associated with Chinese parents’ expectations for their children. This phenomenon may be closely related to traditional Confucian culture. Namely, Chinese families exhibit a family culture based on Confucianism, which emphasizes core values such as self-improvement and family obligation [3]. As such, parental expectations in Chinese culture involve both practical and moral values [4], and Chinese parents are expected to motivate their children to strive to obtain a prospect future and bring honor their families [5].

Extensive empirical evidence has consistently revealed that parental expectations have positive effects on academic performance [6,7,8,9]. When adolescents perceive that their parents have higher expectations of them, they are more likely to engage in actions that meet their parents’ expectations [10], thereby increasing their likelihood of achieving good grades. Accordingly, in the context of Chinese culture, parental expectations are conducive to academic outcomes and the ability to obtain good jobs in the future, thereby contributing to the socialization goals of parenting.

However, less attention has been given to the question of whether parental expectations contribute to subjective well-being. In fact, raising a happy child and raising an academically successful child are equally important, but several Chinese-style parenting practices contribute to academic success while decreasing emotional functioning [11]. This situation may also be the case with respect to parental expectations. Previous research has suggested that adolescents who report higher-level parental expectations may experience greater test stress [12], which may negatively affect their happiness. In addition, adolescence is a period accompanied with significant physical growth and individual psychological, social and cognitive development [13], and adolescents therefore need to deal with the changes brought about by these developments. Moreover, these developmental characteristics may put adolescents at greater risk for subjective well-being. For example, adolescents face increasing demands from social relationships, such as those with their parents [14]. While adolescence is a period that demands autonomy needs and asserts independence from parents [15]. These two conflicting needs may give rise to problems with adolescents’ emotional responses to their parents’ expectations. As such, it is necessary to have a better understanding of the factors associated with adolescents’ emotional experiences, so as to help them navigate through adolescence.

Therefore, this study aimed to explore the relationship between perceived parental expectations and Chinese adolescents’ happiness, as well as to clarify the conditions under which the relationship between these two factors becomes stronger. This approach is helpful with respect to identifying which adolescents are more vulnerable to the emotional consequences of parental expectations and thus to the development of targeted educational assistance.

Relationship between parental expectations and happiness

Happiness is the feeling or emotional experience of one’s quality of life [16, 17], which may be regarded as the affective component of subjective well-being [18, 19]. Living a happy life is associated with health, success and longevity [20,21,22]. In addition, children and adolescents who experience higher levels of life satisfaction may face fewer emotional difficulties [23, 24] and live healthier mental lives [25]. Parental expectations refer to parents’ beliefs regarding their children’s future achievements in the fields of education and occupation [2, 26]. Hitherto, few studies have directly addressed the relationship between adolescents’ perceptions of their parents’ expectations and their own happiness, and related research regarding this relationship has not reached a consensus.

Primarily, ecological system theory suggests that the family is a proximal ecosystem through which children develop [27], and that positive parenting practices contribute to the development of their children’s subjective well-being [28]. On the basis of this theory, children’s subjective well-being may be shaped by parental factors such as parental expectations. Moreover, several studies have explored the relationships between parental expectations and various concepts related to happiness. Some of these studies have reported evidence indicating that perceived parental expectations may be positively associated with adolescents’ happiness. Specifically, a study focused on college students reported that undergraduates who perceived the fulfilment of parental expectations reported higher levels of life satisfaction [29]. Some evidence has suggested the possibility of a negative correlation between perceived parental expectations and happiness. Specifically, previous research has implied that adolescents who perceive high parental expectations with regard to their education may face more academic pressure [30]. Similarly, a study focused on female undergraduates suggested that excessive parental emphasis on success in terms of test grades can lead to anxiety [12]. Previous research has also revealed that high parental expectations are positively correlated with adolescents’ depression [26]. Nonetheless, certain questions regarding the relationship between adolescents’ perceived parental expectations and happiness remain unanswered; this study explicitly addresses this issue.

Moderators of the relationship between parental expectations and happiness

Chinese culture places high value on parental expectations and the contributions of this situation to academic performance have been consistently documented [9]; however, the effects of parental expectations on adolescents’ development outcomes may vary alongside other variables. For example, paternal expectations are not significantly associated with adolescents’ development of self-identity under conditions featuring high levels of maternal control [5]. Moreover, parental expectations can be effectively transmitted to their adolescent children among families that exhibit higher levels of emotional warmth, but this impact is not observed among families that exhibit lower levels of emotional warmth [31]. Although the evidence does not directly address the relationship between perceived parental expectations and happiness, it implies that various moderators may play a role in shaping the consequences of adolescents’ perceptions of parental expectations.

