Personal and Family Correlates of Resilience Among Adolescents Living in Single-Parent Households in Taiwan

ABSTRACT

Based on the responses of 291 Taiwanese adolescents living with single parents, this article examines the personal (gender and academic performance) and family (gender of parent living together and family type) correlates of resilience of the participants with reference to different psychosocial domains. Whereas girls displayed higher resilience in some dimensions of personal and school resilience domains than did boys, boys experienced higher family resilience than did girls. Better academic performance was positively related to effective coping, personal independence, global personal resilience, and parental expectation on academic performance. Adolescents living with single mothers displayed higher personal independence and family resilience than did adolescents living with single fathers. Compared with adolescents not living with any parent or those who lived with both parents after divorce, adolescents living in nuclear and stem families displayed higher positive orientation to older people and experienced higher family resilience.

KEYWORDS:

• Single-parent households
• Taiwan
• resilience
• Chinese
• adolescents

This study was funded by the National Science Council, Taiwan, R.O.C. (Research grant no. NSC91-2412-H-004-011-SSS). The preparation of this work was financially supported by the Research Grants Council of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Hong Kong (Grant CUHK4293/03H) and Wofoo Foundation.