REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
This chapter focuses on the discussions of broken family, gratitude, life satisfaction and
resilience. The synthesis of the relevant and related studies and literatures is also presented at
the end of the chapter.
Broken Family
Saikia (2017) argued that one begins to prepare oneself to grow through the family that
serves as the "first institution". Although it is the ideal for everyone to have a healthy and happy
family, unfortunately, many was not given that privilege. Numerous statistical data around the
world havae proved that broken families are neither uncommon nor odd. A broken family is not
characarterized by the sheer separation of a family because of education, occupation, and other
similar important matters. In order for a family to be considered broken, crises that resulted from
"misconception, mistreating, misunderstanding, misacceptance, etc." must be present.
To delve into it deeper, Saikia (2017), specifically named and presented the usual
causes of a broken family which mainly includes the divorce or the separation of the parents.
Divorce is not yet a legal process in all countries around the world. However, both married and
not married couples can still be separated without the legitimate proceedings. The recurrent
arguments between couples are grounded in issues financially and sexually, being married
early, education, career and healthcare problems, incompatibilities, maltreatment, as well as the
lack of tust. Furthermore, the death of one or both of the parents is also said to be a cause of
broken family to the children left behind. Adversely indisputable, death "reduces the family
strength" and cause disturbances to the children mentally, emotionally and even spiritually.
Moreover, it is asserted that the children are ones who experience the most suffering. Growing
up in a broken family prevents the children to grow up healthily and in the proper way into
adulthood, which also negative affects the society as a whole.
Emery (2004) claimed that low-income families are more likely to experience divorce or
separation, which leads to a "lower standard of living" or reduced quality of life (as cited in
Nelson, 2009). Because of this, family adjustments especially in school and work are usually
done. This involves the children having to transfer to a different school, a parent needing to
work overtime or committing to a side job, as well as elder children not being free to select the
college they want to go to, and the program they want to pursue. With this, the children may
experience increased "stress, anxiety, and emotions".
In addition, it is irrefutable that certain alterations within the family may occur. According
to Lazar et al. (2004), moving, losing contact with a parent, getting involved in parent-child
conflict, and maybe facing financial troubles are some of these changes (as cited in Nelson,
2009). At different stages of the process, the alterations might have an impact on an individual
at various times and in different ways depending on their gender (Hines, 2007). Doherty &
Needle, 1991), in addition, stated that according to research, children from divorced homes
have a worse time making social, academic, and behavioral adaptations than kids from intact
households. On the other hand, Woosley et al. (2009) claimed that children from non-intact
households typically have less psychological well-being than those from intact families (as cited
in Nelson, 2009).
As stated by Lanozo et al. (2021), a family, which is the smallest unit of society, is made
up of the parents and the children. It is completely natural for people to yearn for a place to call
home and a family that is functional physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. In general,
married parents living with children are seen as making up a whole family. However, at the
present time, broken families are widespread, and in fact, can be frequently seen and
encountered on a daily basis. In a study, they aimed to evaluate the lived experiences of
students from broken families ranging from 15 years old to 24 years old. This is in order to
determine the positive experiences and challenges associated with having broken families, as
well as the effects it inflict on the academic performance of the students. The findings showed
that the majority of students from dysfunctional and broken households face significant
challenges related to money, emotions, mental health, social issues, and behavioural issues,
which negatively affect their academic performance. Inattentiveness was observed in the
majority of students who have separated parents, who hardly ever give time, attention, or
financial assistance for daily and school expenses. Moreover, children from broken homes
manage by practicing optimism and independence in their life circumstances. However, despite
their difficult upbringing, students from broken families benefit from some favourable
experiences, particularly in terms of personal development and fostering deeper and stronger
relationships.
Life Satisfaction among Young Adults
Huebner et al. (2005) asserted that mental health professionals as well as educators at
the present time are disputing over the fostering and nurturing of "well-being among young
people" (as cited in Proctor, 2014). Life satisfaction, according to Shin and Johnson (1978) is
the "cognitive, global appraisal of life as a whole". It is also one of the most widely recognized
measures of "happiness, well-being, and positive functioning among young people" in
accordance with the arguments of Suldo et al. (2006). Existing research also identifies life
satisfaction as a potentially important buffer to harm for individuals from the effects of
unfavourable or stressful life circumstances. For instance, the study conducted by Bahrassa et.
al. (2011) demonstrated that life happiness acted as a protective buffer on the family tensions'
detrimental effects on college students' academic progress from the first semester (Proctor,
2014).
