Abstract
China’s one-child policy, industrialization and urbanization have implications for children’s interacting with parents, friends, and classmates as well as their well-being. Using a stratified random sample of 1,306 sixth-grade primary school children and their parents in Nanshan district, Shenzhen, this exploratory study measured the interactive structures at home, with friends, and in school in relation to their family backgrounds, subjective well-being, and school performance. Being the only child or having household registration in Shenzhen was associated with more time and financial investments from parents. Girls, only children, or children with household registration in Shenzhen interacted more with friends than their counterparts. Girls or children with siblings engaged more with classmates but household registration did not make a difference. Having controlled for demographic and family backgrounds, parent and classmate relation were both associated positively with children’s levels of satisfaction with their relationships with siblings, parents, and friends as well as subjective well-being. But only classmate relation, besides parent’s educational attainment, was positively associated with school performance.
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Notes
Bian (2002) gave an excellent review on scholarly work on social stratification and mobility in China. Bian et al. (2005) documented social stratification in China as a result of both political and market forces. Hu and Stanford University (2007) gave a very good account on, between 1950 and 1996 how the Chinese Communist Party and elite families managed to maintain their advantaged status and the humbled families were robbed of life chances determined by educational attainment, communist party membership, and occupation (Lin and Bian 1991; Bian 2002; Bian et al. 2005; Hu and Stanford University 2007).
Xi et al. documented the life of the Chinese youth and highlighted the only children and the high stress many children experience about educational attainment (Xi et al. 2006). Wang and Fong (2009) studied the grown single children to examine the observable consequences of the one-child policy in China since 1978 (Wang and Fong 2009).
Mencius’ mother moved house three times before finding a location that she felt was suitable for the child’s upbringing. As an expression, the idiom (Meng Mu San Qian) refers to the importance of finding the proper environment for raising children. Mencius became a famous philosopher and wrote the Confucian classic book entitled The Mencius. Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mencius, accessed 27 July 2010.
The empirical evidence in Denmark proved the social and cultural capital owned by parents to be key predictors of their children’s school attainment (Jaeger and Holm 2007).
The government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China set up the CIIF in 2002 to provide seed money to support the collaborative efforts of community organizations and the private sector. The fund aims to encourage mutual concern and aid among people, promote community participation at the local level and support cross-sectoral programmes to develop social capital. Altogether 130 project teams and their 3,000 collaborators have been chosen as the CIIF partners by 2009. Strong partnerships and neighbourhood-based mutual help networks that form the real safety nets of local communities have been set up in all districts in Hong Kong. For example, “Community Inculsion Project for New Arrivals,” “SMARTCare Movement–Building Social Capitals for Supporting Carers of Chronic Patients” are among the projects funded by the CIIF. A full list of approved projects is available at http://www.ciif.gov.hk/en/appproj/index_e.html.
Social capital that is binding may exclude outsiders and may not necessarily promote collective interest.
Interviews with school teachers and students during the two focus group discussions.
Shenzhen Municipality Annual Statistic Report, available at http://www.sztj.com/main/xxgk/tjsj/tjgb/gmjjhshfzgb/201004265740.shtml, accessed 29 July 2010.
About 6.4 yuan (CNY) is equivalent to 1 USD.
The standard error of expenses on sports was very big (220.59 yuan) for families with household registration in Shenzhen. It explains why although the absolute difference was big (315.64 yuan) between the two groups, it was not statistically significant.
Internal consistency is usually measured with Cronbach’s Alpha. A commonly-accepted rule of thumb is that an α of 0.6–0.7 indicates acceptable reliability, and 0.8 or higher indicates good reliability. High reliabilities (0.95 or higher) are not necessarily desirable, as this indicates that the items may be entirely redundant. The goal in designing a reliable instrument is for scores on similar items to be related (internally consistent), but for each to contribute some unique information as well. Reliability may be improved by clarity of expression (for written assessments), lengthening the measure, and other informal means.
The correlation between household registration and household income and educational attainment of participant parent was 0.39 and 0.53, respectively, and both were statistically significant at 99 % confidence level.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Professor Ray Forrest and Philip Ivanhoe and the two anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments. Financial support from the City University of Hong Kong (Grant #7200154) is gratefully acknowledged. Special thanks go to the Nanshan District Bureau of Education and DONG Jian for assisting the survey work.
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Li, W., Lau, M. Interpersonal Relations and Subjective Well-Being among Preadolescents in China. Child Ind Res 5, 587–608 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-012-9137-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-012-9137-7