Social Science and Medicine
Volume 132, 2015, Pages 261-269

Positive youth development in rural China: The role of parental migration (Article)

Wen M. , Su S. , Li X. , Lin D.*
  • a Department of Sociology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, United States
  • b Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development, Tufts University, Medford, MA, United States
  • c Prevention Research Center, Department of Pediatrics, Wayne State University (WSU) School of Medicine, Detroit, MI, United States
  • d Institute of Developmental Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

Abstract

This study examined how parental rural-to-urban migration may affect left-behind children's development in rural China. We used two-wave data collected on 864 rural youth age 10-17 years in the Guangxi Province, China in 2010. We tested psychometric properties of a positive youth development (PYD) model theorized and corroborated in the US, compared a range of developmental outcomes among rural youth by their parental migration status, and explored the mediating role of family economic and social resources in observed associations between developmental outcomes and parental migration. The results showed the PYD model had some international validity although modifications would be needed to make it more suitable to Chinese settings. Little difference in the PYD outcomes was detected by parental migration status. On other outcomes (i.e., self-rated health, school grades, educational aspirations, problem behavior), positive influences of parental migration were observed. Increased income but not social resources in migrant families helped explain some of these patterns. The take-home message from this study is that parental migration is not necessarily an injurious situation for youth development. To advance our knowledge about the developmental significance of parental migration for rural Chinese youth, we urgently need large-scale representative surveys to collect comprehensive and longitudinal information about rural children's developmental trajectories and their multilevel social contexts to identify key resources of PYD in order to better help migrant and non-migrant families nurture thriving youth in rural China. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.

Author Keywords

Parent-adolescent relationships Child/adolescent outcomes Rural/farm families Development/outcomes Educational aspirations self-rated health

Index Keywords

education urban area China rural area educational status family functioning social capital family attitude mental health human adolescent development health status child behavior United States social status migrant family psychology Adolescent Humans male Emigrants and Immigrants female young population parental migration adolescence Parent-Child Relations Psychometrics psychometry Article behavior disorder rural-urban migration migration age distribution parental investment Child Development child parent relation public health Child
Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84927553752&doi=10.1016%2fj.socscimed.2014.07.051&partnerID=40&md5=8cdc36e9b7119361476ca46c3e1f9d37
DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.07.051
ISSN: 02779536
Cited by: 28
Original Language: English