According to satisfaction of goals theory [21], individuals’ subjective well-being is contingent upon the fulfilment of their personal needs, desires, and goals. In addition, subjective well-being is a type of personal experience that is closely related to individual fulfilment [32, 33]. This view is in line with self-determination theory [34, 35], which proposes that the fulfilment of basic psychological needs can facilitate healthy psychosocial development. As such, adolescents may feel happy when their key personal needs and goals are satisfied; otherwise, they are likely to feel distress. In fact, parental expectations reflect parents’ socialization goals, which are different from adolescents’ personal goals. Previous research has reported that parents can have unrealistic expectations that are higher than their children’s own expectations, thus leading to worse developmental outcomes [36]. In this way, adolescents’ self-fulfillment needs may play a critical role in the relationship between perceived parental expectations and their happiness. Competence and relatedness are two basic psychological needs [34], and the satisfaction of these personal needs may be important socialization goals that can make adolescents happy. However, little is known regarding the correlation between perceived parental expectations and adolescents’ happiness under conditions of competence and relatedness. Therefore, on the basis of self-determination theory and satisfaction of goals theory, this study focused on two concepts related to basic psychological needs, i.e., self-efficacy and connectedness, and sought to explore whether the relationship between perceived parental expectations and adolescents’ happiness depends on the extent to which those goals pertaining to basic needs are satisfied.

The moderating role of self-efficacy

Self-efficacy is defined in term of individuals’ belief in their capacity to navigate and overcome the demands associated with dynamic societal conditions and challenges effectively [37, 38]. Self-efficacy is a pivotal concept within social cognitive theory and is known for playing a crucial role in individuals’ development, adaptability and change [39, 40]. The significance of self-efficacy extends across various domains (e.g., learning, behavioural outcomes and mental health) and different cultures [41, 42]. The direct effect of self-efficacy on adolescents’ emotional development has been documented. Self-efficacy has long been identified as a type of psychological strength that promotes subjective well-being. Adolescents who exhibit higher levels of self-efficacy are better equipped to address significant psychosocial changes and new environmental demands. In contrast, adolescents who experience a sense of inefficacy are more vulnerable to stress and thus suffer various forms of dysfunction [43], such as depression and anxiety [44]. Recent research has consistently revealed a positive relationship between self-efficacy and subjective well-being among adolescents [45,46,47].

This study hypothesized that self-efficacy, in addition to its direct contributions to adolescents’ happiness, may act as a moderator in the relationship between perceived parental expectations and adolescents’ happiness. However, this line of research has not explicitly developed hypotheses concerning whether self-efficacy mitigates or exacerbates this relationship. Two types of evidence have been reported by prior research on this topic; one stream of research has suggested that self-efficacy plays a protective role, while the other has indicated that self-efficacy plays a dampening role in the relationship between parental expectations and subjective well-being.

On the one hand, adolescents who exhibit high levels of self-efficacy can effectively cope with risk factors that may undermine their subjective well-being, thus protecting them from the adverse effects of psychosocial risk. Specifically, previous research has reported that high self-efficacy can protect adolescents’ life satisfaction from the adverse effects of stressful experiences, whereas adolescents who exhibit low levels of self-efficacy report low life satisfaction in relation to stressors [48]. High emotional self-efficacy has been shown to buffer the negative effects of social media use on adolescents’ subjective well-being [49]. Similar evidence of the moderating effects of self-efficacy on subjective well-being has also been observed among adults [50]. As such, self-efficacy can alleviate the adverse effects of psychosocial stressors and play a stress-buffering role in the process by which adolescents’ subjective well-being is generated. A previous study suggested that high parental expectations may constitute a stressful experience [12]; thus, self-efficacy may play a stress-buffering role in the relationship between perceived parental expectations and happiness.

