This three-wave longitudinal study ( N = 609; M _age = 12.09) tested whether filial piety predicts Chinese adolescents’ life satisfaction through prosocial tendencies and whether socioeconomic status (SES) moderates these links. Reciprocal filial piety (RFP), authoritarian filial piety (AFP), life satisfaction, and SES were assessed at baseline, prosocial tendencies 6 months later, and life satisfaction again 12 months later. Structural models controlling covariates showed that both RFP and AFP predicted greater overall subsequent satisfaction, though only AFP retained a direct effect. Prosocial tendencies partially mediated both associations: higher filial piety fostered greater prosociality, which improved life satisfaction. SES moderated only the RFP pathway, with stronger indirect effects under high SES, whereas AFP effects were stable across groups. These findings suggest that filial piety serves as a culturally grounded resource for adolescent life satisfaction, and that socioeconomic advantages particularly strengthen the translation of reciprocal filial values into prosocial behaviour and, in turn, life satisfaction.

Maternal and paternal attachment may relate differently to adolescent depressive symptoms, but the potential contribution of oxytocin receptor (OXTR) gene single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to these associations remains unclear. This six-month longitudinal study included 746 seventh- and tenth-grade students (50.7% female) from Guangzhou, China. Parent-child attachment and saliva samples for genotyping were collected at baseline, and depressive symptoms were assessed at follow-up using the CES-D-10. Overall, 48.8% of adolescents screened positive for depressive symptoms. Compared with adolescents below the cutoff, those who screened positive reported lower parental trust/communication and higher alienation (all p < 0.01). In adjusted linear regression models, father-child trust/communication was negatively associated with subsequent depressive symptoms (β = −0.26, p < 0.01), whereas mother-child alienation was positively associated with subsequent depressive symptoms (β = 0.15, p = 0.02). Exploratory moderation analyses showed a nominal rs2254295 × mother-child alienation interaction before correction (β = −0.07, p = 0.046), but this effect did not survive FDR correction. Father-child trust/communication and mother-child alienation showed distinct associations with adolescent depressive symptoms. The possible moderating role of OXTR rs2254295 should be regarded as preliminary and requires replication in larger independent samples.