Strength Of Family Relationships

Pathways Linking Family Relationships to Well-Being Relationships with our family members are important as we go through the process of life. These relationships are important because they are a great source of social connection and social influence for an individual throughout their life course. There have been many studies that proves social relationships can greatly impact well-being in an individual’s life course. In other words, family relationships can give an individual a much greater sense of meaning and purpose as well as social and physical resources that aids well-being.

Some ways the strength of family relationships can affect well-being is through psychosocial, behavioral, and physiological pathways. Stress process theory argues

Life course perspective on marital relationships is that it is important in an individual’s well-being through-out adulthood. Some studies using the marital resource model and the stress model, to explain why marital relationships shape well-being. The marital resource model proposes that marriage encourages well-being through increased access to economic, social, and health-promoting resources. The Stress model suggests that negative aspects of marital relationships such as marital strain and marital terminations create stress and destabilize well-being, whereas positive characteristics of marital relationships may prompt social support, improve self-esteem, and encourage healthier behaviors in general and in handling with stress. Marital relationships are usually more salient with aging, as other relationships like those with family members, friends, and neighbors are often lost due to physical relocation and death in the later part of the life

Grandparents tend to engage in activities with their grandchildren that is meaningful, something they can be close to their grandchildren. If grandparents lose contact with their grandchildren, their well-being becomes lowered. Also, grandparents can experience stress and depression from not having the parent support, swapping roles, and work responsibilities. Evidence has shown that experience of intergenerational relationships is different for men and women. Women tend to be more interactive with and affected by intergenerational relationships, because they take on the role of a mother. Children’s relationship is more associated with mothers’ well-being than with the fathers’. Mother often report more parental pressures than the father, and this decreases the mothers’ well-being. Intergenerational relationships are important for parents, grandparents, and children or grandchildren. This relationship can impact everyone’s well-being drastically.

Sibling