On the other hand, previous evidence has indicated that self-efficacy may play a dampening role in this relationship. Specifically, a study targeted Chinese employees revealed that a lack of autonomy (which was conceptualized as a stressor in the study in question) was negatively correlated with job satisfaction and that self-efficacy exacerbated this negative relationship [51]. The researchers have suggested that employees who exhibit higher levels of self-efficacy desire more autonomy; thus, the gap between their actual low level of autonomy and the high level of autonomy they desire might result in decreased satisfaction with their jobs. Subsequent research has also revealed that employees who exhibit high levels of self-efficacy are more likely to resign in response to risk factors within the organization than are their counterparts who exhibit low levels of self-efficacy [52]. This evidence has indicated that high self-efficacy does not always alleviate the corresponding negative effects and may even exacerbate them in certain situations. Although the evidence discussed above focused on adult employees, it has implications and provides support for the present study. This study focused on parental expectations as a value construct associated with traditional cultures [2], which emphasize the honor of the family and the importance of obedience to parental authority. In this way, adolescents who perceive high parental expectations are more likely to experience a lack of control. While adolescence is a developmental stage that requires a high level of autonomy [15], adolescents who exhibit high levels of self-efficacy may be more concerned with their personal independence and feelings of control. Moreover, due to the development of and changes in social value [53, 54], younger generations may exhibit less obedience in response to authoritative parenting, even in a collectivist culture. As such, it is possible that when adolescents who exhibit high levels of self-efficacy perceive that they are controlled excessively, their self-agency is hindered [55], which may be detrimental to emotional experiences. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that high levels of self-efficacy may decrease adolescents’ happiness in situations featuring high parental expectations.

In summary, when these two types of evidence are combined, both hypotheses regarding the protective and dampening roles of self-efficacy in the relationship between perceived parental expectations and happiness are reasonable. Accordingly, this current study hypothesized that self-efficacy moderates this relationship, but it did not address explicit moderating effects; in other words, this study aimed to explore the specific moderating effects of self-efficacy on this relationship among Chinese adolescents in detail.

The moderating role of connectedness

Connectedness refers to feelings of mutual support, connection and bonding experiences with socialization agents [56, 57]. This notion could also be applied to various contexts or agents for children and adolescents, such as families, schools, peers and teachers, since they were in multiple socialization contexts [57]. This study focused on general connectedness, which does not distinguish among specific contexts but rather focuses on an overall evaluation of total contexts. Connectedness is associated with a variety of positive outcomes (e.g., improved physical health, decreased risk behaviours, and better academic performance) [58,59,60], and is a key factor with regard to mental health and well-being [61]. According to the belongingness hypothesis [62, 63], the need for belonging is the fundamental motivation of humanity. When adolescents are highly accepted, valued and supported in the context of significant social relationships, their basic need for belonging may be satisfied, thus leading to a variety of positive outcomes [64]. In contrast, adolescents with weaker connectedness face difficulties with regard to social adjustment [65] and experience more negative emotions [66].

Connectedness has been shown to have direct predictive effects on happiness-related concepts. For example, cross-sectional studies have consistently reported positive associations between connectedness and subjective well-being across ages [67, 68]. In addition, individuals who were experimentally assigned to an inclusion group reported more positive affect than those who were assigned to an exclusion group did [69]. Moreover, a longitudinal study revealed that connectedness in adolescence is a potent positive predictor of well-being in adulthood [70]. In addition, a recent meta-analysis revealed that a domain-specific type of connectedness, i.e., school connectedness, is significantly and positively correlated with psychological well-being [71].

Moreover, previous empirical evidence has focused on the protective function of connectedness with regard to happiness in situations involving risk factors. In fact, connectedness could be a resilience factor that protects adolescents from negative effects [72], and previous research has suggested a potential buffering function of connectedness. For example, the subjective well-being of minority adolescents decreases as their age increases, and adolescents’ connections with family members can mitigate this decline [73]. Moreover, several studies have explicitly explored the moderating role of connectedness in the school context. Specifically, for adolescent girls who exhibit higher levels of school connectedness, victimization does not predict subsequent conduct-related problems [74]. Similarly, the negative effects of family relationships on subsequent behavioural problems can also be mitigated by school connectedness [75]. Taken together, adolescents’ connectedness can play a buffering role in alleviating these negative effects.

