Psycho-Social Well-being in Female Students: the Role of Perceived Parental Autonomy Support and Warmth

According to self-determination theory well-being of individuals rests upon meeting the psychological need to autonomy, competence, and relatedness and the environment which provides the ground to meet these needs can facilitate psychological well-being of people. The goal of present research is to investigate the role of paternal and maternal autonomy support and warmth in psychological and social well-being of female students.

The design was correlational studies; 182 female freshmen students of Mashhad Payam-Noor University were selected using multistage random sampling and completed Perceptions of Parents Styles (POPS; Robbins, 1994), psychological well-being (Ryff, 1989) and social well-being (Keyes, 1998) questionnaires. Data analysis was done using correlation coefficients and stepwise regression in SPSS software.

The findings showed that there was significant and positive relationship between paternal autonomy and social integration. Maternal warmth has positive relationships with self-acceptance, personal growth, social integration and social well-being. Paternal warmth has a positive significant relationship with self-acceptance, personal growth, psychological well-being, social integration, social contribution and social well-being. There was no significant relationship among maternal autonomy support with none of the research variables.

It seems that warm and friendly behavior along with parentschr('39') affection toward children can have sustainable impacts on childrenchr('39')s well-being.