Safety, Perceptions of Good Treatment and Subjective Well-Being in 10- and 12-year-old Children in Three Countries

Abstract

Satisfaction with safety and satisfaction with how adults listen to children and how they take what they say into account are the most important satisfaction domains that contribute to children’s subjective well-being (SWB). However, there is still more to know about what contributes to both domains. Little is understood about their mediating effects on the safety perceptions of being cared for and supported in terms of children’s SWB. Age and country are also relevant variables in this equation that suffers from a lack of information. Therefore, this article attempts to shed light on these questions by using the third wave of the Children’s Worlds data set that covers Spain, Brazil, and Chile and focuses on the 10- and 12-year-old age group. Results show that perceived contexts (home, school, and neighborhood) in each country are very important for assessing satisfaction with personal safety, while having parents who listen and take children’s opinions into account is very important for SWB in all contexts. The importance of the effects of feeling safe on SWB increases from late childhood to early adolescence, with its indirect effects being much more important than direct effects. Most children do not perceive to be listened to by teachers or do not perceive that what they say is taken into account by their teachers, which does not turn out to be very relevant for SWB in any of the three countries. Despite existing relationships between all of the variables analyzed, there are differences depending on the country and age group, with a common relationship observed between some of them