In positive psychology, the key objective is the betterment of the quality of life of people.
In order to attain this, comprehension about and improvement of life satisfaction must be taken
into serious consideration. Extensive numerous research studies confirm the importance of life
satisfaction for young people's good functioning. School-related factors, such as perceived
"academic efficacy, competence, and self-efficacy," as well as "adaptive psychosocial
functioning, interpersonal and social relationships, academic success, decreased behaviour
problems, increased healthier behaviours," and a variety of other factors all have a positive
correlation with life satisfaction. Gratitude journals, the promotion of wellbeing in the classroom,
and character strengths treatments are just a few examples of positive psychology strategies
that have been proven to boost life satisfaction (Proctor, 2014).
According to Gokalp and Topal (2019), life satisfaction is described as a cognitive
evaluation process in which the individual's life is evaluated in terms of specific standards. Also,
one component of subjective well-being is life satisfaction, as asserted by Diener et al. (1985).
In context of this, life satisfaction is one of the key ideas used to describe how people are doing,
along with positive and negative affectivity, in terms of a cognitive evaluation of their lives.
Furthermore, despite the significance of healthy relationships for people's happiness, the
application of gratitude journaling to improve social interactions has been overlooked in some
research studies. It takes consideration and ability to thank someone at work, many written and
spoken methods that professionals value receiving thanks in low-effort and elevated effort, small
accomplishment, and major-accomplishment situations have been based on a gratitude
journaling exercise.
The overall well-being of a person depends on their level of life satisfaction. Among the
people in a society, life satisfaction is important to be observed on college students because it
represents how they perceive and assess their lives as an individual. It is in college years where
individuals experiment with adult roles, both on personal and professional level. Additionally, it is
the period where one prepares for the workforce, and more fully idealize their personal beliefs
(Gokalp & Topal, 2019).
According to Holinka (2015), it is essential to understand how college students deal with
stress and related situations in order to preserve mental health and life satisfaction because
chronic stress has been linked to heart disease, depression, irritability, chronic headaches,
eating disorders, and chronic exhaustion. According to Lee et al. (2005), planning a future
career was the most common personal stressor reported by college students, followed by
finances, interpersonal relationships, appearance, intimate relationships, personal achievement,
and goal-setting.
Additionally, stress is negatively correlated with overall life satisfaction among college
students (Weinstein et al., 2009). In a study, Holinka (2015) concurred and revealed that life
satisfaction and stress were negatively correlated. In other words, college students' overall life
satisfaction decreased as their stress levels increased. Stress had a significant main effect on
the study's analysis, with college students who reported less stress showing greater levels of life
satisfaction.
Resilience among Young Adults
In general resilience is described as the ability to adapt, adjust and bounce back when
an individual stumbles upon an adversity or problems in life. Recent studies show that this
positive trait is often affected by many factors including environmental and social factors. This
means in order to determine the resilience rate of an individual one must consider those factors
before drawing a final conclusion. One key factor that affects the resilience and the overall wellbeing of an individual is their family setting. According to Saikia, 2017 (as cited in Madla,
Ocdamia, Samiley & Falculan, 2019), family is the foundation of a child where they will start to
grow and develop their strong character and personality that they will utilize in the society.
Family heavily influences an individual’s overall relationship towards other people and to them
self. In Erik Erikson’s attachment theory, he argues that a person, starting from childbirth to
adulthood, will go through eight level of developmental processes and each stages resides
conflicts that each person must need to resolve, and by resolving these problems it can help
individual to develop strong psychological strengths and personality that can help them to
become more confident, resilient, and have a healthy overall well-being (Lewis, 2020).
However, a broken family can affect a child’s future and their relationship towards other
people and society. According to Bilal, 2008 (as cited in Gul & Nadeemullah, 2017) every
person is influenced by their social factors including their parents, siblings and close relative,
hence, they develop base on their family context and their surroundings. According to Frank
(2006), numerous research studies demonstrate that parentless adolescents suffer far more
prone to poverty, criminal activity, drugs, immaturity; have less education and are more likely to
drop out of school; and suffer from additional societal ills. With the being said, the overall wellbeing and resilience of a young adult is affected by a broken home.
In the research study conducted by Conger and Conger (2002), it was suggested that
families that demonstrates connectedness to one another tend to improve both parent’s and the
child’s ability to adapt to any problems they encounter (as cited in Coyle, 2011).
