Objectives: This study aimed to explore the impact of children’s relationships (mother, teacher, peers) and resilience on their happiness, and the mediating and moderating effects of resilience between social relationships and their happiness.
Methods: A total of 113 4th graders (56 boys, 57 girls), their mothers, and elementary school teachers participated in this study. Children responded to questionnaires on their happiness (Choi et al., 2009), resilience(Ju & Lee, 2007), and peer attachment (Ok, 1997). In addition, their mothers and teachers completed a survey on the mother-child attachment (Yang, 2006) and the student-teacher relationships (Yi & Shin, 2014), respectively. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test, Pearson’s correlation analysis, hierarchial regression, and Sobel tests.
Results: First, sub-domains of student-teacher relationships (conflict and dependence), peer attachment (mutual trust), and children’s resilience were found to affect their happiness, while any area of mother attachment was not found to do so. Second, resilience could mediate the impact of social relationships on children’s happiness. The teacher-student relationships (conflict and dependence) had indirect effects through resilience as well as direct effects on the children’s happiness. These results were also observed for peer relationships (mutual trust). In addition, children’s resilience could moderate the negative impact of teacher-student (conflict) and peer relationships (isolation) on their happiness.
Conclusions: Children’s social relationships and resilience affect their happiness. In particular, the latter plays a mediating role between their social relationships and happiness, and a moderating role in reducing the negative influence of social relationships (conflict/isolation) on happiness.