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Parent–child separation: the relationship between separation and psychological adjustment among Chinese rural children

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Abstract

Purpose

The current study aimed to explore the characteristics of psychological adjustment among Chinese left-behind children (LBC) in rural areas, and to examine the association between separation duration from parent/parents (SDP) and children’s psychological adjustment and the extent to which personality mediates this hypothesized link.

Methods

We surveyed 534 rural children and adolescents aged 10–17 years at school (440 LBC and 94 non-LBC) in 2013, who were selected for participation using stratified cluster sampling from two counties in Chongqing, China. Measures used included socio-demographic variables, age at the commencement and end of the separation from parents, the revised Chinese Juvenile Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, and the Adolescent Psychological Adaptability Scale.

Results

Most children (82.4%) had experienced separation from parents. t test results showed a marginally significant difference (p = .08) in psychological adjustment between LBC (mean = 64.44, SD = 8.62) and non-LBC (mean = 66.16, SD = 9.26). LBC’s mean SDP was 5.64 years (SD = 3.90). Correlation analysis showed that children’s SDP was negatively associated with psychological adjustment. Structural equation modeling showed that neuroticism, but not extraversion or psychoticism, fully mediated the link between children’s SDP and psychological adjustment.

Conclusion

Personality (neuroticism) is one of the mediating pathways through which long-term SDP may predict poor psychological adjustment among children. Given the detrimental impact of long-term SDP, interventions should target the mediating pathway to buffer against the negative impact of parental separation on the affected rural children and to improve their mental health.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Miss Xinyu Hu and the teachers of the participating schools for their help in respondents’ recruitment. The authors also thank all the respondents of this study.

Funding

This study was supported by the postgraduate Science Innovation Foundation of Chongqing (CYB17050), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31571128), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (SWU1509392).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China

    Wenjian Xu, Ni Yan, Gang Chen & Xing Zhang

  2. Faculty of Psychology, Center for Child Development and Family Counseling, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, China

    Tingyong Feng

Authors
  1. Wenjian Xu
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  2. Ni Yan
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  3. Gang Chen
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  4. Xing Zhang
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Contributions

WJX, TYF, and GC conceived the study and participated in its design. WJX performed the statistical analysis and drafted the manuscript. WJX, TYF, NY, and XZ examined and revised the manuscript. WJX, NY, GC, XZ, and TYF read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tingyong Feng.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not describe any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Xu, W., Yan, N., Chen, G. et al. Parent–child separation: the relationship between separation and psychological adjustment among Chinese rural children. Qual Life Res 27, 913–921 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-017-1776-1

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