Accordingly, connectedness may moderate the relationship between perceived parental expectations and adolescents’ happiness. Previous research has suggested that adolescents who are connected in social relationships can obtain the emotional support the need to cope with negative experiences [74, 75]. Moreover, adolescents who exhibit stronger connectedness are socially engaged and establish bonds with others, in which context they can compensate for a deficit in family-related experiences by relying on connections in other contexts [76]. As mentioned [75], negative family relationships can be compensated for by social connectedness, such that adolescents who exhibit stronger connectedness face few behavioural problems in situations involving poor family relationships. As such, in response to higher parental expectations, adolescents who exhibit stronger connectedness can receive support from other social contexts, such as from their peers and teachers, thus enabling them to feel less pressured and to maintain higher levels of happiness. Therefore, this study assumes that connectedness can moderate the relationship between perceived parental expectations and adolescents’ happiness.

The present study

In this study, parental expectations are viewed as a culture-related concept that pertains to various aspects of traditional Chinses culture, such as family obligations and obtaining success to bring honor to family. Recent evidence has consistently indicated that parental expectations are positively related to academic performance [9], which may be beneficial with respect to future success. However, high parental expectations may inadvertently be related to more negative emotional experiences [11], and excessive parental expectations may lead to poor developmental outcomes [36].

However, few studies have addressed the emotional consequences of Chinese culture with regard to parental expectations. Moreover, although parental expectations have been shown to have the potential to undermine adolescents’ emotional functioning, little is known about which characteristics of adolescents are less sensitive to the negative emotional consequences of parental expectations. The fulfilment of personal needs (e.g., competence and relatedness) are potent factors correlated with happiness [21], which may influence the effects of parental expectations; however, more empirical evidence is needed in this regard. Taken together, to address these issues, this study directly investigated whether adolescents’ perceived parental expectations are correlated with their happiness and explored whether two concepts related to basic needs, i.e., adolescents’ self-efficacy and connectedness, moderate the relationship between perceived parental expectations and their happiness.

Method

Participants

The participants were recruited from two public primary schools in counties located in two provinces in southeast China as well as from one public middle school in a county located in a province in southwest China. Initially, 889 primary school students and 781 middle school students were invited to participate in this study. Approximately 9.58% of the students (n = 160; 93 primary school students and 67 middle school students) were excluded because they withdrew from the study or because of incomplete questionnaires. As such, the valid sample consisted of 1510 fifth- to eighth-grade students whose ages ranged from 10 to 15 years; their average age was 12.39 years (SD = 1.10), and 55.40% of the participants were boys. Among the participants, 796 were fifth- to sixth-grade students (52.70%) whose data were collected from these two public primary schools, whereas 714 were seventh- to eighth-grade students (47.30%), whose data were collected from the public middle school. Moreover, information regarding the household registration (hukou) of each family was obtained, revealing that 46.50% of the students in the sample came from rural families, while the remaining 53.50% of the students came from urban families.

In addition, an independent sample t test was conducted to examine the differences in the study variables between school type and hukou respectively, and significant results were obtained. The results showed that participants in primary school had higher scores in perceived parental expectations (Mprimary school = 4.84, SD = 1.05; Mmiddle school = 4.51, SD = 1.02; t(1413) = 5.91, p < .001), self-efficacy (Mprimary school = 2.60, SD = 0.55; Mmiddle school = 2.44, SD = 0.57; t(1454) = 5.45, p < .001), connectedness (Mprimary school = 3.91, SD = 0.91; Mmiddle school = 3.44, SD = 1.04; t(1440) = 9.15, p < .001), and happiness (Mprimary school = 7.32, SD = 2.44; Mmiddle school = 3.44, SD = 2.45; t(1508) = 14.68, p < .001) than those in middle school. The results showed that participants from rural families has less scores in perceived parental expectations (Mrural = 4.59, SD = 1.00; Murban = 4.75, SD = 1.07; t(1369) = − 2.95, p = .003), self-efficacy (Mrural = 2.46, SD = 0.56; Murban = 2.58, SD = 0.57; t(1410) = − 3.09, p < .001), connectedness (Mrural = 3.56, SD = 1.02; Murban = 3.78, SD = 0.78; t(1396) = − 4.12, p < .001), and happiness (Mrural = 5.86, SD = 2.56; Murban = 6.95, SD = 2.55; t(1463) = − 8.10, p < .001) than those from urban families. Thus, these two variables were controlled for in the subsequent data analyses.

Procedure

Prior to the data collection process, the investigation protocol was approved by the local educational department and the administration of the school. In addition, all parents of the participating adolescents provided informed consent. The data were obtained directly from adolescent reports. All the adolescents completed informed consent forms and were informed that their participation was voluntary and that they could withdraw from this research at any time. Adolescents completed the paper questionnaires on a weekday. After the completion of the questionnaire, each adolescent received a gift (10 RMB) for his or her participation in this study.

