This article draws on data from research that includes 400 children who lived separately from their migrant parents in 10 rural communities in China, to explore the deep impacts of rural parents' migration on the care-giving and nurturing of children left behind. It shows that parent migration has brought about multiple impacts, mostly negative, on the lives of children, such as increased workloads, little study tutoring and supervision, and above all the unmet needs of parental affection. Children's basic daily care and personal safety could become problematic since surrogate caregivers, mostly elderly, are usually exhausted with livelihood maintenance. With illumination on the family dysfunction in children's development due to migration-induced family separation, this article highlights the social cost to rural families of parental migration. Urbanization in developing countries is obtained at the expense of rural migrants and their families, especially children left behind. Further attention is required to improve left-behind children's well being within split family structures and interregional migration. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

Rural-urban migration Left-behind children Split family

family structure residential mobility China economics psychological aspect developing country Developing Countries human rural population family health rural health Urbanization ethnology health Humans labor migration preschool child Socioeconomic Factors Child, Preschool socioeconomics History, 21st Century Child Welfare Parent-Child Relations Article Family Relations history rural-urban migration migration family relation History, 20th Century employment population migration child parent relation Child