An article entitled, ‘Attachment and Resilience and their Importance for Children’s
Holistic Learning, Development and Well-being’ (2018), also demonstrates that children must
have the capacity to establish and sustain connections since doing so promotes learning,
growth, development and overall well-being. When a child’s emotional requirements are
addressed in secure attachment relation, they are much more prone to become resilient and
more inclined to develop coping mechanism under frustration and pressure, and they are more
likely to have growth and can utilize their full potential, they also has the capacity to deal with
stress, conflict and failures in life.
According to Thompson et al. (2018), attachment and resilience correlates each other,
meaning if a child has a healthy childhood that person can learn adaptive self-esteem,
compassion with ease through the use of healthy relationship to other people and their
respective cultures. Moreover, according to their studies both resilient and securely attached
individuals are successfully developed to with stand any pressure in life, and they are also
capable of experiencing a sense of security as well as strong sense of self.
Thompson et al. (2011) stated that young individuals who are resilient frequently rely on
having strong support systems, have a sense of social connectedness, and show a positive
attitude on life. According to Masten (2014) and Ungar (2013), youth researchers generally
concur that developing successful coping mechanisms in the face of challenging life
circumstances includes resilience.
Youth risk-taking behaviours can be reduced and resilience can be increased by
improving protective factors such education and competence as stated by Sanders et al. (2015).
For instance, Fergus and Zimmerman (2005) argued that encouraging resilient qualities in
young people helps keep them away from substance misuse and dangerous sexual activities.
However, according to Ungar (2012) since it is so intimately entwined with youths' unique social
locations associated to their intersecting identities and environmental settings, the development
of resilience cannot be monolithically generalized to young people.
According to Wexler et al. (2009), these findings on the difficulty of resilience highlight
the need for analyses that take into account the context in which marginalized groups, such as
young adults who identify as gender and sexual minority, interpret the negative experiences.
Understanding the resiliency of sexual and gender minority college students is essential to their
academic achievement, as is figuring out the specific contexts of college that could act as
hurdles or assist these young people's well-being, as stated by Sanlo (2004). Moreover, in the
study of Kosciw et al. (2015), it is important to think about how well a sense of resilience can
successfully take LGBTQ young adults into middle and later life because this study showed that
young people's ability to develop resilience in the face of hardship was highly dependent upon
context and social environment.
Gratitude on Life Satisfaction and Resilience
According to Algoe et al. (2008) and McCullough et al. (2008), gratitude enhances an
individual’s capabilities when it comes to communicating to other people (as cited in
Chowdhury, 2019). Gratefulness is an emotion that causes people be more appreciative. It
enhances one’s social life by reinforcing overall well-being and life satisfaction (Davis et al.,
2016; Wood et al., 2010 as cited in Unanue et al., 2019).
Gratitude, according to Wood et al. (2010), "is a life orientation towards noticing and
appreciating the positive in life" (as cited in Unanue, 2019). As argued by Cortez et al. (2019),
an increase in life satisfaction can be attained through gratitude as it is closely associated with
better interpersonal relationships. Additionally, innumerable research studies also confirmed
that gratitude and depression are inversely associated with each other. Hence, lack of gratitude
may be a strong factor in the development of depression. By hindering depressive episodes, life
satisfaction can be increased and improved.
On the other hand, Kumar (2022), highlighted the adverse impact of the COVID-19
pandemic to the mental health of people around the world. It was also given strong emphasis
that personal strengths, such as gratitude has the ability to foster resilience and improve wellbeing in spite of being in an adversity. In a study conducted during the heightened period of the
pandemic, overall findings suggested that mental health sufferings has been reduced because
of gratitude. However, more studies are needed to support the claim that resilience can be
promoted by practicing gratitude along with other personal strengths.
Being a college student demands facing a number of challenging situations, such as
adjusting to college life, which includes maintaining academic progress, managing their
interpersonal interactions, and acquiring independence from their parents. Gratitude journaling
offers time for intrapersonal connections despite the pandemic that has a major impact on
educational settings. Additionally, gratitude increases an individual’s perceptions of pleasure
and life satisfaction (Ko et al., 2021).
One study yields significant results regarding gratitude as an intervention against mental
health problem, wherein it was revealed that individuals who practiced gratitude writing leads to
a better mental stability (Brown & Wong, 2017). According to Seligman et al. (2005) (as cited in
Chowdhury, 2019) gratitude journaling helps improve the overall well-being of a person by
improving sleep patterns and helping people to be aware of their emotions and feelings.
Gratitude works as a natural medicine that can help people fight off anxiety and depression.
(Chowdhury, 2019).