Abstract
Negative family factors play an important role in depression among adolescents. Non-Western research on the relationship between lack of coparental cooperation (LCC) and adolescent depression is scarce, and it is not clear whether support from grandparents—who are important to the functioning of Asian families—and parent–grandparent relationships (PGRs) moderate this link in the Asian context. This study explored the moderating effects of those factors on the relationship between lack of coparental cooperation and depression in Chinese adolescents. Data were collected from 443 Grade 10 students (mean age = 15.40; 209 males) at a high school in Luxian, China. High school or below was the highest educational level for 58.90% and 67.30% of the participants’ fathers and mothers, respectively. The participants responded to items on an adapted version of the parental cooperation subscale of the Coparenting Inventory for Parents and Adolescents scale, the Social Support Network questionnaire, Quality of Parent-grandparent Relationships Questionnaire, and Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. The data were analyzed using a moderated moderation model. A significant three-way interaction was observed. The results show that high grandparent support (GS) and PGR levels can reduce the negative effects of LCC on depression for adolescents (p < .05). The link between lack of coparental cooperation and depression was stronger for adolescents with low or high GS and low PGR (ps < .05). Based on the family system theory, GS and PGR were found to moderate the link between LCC and depression in Chinese adolescents.
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The authors thank the adolescent who participated in this research.
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The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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This work was supported by the Elite Doctoral Research Initiation Project of Jiangsu Normal University (Grant No. 20XSRX013).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Yuchi Zhang, Wei Tong and Meng Yu. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Yuchi Zhang, Meng Yu, Wei Tong and Ruihong Nie, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Zhang, Y., Tong, W., Nie, R. et al. Lack of coparental cooperation and depression among Chinese youth: The moderating roles of grandparent support and parent-grandparent relationships. Curr Psychol 41, 6675–6686 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-02936-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-02936-z