Measures

Perceived parental expectations

Perceived parental expectations were assessed via a subscale drawn from the Living-up-to-Parental Expectation Inventory [2], which focused on parental expectations in the educational and career fields. Adolescents reported a total of nine items (e.g., “My parents expected me to have excellent academic performance”) on a scale ranging from 1 (not at all expected) to 6 (very strongly expected). The mean scores of all the items were calculated, and higher scores indicated higher levels of perceived parental expectations. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for this scale was 0.87 in the present study.

Self-efficacy

Global self-efficacy was measured via a 10-item General Self-Efficacy Scale [77]. Adolescents’ responses were provided on a scale ranging from “1 = not at all true” to “4 = completely true” (e.g., “I can always manage to solve difficult problems”). The mean scores of all the items were calculated, and higher scores indicated higher levels of self-efficacy. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for this scale was 0.85 in the present study.

Connectedness

This study used the four-item Connectedness Subscale [78] to assess adolescents’ global connections to important social agents in various life domains. Minor modifications have been made to the original items to make them positive statements to ensure that they are easier for adolescents to understand. Specifically, adolescents rated the items (e.g., “I feel connected to someone in my life”) on a 5-points Likert scale ranging from “1 = not at all like me” to “5 = extremely like me”. The means of all the items were calculated, and higher levels indicated higher levels of connectedness. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for this scale was 0.78 in the present study.

Happiness

One single-item scale, i.e., “In general, how happy are you?”, was used to measure adolescents’ happiness [79]. This single-item exhibited good reliability and was closely associated with multi-item measures of happiness. On a scale ranging from “0 = extremely unhappy” to “10 = extremely happy”, the adolescents’ score was 6.45 (SD = 2.61); higher scores indicated higher levels of happiness. One single item tool is commonly used to measure happiness [80], and this item has been widely used across ages [81].

Data analyses

The data were analysed via SPSS 25.0 software and the SPSS PROCESS macro. The listwise method was used for missing values in all data analyses. To test for possible common method bias, the Harman single-factor test was conducted prior to the formal data analyses. As a result, a total of 4 factors had eigenvalues greater than 1, and the first factor explained 23.86% of the total variation. Thus, there was no significant common method bias.

The descriptive statistics were analysed, and the means, standard deviations, and correlations among the variables are presented. Besides, MODEL 2 in the PROCESS macro was used to test the moderating roles of self-efficacy and connectedness in the relationship between perceived parental expectations and happiness simultaneously. Specifically, five thousand bootstrapping resamples generated 95% confidence intervals, and the moderation models were considered to be effective when the interaction terms were significant and when these 95% confidence intervals did not include zero. Moreover, gender, age, familial hukou type and school type were controlled for in the analyses; in particular, gender (boy = 0, girl = 1), familial hukou type (rural = 0, urban = 1), and school type (primary school = 0, middle school = 1) were all transformed into dummy variables, and age was a z-transformed variable. In addition, simple slope diagrams were generated when the moderating effects were significant.

Results

Descriptive statistics and correlations among the main variables

The means, standardized deviations, and correlations among the main variables are presented in Table 1. The results revealed that perceived parental expectations were positively related to happiness (r = .06; p = .025), self-efficacy (r = .16; p < .001) and connectedness (r = .09; p = .001). In addition, happiness was positively related to self-efficacy (r = .27; p < .001) and connectedness (r = .48; p < .001). Moreover, self-efficacy was positively related to connectedness (r = .39; p < .001).

Table 1 Descriptive statistics and correlations among study variables
Full size table

The moderating effects of self-efficacy and connectedness

Table 2 presents the moderating roles of self-efficacy and connectedness in the relationship between perceived parental expectations and happiness. The results revealed that perceived parental expectations were not significantly correlated with happiness (β = −0.04, p = .073). Besides, both self-efficacy (β = 0.11, p < .001) and connectedness (β = 0.38, p < .001) significantly and positively predicted happiness. Moreover, self-efficacy significantly and negatively moderated the relationship between perceived parental expectations and happiness (β = −0.09, p < .001), whereas connectedness significantly and positively moderated the relationship between perceived parental expectations and happiness (β = 0.09, p < .001).

