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Fathers’ socioeconomic status and Children’s developmental outcomes: The role of parental depressive symptoms and parent-child interactions

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Abstract

This study aims to explore the effects of parental socioeconomic status (SES) on children’s developmental outcomes (e.g., peer relationship, happiness, and depression). Additionally, the mediating roles of parental depressive symptoms and parent-child interactions (PCIs, including both positive and negative PCI) are also of particular interest. A secondary data analysis of the 2014 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) is conducted, using data of 863 mainland China’s families. The results indicate child developmental outcomes are majorly associated with father’s SES, through two different mediating paths. The first one is father’s reported depression plays a mediating role in the relation between his SES and children’s developmental outcomes. In the second path, the effect of father’s SES on children’s developmental outcomes is serially mediated by maternal depressive symptoms and PCIs. These results (a) provide evidence for the cultural universality of the family stress model (FSM), (b) highlight distinctive roles of father and mother in family processes, and (c) extend the applicability of the FSM by the investigations of underrepresented variables.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Education, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, People’s Republic of China

    Shenli Peng

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Shenli Peng designed the study, analyzed data and wrote and revised the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Shenli Peng.

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Availability of Data and Material

The data used in this study is retrieved from the 2014 CFPS (http://doi/org/10.18170/DVN/45LCSO).

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The author declare that he has no potential conflicts of interest.

Research Involving Human Participants and/or Animals

The current study was based on a secondary data analysis. Therefore, no Human Participant or Animal was involved.

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The data used in this study was retrieved from 2014 CFPS, and no Human participant was involved, therefore no informed consent was obtained.

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Peng, S. Fathers’ socioeconomic status and Children’s developmental outcomes: The role of parental depressive symptoms and parent-child interactions. Curr Psychol 42, 3151–3159 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01672-0

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