The article addresses a novel concept: Parental Happiness Management (PHM)—which refers to parents’ educational or decisions aimed to improve their children’s well-being in adulthood. We ran a survey among 1,110 adults and asked them to retrospectively assess four types of parental decisions: discipline, autonomy, pro-social preferences, and parental acceptance. The results confirm the association between retrospective assessments of PHM and adults’ subjective well-being as measured by global life evaluation, positive, and negative feelings, and a sense of meaning in life. We report a positive association between discipline and meaning in life, but also between discipline and negative feelings. Education for pro-social preferences was found to be positively associated with all components of subjective well-being. The child’s autonomy was found to be positively associated with global life evaluation. We view parents as managers, who allocate their limited parental resources so as to maximize their children’s well-being in adulthood.

这篇文章提出了一个新概念：父母幸福管理(PHM)——指的是父母的教育或决定旨在改善孩子成年后的幸福感。我们对 1,110 名成年人进行了一项调查，并要求他们回顾性评估四种类型的父母决定：纪律、自主、亲社会偏好和父母接受。结果证实了 PHM 的回顾性评估与成年人的主观幸福感之间存在关联，这些幸福感是通过全球生活评估、积极和消极情绪以及生活意义感来衡量的。我们报告了纪律与生活意义之间的积极关联，但也报告了纪律与消极情绪之间的积极关联。研究发现，亲社会偏好教育与主观幸福感的所有组成部分都呈正相关。发现儿童的自主性与整体生活评估呈正相关。