Table 2 The moderating roles of self-efficacy and connectedness for happiness
Full size table

The simple slope test was conducted and the results were graphed, as shown in Figs. 1 and 2. With regard to the moderating role of self-efficacy (see Fig. 1), the results revealed that for adolescents who exhibit higher levels of self-efficacy, perceived parental expectations negatively predicted happiness (β = − 0.13, t = − 2.95, p = .003); in contrast, for adolescents who exhibited lower levels of self-efficacy, perceived parental expectations did not predict happiness (β = 0.05, t = 1.03, p = .304).

As for the moderating role of connectedness (see Fig. 2), the results revealed that for adolescents who exhibited stronger connectedness, perceived parental expectations did not predict happiness (β = 0.04, t = 0.94, p = .348); in contrast, for adolescents who exhibit weaker connectedness, perceived parental expectations negatively predicted happiness (β = − 0.13, t = − 2.86, p = .004).

Fig. 1
figure 1

The moderating effect of self-efficacy

Note. The solid line indicates significant relationship at a p value less than .05, and the dotted line indicates a non-significant relationship at a p value greater than .05

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Fig. 2
figure 2

The moderating effect of connectedness

Note. The solid line indicates significant relationship at a p value less than .05, and the dotted line indicates a non-significant relationship at a p value greater than .05

Full size image

Discussion

Relatively few studies have investigated on whether Chinese parents’ expectations are related to their children’s subjective well-being or explore the conditions under which parental expectations may be associated with negative emotional consequences. This study addressed this issue explicitly by examining the relationship between perceived parental expectations and happiness as well as revealing the moderators that regulate this relationship. As a result, this study reveals that perceived parental expectations exhibit a significantly positive but weak correlation with happiness among Chinese adolescents. When adolescents’ self-efficacy and connectedness are considered, the main effect of perceived parental expectations on happiness is nonsignificant. Moreover, self-efficacy negatively moderates the relationship between perceived parental expectations and happiness, whereas connectedness positively moderates this relationship. Specifically, perceived parental expectations are associated with unhappiness among adolescents who exhibit higher levels of self-efficacy or weaker connectedness.

This study does not indicate a strong correlation between adolescents’ perceived parental expectations and their happiness. This finding is not exactly consistent with previous evidence that has indicated that parental expectations can positively predict life satisfaction even longitudinally [82]. Although parental expectations play an important role in the task of promoting academic performance [9], excessive parental expectations may not be beneficial with regard to adolescents’ emotional experiences. This finding extends previous research [11], indicating that Chinese cultural parenting practices such as parental expectations regarding their children’s future education and careers might also accidently undermine those children’s subjective well-being. Such an adolescent may have more chances to succeed, but he or she is also more likely to be unhappy. According to the findings of this study, this claim may be especially true for adolescent who exhibit higher levels of self-efficacy or weaker connectedness.

This study reveals the moderating roles of adolescents’ self-efficacy and connectedness in the relationship between perceived parental expectations and their happiness. These findings are in line with previous evidence suggesting that the effects of parental expectations can be moderated [5, 31]. More importantly, these findings are partly consistent with satisfaction of goals theories and self-determination theory [21, 34] and uncover that the effects of perceived parental expectations on adolescents’ happiness are contingent upon the extent to which their personal basic needs are satisfied. Furthermore, due to the personal experience nature of happiness, it has been suggested that self-fulfillment goals are associated with happiness [32]. Accordingly, this research proposed that the fulfillment of adolescents’ own goals (i.e., their competence and relatedness needs) may moderate the relationship between perceived parental expectations and happiness. Indeed, the research hypotheses are supported, and differential moderating effects of self-efficacy and connectedness are revealed.

