Career Adaptability and Parental Career Support: A Moderated Mediation Model

How social and environmental support influences the career adaptability process has been largely understudied. Drawing from the career adaptability framework (Savickas, 2021), this study examined the effects of parental career support on the adaptability resources and adaptation results of senior high school students in Hong Kong (4,664 girls and 4,120 boys). We conceptualized parental career support as an interactive process with a perceived action dimension and a recipient satisfaction dimension. We adopted meaning in life as a measure of adaptation results. Findings from the latent moderated structural equation showed that perceived parental career support action has a positive effect on the career adaptability resources of students, and the effect was moderated by the levels of adolescents’ satisfaction with parental career support. The test of moderated mediation suggested that the conditional indirect effects estimate from parental career support action to meaning in life were significant, with satisfaction toward parental support serving as the moderator and adaptability resources as the mediator. Results underscored the importance of environmental support in strengthening the self-regulation competencies of adolescents and helping them to gain clarity toward their life meaning and purposes. Implications for theory, research, and parent education interventions are discussed.