(HealthDay News) -- Happiness in adulthood
may be determined by the quality of relationships in your youth, not
brain power or academic prowess, new Australian research suggests.
"This shows that there is an enduring,
significant relationship between being well-adjusted as a child and
being well-adjusted as an adult," said Dr. Victor Fornari, director of
child/adolescent psychiatry at North Shore-LIJ Health System in New Hyde
Park, N.Y. "[And] academic adjustment per se is not sufficient to lead
to well-being."
Learning the secrets of "the good life" has
guided human endeavors for millennia. But according to study author
Craig Olsson, an associate professor in developmental psychology at
Deakin University and the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in
Melbourne, neither material wealth nor academic achievement has been
strongly linked to happiness.
Instead of focusing on either of these
factors, Olsson and his colleagues decided to look at "sense of
coherence, connection, positive coping and prosocial values."
"Coherence" included whether the child felt
his or her life was meaningful and manageable; social involvement looked
at participation in organized activities such as sports groups; coping
strategies included using emotional support; and prosocial behavior
included whether the person felt he or she was trustworthy, kind and
reliable.
A person scoring high in all these areas
would be "someone less obsessed by how they feel and what they can
obtain, and more interested in how they live and the values they use to
guide their interactions with themselves, others and the world," Olsson
explained.
Those traits were associated with greater
happiness in adulthood, according to the study, which followed more than
800 New Zealanders for 32 years, starting at 3 years of age. The
results were published online July 25 in the Journal of Happiness Studies.
Early language development and adolescent
academic achievement only had a weak association with well-being, the
researchers found.
Using parent and teacher ratings, the
researchers defined social connectedness in childhood as being liked,
not isolated and confident.
For teenagers, social connectedness was
measured by attachments to parents, peers, school and a close friend, in
addition to participation in youth groups and recreational clubs.
To boost social connectedness, the authors
envision developing "a broad-based social curriculum that could parallel
the academic curriculum and nurture the development of positive values
systems across the early developmental years," said Olsson, who has been
involved with the study since 2008.
"The social environment provides critical
learning opportunities for children and young people to explore, test
and consolidate values such as kindness, trust, loyalty, care, etcetera,
which are the 'glue' of enduring positive relationships across the life
course," he added.
The findings aren't a surprise, some experts say.
"It is one of the basic precepts of our
understanding of one's psychological makeup: That what we do as adults
and how we approach life has been established in our childhood. If we
had a healthy happy childhood, we are more likely to recreate those
patterns as adults," said Alan Hilfer, director of psychology at
Maimonides Medical Center in New York City.
"However, a happy childhood does not
guarantee success if success is defined as career achievement," Hilfer
said. "For that, a person must have the appropriate skills set or talent
to succeed in their chosen profession. A person can be successful and
not be happy, and a person can be happy and not considered a financial
or career success story."
