Abstract

This study aims at analysing what factors are seen by parents and preadolescent children as influential in forstering or jeopardizing well-being in preadolescence. The research concerned 126 preadolescents and 112 parents (mother-father) of the middle class. The preadolescents were grouped according to sex (64 males and 62 females). The approach used included the examinations of the participant's free associations compared in different stages of life (childhood, adolescence and adult life). The answers were first codified through a category system and then submitted to ACM (Multiple Correspondence Analisys). The outcome of the research has shown that parents, while being both aware of the relevance of family ties, do not share the same points of view as to the elements supporting well-being: fathers are generally more inclined to emphasize "personal resources" (personality of the young) while mothers tend to underline the importance of "relational resources" (friends). As to children, their assessment ranges from priority given to "personality features" to the adolescent's "cognitive skills", "health habits" and "friendly relations". Again mothers and fathers do not agree as to the background of children's malaise, even if they both accept the relevance of "love feeling". Fathers seem to believe that malaise originates from "weakness of character" rather than from "dysfuntional" family relations and related lack of rules to which mothers seem instead to give priority. Children's assessments are more in line with those of fathers, as they link malaise to "personality" combined with "lack of affection".