As expected, this study revealed that connectedness plays a protective role in the relationship between perceived parental expectations and happiness and that adolescents who exhibit stronger connectedness experience higher levels of happiness irrespective of the parental expectations they face. This finding is consistent with the belongingness hypothesis [63], indicating that stronger connectedness in social relationships makes adolescents happier. Moreover, previous studies have extensively explored the main effects of connectedness on happiness-related concepts [67] and indicated that connectedness can mitigate the negative effects of risks factors in both family and school contexts, thus helping adolescents maintain positive emotions [74, 76]. The finding of the current study therefore adds new evidence to the extant literature and suggests that connectedness can also alleviate the negative effects of higher parental expectations on adolescents’ happiness. As previous studies have indicated [12, 26], excessive parental expectations may be associated with adolescents’ negative emotional experiences and intense parent − child relationships, thus these adolescents may feel less connected to their parents and less satisfied with their family relationships. As this study indicated, adolescents who exhibit stronger connectedness are highly accepted, valued and supported in the context of significant social relationships, which act as important resources to support emotional resilience in contexts featuring higher parental expectations. Adolescents who exhibit stronger connectedness can seek help and support from other social relationships, thus enabling them to fulfill their relatedness needs and be happy. In contrast, adolescents who exhibit weaker connectedness may face difficulties in their attempts to establish high-quality relationships with other members of society, and it is difficult for such adolescents to obtain informational and emotional support that can help them regulate their negative emotions in response to higher parental expectations. In this way, adolescents who exhibit lower levels of connectedness may frequently be deficient in terms of relatedness satisfaction, so they are more likely to experience negative emotions and feel unhappy. Therefore, stronger connectedness can help promote adolescents’ happiness in contexts featuring higher parental expectations in China.

This situation is not the case with regard to self-efficacy. Instead of being protective, adolescents who exhibit higher levels of self-efficacy reinforce the negative effects of perceived parental expectations on their happiness. This finding is in line with previous research conducted among adults [51], which has suggested that high levels of self-efficacy can decrease adolescents’ happiness when they perceive high parental expectations. However, these findings do not support previous evidence indicating that self-efficacy can buffer the impacts of stress [48, 49]. This difference is partly due to the fact that adolescents who exhibit high levels of self-efficacy are capable of coping with stressors; for such adolescents, dealing with stress and challenges in life is routine, and they are willing to take on difficult tasks [44]. Thus, such adolescents may be less sensitive to the stress associated with high parental expectations. High self-efficacious adolescents are concerned with their initiative actions and self-control experiences during the process of evaluating parental expectations; thus, these adolescents are more sensitive to whether parents respect their competence and autonomy, and seek to establish a parent − child relationship based on equality rather than on obedience. The latter type of relationship can dampen the happiness of an adolescent who exhibits a high level of self-efficacy, as indicated by this present study.

Furthermore, high parental expectations, which are characterized by a focus on family honor, obedience to parental authority and the fulfillment of parental wishes, may communicate high-level control messages to adolescents, which may impede those adolescents’ basic competence and autonomy needs [15] and thus make them experience frustration and distress. In contrast, in situations involving low levels of perceived parental expectations, adolescents who exhibit high self-efficacy may take more control of their own lives and personal goals and thus obtain more happiness than adolescents who exhibit low levels of self-efficacy, who are less demanding of mastery and self-fulfillment. In addition, according to previous research, high parental expectations are associated with higher levels of parental involvement in their children’s learning [83] and the likelihood of sending pressure-causing messages such as by asking children to work more diligently [84, 85]. As such, to help children achieve positive future prospects, one way in which parents may attempt to express high expectations may be to arrange excessive extracurricular classes and ask their children to invest more effort into their learning. Adolescents who exhibit high levels of self-efficacy assume that they are capable of fulfilling these extra requirements stipulated by their parents; thus, they actively participate in such extracurricular classes and are more engaged in academic tasks. In this way, these adolescents may have fewer opportunities to engage in other recreational activities and are more prone to physical fatigue, which may be related to less hedonic subjective well-being.

Implications

The findings of this research may contribute to the understanding of parenting practices and provide a helpful reminder that excessive parental expectations in the academic and career domains can negatively affect their children’s emotional experiences in the Chinese context. In the context of Confucian culture, Chinese adolescents are expected to fulfill their parents’ expectations and bring honor to their families [86]. Greater perceived parental expectations motivate adolescents to take more actions to achieve the goals stipulated by their parents, which can help these adolescents obtain positive academic outcomes [87]. In this way, greater parental expectations for their children are viewed as beneficial in the Chinese context and profoundly influence the development of Chinese adolescents. However, the extent to which these expectations impact adolescents’ subjective emotional experiences has been overlooked. In light of the findings of this study, it is unwise for parents to express excessive expectations for adolescents whose self-efficacy is relatively high or whose connectedness is relatively weak in the context of social relationships. Understanding the kinds of adolescents for whom that parental expectations may be harmful in terms of their happiness could guide Chinese parents to adopt proper parenting values. Moreover, well-connected and high-quality social relationships are beneficial with regard to adolescents’ affective component of well-being. It is necessary to provide assistance to adolescents with weaker connectedness to help them establish contacts with others and obtain effective support when they need it.

