This study examined the relationships between family environmental contexts, sibling structure, immediate family settings and students’ affective characteristics. Data were collected from 460 South African senior high school students. Using partial least-squares path modelling the findings suggest that environmental contexts and family immediate settings combine to have modest to large concurrent validities in relation to differing measures of students’ affective characteristics, immediate family settings are related more strongly to measures of student affect than are indicators of family environment contexts and (...) there are gender-related differences in how social-status indicators form environmental context constructs and in the nature of the relationships between students’ family environments and their affective characteristics. (shrink)