How Parent-Parent Relationships, Parent-Child Relationships and the Interactions Among Them Affect Teenagers’ Happiness

Abstract

Previous research has focused on both the relationship between parents and parents and the relationship between parents and children, and how they affect and are affected by various different factors. This study focuses on the interactions between parent-parent relationships and parent-child relationships, specifically how they relate to and affect each other. We approached this study mainly by examining three key relations: how parent-parent relationships affect teenagers’ happiness, how parent-child relationships affect teenagers’ happiness, and how the interaction between parent-parent relationships and parent-child relationships affect teenagers’ happiness, specifically how these two different types of relationships relate to each other. After designing a survey with many questions in it and distributing it to an audience of 32 teenagers, several core relations were revealed. Firstly, individual happiness affects overall happiness more than happiness when with family. Secondly, relationships with the child’s parents individually and the relationship strength between their parents both factor into the child’s happiness when they are with their parents. Finally, the parent-parent relationship is independent of the parent-child relationship; they act independently on the child’s happiness. Synthesizing all major and minor findings, it is clear that both a positive parent-parent relationship and positive parent-child relationships are important to maintain the child’s happiness.