Limitations and future research

Despite the contributions noted above, several limitations of this study should be addressed. Primarily, this study focuses on adolescents’ subjective well-being but only measures the affective component of subjective well-being. In addition, partly because happiness and subjective well-being can share a common core of meaning and can be used interchangeably [16], evidence focused on subjective well-being was therefore used to support the current study. However, the findings of this study may not be directly generalizable to subjective well-being because the cognitive component of subjective well-being was not captured. Future research should be more in accordance with previous research [88] and measure both the affective and the cognitive components of subjective well-being to reveal how they relate to parental expectations. Other limitations are as follows.

First, due to the cross-sectional nature of this study, the findings revealed only the associations among these variables. Future longitudinal research can be employed to examine how these study variables are related to one another over time, which could help reveal the complex interactions between perceived parental expectations and self-efficacy or connectedness. Second, all the variables included in this study were based on adolescents’ self-reports, and future research can use multi-source data to examine these associations. For example, parental expectations were reported by adolescents in the present study; given the observed gap between parents’ reports of parental expectations and those of their children [30], future research could also consider parents’ perspective. Third, future research could investigate whether high levels of self-efficacy can enhance learning outcomes (e.g., motivation, persistence, learning engagement, and academic performance) among adolescents in situations featuring high parental expectations, which could help reveal the double-edged effects of self-efficacy in response to high parental expectations and provide more complete overview of the functions of self-efficacy. Fourth, the present study used self-determined theory as a framework [34] to examine only two concepts related to basic psychological needs. Autonomy and competence are interrelated concepts, and this study provides explanations for these findings by reference to related research on autonomy; namely, the findings concerning self-efficacy in this study may also be applicable to autonomy. Nevertheless, these two concepts are also independent; thus, all three basic needs (i.e., autonomy, competence and relatedness) could be simultaneously tested within the framework of self-determination theory in future research. Fifth, connectedness is both a general variable and a domain-specific variable [57]; this claim is also true of self-efficacy [89]. This study focused on both general self-efficacy and general connectedness; however, it did not address the specific domains of these two variables. Accordingly, the applicability of the findings of this study to other domains requires further exploration. Sixth, previous research has suggested that personality is an important factor associated with individuals’ subjective well-being [90, 91], and the current study did not measure it as a control variable. Future research focused on subjective well-being can consider personality as a covariate. Finally, the sample used in this research focused on adolescents from China, which is a relatively collectivist society. Thus, the generalizability of these findings to other cultures remains unknown, and future research can replicate the findings of this study by reference to diverse samples, such as in individualistic societies.

Data availability

Availability of Data: The data that support the findings of this study are available on reasonable request from the authors.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all the adolescents who participated or contributed to the current study.

Funding

This study was supported by the Sichuan Mental Health Education Research Center Key project (grant number: XLJKJY2408A), the Sichuan Province Philosophy and Social Science Planning ‘Key Research Base Project’ in 2023 (WQ113024P04001), the Key Research Base for Philosophy and Social Sciences in Sichuan Province in 2022: Mental Health Education Research Project (WQ113022Z01004), and the Southwest Jiaotong University New Interdisciplinary Cultivation Fund (grant number: 2682024ZDPY002).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Applied Psychology, Psychological Research and Counseling Center, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, 611756, PR China

    Feng Zhang & Rui Yang

Authors
  1. Feng Zhang
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  2. Rui Yang
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Contributions

F.Z., Conceptualization, methodology, software, validation, data curation, formal analysis, writing—original draft preparation, writing—review and editing, funding acquisition.R.Y., Investigation, resources, writing—review and editing, visualization, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rui Yang.

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Ethics approval and consent to participate

The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Psychological Research and Counseling Center, Southwest Jiaotong University (protocol code XL-20230327-0001). Informed consent was obtained from all the adolescents involved in the study, and their parents also completed the informed consent statement.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Zhang, F., Yang, R. Parental expectations and adolescents’ happiness: the role of self-efficacy and connectedness. BMC Psychol 13, 24 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-025-02345-4

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Keywords

BMC Psychology

ISSN: 2050-7283

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