Grandparental Involvement and South African Adolescents’ Psychological Well-Being

Exploring the association between grandparental care and child development: Evidence from China

Grandparental care has become an involuntary choice in life for many families, mainly due to parents' unavailability to provide care and the lack of public or affordable private childcare. This phenomenon has raised concerns regarding the effects of grandparental care along the dimensions of child development. This study aims to test the association between grandparental care and child development in three dimensions: subjective wellbeing, behavioural traits and study performance. It used data from the 2018 China Family Panel Studies survey. First, the study outlines the data and the applied method with defined variables, on the basis of which an overview on the current stage of grandparental care is presented. It then examines the association of the impact of grandparental care in different dimensions using the general linear model, along with the other influencing factors. Finally, a cross-age group comparison is employed. The results of the study illustrate the difficulty of examining an overall picture of grandparental childcare, with its negative or positive associations. However, when evaluated using the features of different age groups of children's development, significant associations between grandparental care and child development are mainly found in the 6-11 age group, but the significant associations weaken or disappear in the 12-16 age group. Attachment theory and peer group theory are used to explain the difference between the two age groups.

Moral Development in Adolescence

This article provides a selective review of research on moral development in adolescence during the past decade. We begin with introducing key concepts and reviewing critical theoretical advances in the field of adolescent moral development. This includes integrative models to the developmental study of morality and dynamic socialization models of moral development. Next, related major empirical findings are presented on moral emotion-behavior links, morality in intergroup contexts, and the socialization of moral development. Next, methodological innovations are presented, including new techniques to assess and analyze moral emotions and moral behaviors. We conclude by pointing to promising future directions for moral development research and practices aimed at promoting ethical growth and civic responsibility in adolescents around the globe.

A systematic review of the South African work on the well-being of young people (2000-2016)

Burgeoning research on the well-being of young people in recent years has made it difficult to identify conceptual gaps in the literature. We conducted a review of South African research in this area to better understand the use and measurement of the construct, as well as factors associated with it. The search of multiple databases identified 28 studies published in academic journals between 2000 and 2016. Within this period, studies that referred to well-being and its related subjective components varied significantly in terms of how they defined and operationalised these constructs, resulting in a fragmented body of work. The review highlights the need for a coherent research agenda in this area given the centrality of well-being research in promoting optimal outcomes in young people. Recommendations for strengthening South African research in this area are provided.