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Fathers’ involvement and left-behind children’s mental health in China: The roles of paternal- and maternal- attachment

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Abstract

Due to the lack of parental care, the issue of left-behind children (LBC)’s mental health has been highlighted in the academic field. In LBC’s families, a large proportion of fathers migrated to other cities for work. Migrated fathers’ involvement also has crucial impacts on children’s development, but previous studies focused less on it. Thus, using the longitudinal data of two waves, current study examined the relationship between fathers’ involvement and the LBC’s mental health from the perspective of the Dual-Factor Model of Mental Health and its underlying mechanism. A total of 613 LBC at primary schools in China completed questionnaires twice about fathers’ involvement, paternal and maternal attachment, life satisfaction, prosocial behavior, internalizing problems, and externalizing problems. The results showed that the total effects of fathers’ involvement on LBC’s life satisfaction and prosocial behavior were significant, while those on problem behaviors were insignificant. Also, father-child attachment played a mediating role in the association between fathers’ involvement and the positive indicators of LBC’s mental health. Meanwhile, mother-child attachment mediated the relationships between fathers’ involvement and LBC’s problem behaviors. The study not only highlights the positive influence of fathers’ involvement on LBC as well as the relations among different subsystems in the family but also implies the different effects of paternal and maternal attachment on LBC’s mental health, which brings inspiration for improving the mental health of LBC in China.

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Data Availability

The dataset analyzed during the current study is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgments

The study described in this report was Funded by Major Humanities and Social Sciences Research Projects in Zhejiang Province (2021QN064), Open Research Fund of Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Intelligent Education Technology and Application (JYKF20062), and Zhejiang Province Educational Science Planning Key Project (2021SB120). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of Major Humanities and Social Sciences Research Projects in Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Intelligent Education Technology and Application, and Zhejiang Province Educational Science Planning Key Project. We are appreciative of the parents, children, and teachers who participated in our study and the people who assisted in data collection.

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Author notes

  1. Ruibo Xie and Wan Ding contributed equally to this study and share corresponding authorship.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Teacher Education, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, 321004, China

    Wei Wu, Ruibo Xie & Die Wang

  2. Research Center of Tin Ka Ping Moral Education, College of Teacher Education, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, 321004, China

    Wan Ding

  3. Institute of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, 321004, China

    Weijian Li

  4. Suzhou International School, Suzhou, 234000, China

    Lilun Zhu & Dan Ding

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  1. Wei Wu
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  4. Die Wang
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  6. Dan Ding
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Correspondence to Ruibo Xie or Wan Ding.

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All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of University and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Wu, W., Xie, R., Ding, W. et al. Fathers’ involvement and left-behind children’s mental health in China: The roles of paternal- and maternal- attachment. Curr Psychol 42, 4913–4922 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01804-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01804-6

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