Coparenting and Chinese preschoolers’ social-emotional development: Child routines as a mediator

Highlights

• Coparenting has only recently been studied in the Chinese context.

• Coparenting quality was positive related to consistency of child routines.

• More consistent routines were related to better social-emotional adjustment.

• Child routines mediated the effect of coparenting on child social outcomes.

Abstract

In recent years, the importance of young children’s social-emotional development has been increasingly recognized in Chinese culture. The current study examined the relationship among coparenting, child routines, and preschoolers’ social-emotional development in a Chinese sample. It was hypothesized that child routines would mediate the association between coparenting quality and children’s social-emotional adjustment. A total of 515 families with preschool-aged children from Shanghai were involved in this study. Multiple aspects of coparenting, child routines, and children’s social-emotional development were measured. Structural equation modeling was used to test the mediating effect of child routines. The results showed that the consistency of child routines significantly mediated the effects of coparenting quality on children’s social-emotional outcomes. Specifically, coparenting was positively related to the consistency of child routines, which was in turn positively related to children’s initiative and self-control, as well as negatively related to children’s behavioral concerns. The current study highlights the role of coparenting and child routines in Chinese young children’s social-emotional development. It offers implications for how parents can support young children’s development of consistent routines and social-emotional functioning in the family context.

Introduction

Deemed as an important task across cultures, childrearing is often carried out by two collaborating caregivers—the child’s mother and father. Coparenting, defined as the quality of support and coordination between the two members of the marital dyad, is essential for meeting the challenge of raising a child (Feinberg, 2003). According to family systems theory, coparenting is an important component of the family system (Cox & Paley, 1997). Although coparenting subsystem is closely related to other subsystems within the family system, such as the marital and parent-child subsystems, scholars contend that coparenting should be distinguished from these subsystems (Pedro et al., 2012, Teubert and Pinquart, 2010). Empirical evidence has also shown that coparenting contributes to child development above and beyond the marital relationship of the parents and their individual parenting practices (e.g., Karreman et al., 2008, Kolak and Vernon-Feagans, 2008, Kwon and Elicker, 2012). Therefore, coparenting, in and of itself, plays an important role in children’s development.

There is a large body of research showing that there is a close link between coparenting quality and children’s social-emotional adjustment, such that higher levels of mutual support and lower levels of coparental conflict are generally related to better social competence and fewer behavioral problems in children (Teubert & Pinquart, 2010). However, little is known about the underlying process through which coparenting is related to child social-emotional functioning. Based on Feinberg (2003) ecological model of coparenting, coparenting can directly as well as indirectly influence child adjustment through parental adjustment and parenting. Guided by this framework, some researchers explored parents’ psychological adjustment (e.g., depressive symptoms) and parenting practices as intermediate links between coparenting quality and child social-emotional functioning (e.g., Cabrera et al., 2012, Kwon et al., 2013, Parkes et al., 2019). In the current study, we went beyond parental adjustment and parenting by exploring child routines as a potential mediator of the relationship between coparenting and social-emotional development in preschool-aged children.

We focused on child routines for several reasons. First, according to Feinberg (2003), one important component of coparenting is the division of labor, which refers to “the division of duties, tasks, and responsibilities pertaining to daily routines involved in childcare and household tasks” (p. 103). Therefore, coparental support and conflict may often emerge in the context of daily routine activities for young children. Moreover, childrearing agreement on child-related topics (e.g., behavioral expectations and discipline) constitutes another important facet of coparenting (Feinberg, 2003). We speculate that when parents agree with one another on childrearing issues, they may be more likely to utilize consistent practices to manage children’s daily activities and discipline the children when daily routines are not successfully carried out upon parents’ demands. As a result, childrearing agreement between parents may help establish regularity in children’s lives. In addition, when coparental support level is low and coparental conflict level is high, children are likely to receive inconsistent messages from parents (Karreman et al., 2008), posing great challenges for establishing regular routines in daily life, which may lead to negative consequences for children’s social-emotional development. Finally, implementing structured and consistent routines is an important strategy used in behavioral clinical intervention because “routines offer a tangible skill that parents can initiate and maintain with assistance” (Ferretti & Bub, 2014, p. 179).

The current study has important value in two respects. First, this study may shed light on the possibility of integrating coparenting and child routines in intervention programs to enhance children’s social-emotional wellbeing. In addition, the current study centered on Chinese preschool-aged children. Coparenting research has primarily focused on families in Western societies. The concept of coparenting has only recently become a focus of study in Asian cultures (McHale, Dinh, & Rao, 2014). Our findings will add to the growing research on coparenting in the Chinese context.

Many studies have documented the impact of coparenting quality on a range of children’s social-emotional outcomes, such as social skills, prosocial behavior, as well as internalizing and externalizing problems (Cabrera et al., 2012, Jahromi et al., 2018, Kolak and Vernon-Feagans, 2008, Schoppe et al., 2001, Scrimgeour et al., 2013). Based on 59 studies, Teubert and Pinquart (2010) found significant, albeit generally small-sized, associations between coparenting quality and children’s social functioning, attachment, and externalizing and internalizing symptoms. Moreover, the association between coparenting quality and children’s externalizing and internalizing symptoms remained significant even after controlling for parenting styles and marital quality.

Emerging evidence has also demonstrated the crucial role of coparenting in the social-emotional functioning of Chinese preschool-aged children. For instance, McHale, Rao, and Krasnow (2000) found that higher levels of coparental conflict reported by mothers was related to more behavioral problems in Chinese preschoolers. Yuan (2016) reported that mother-reported coparenting quality was negatively related to Chinese young children’s externalizing and internalizing behavior, while both mother- and father-reported coparenting quality was positively associated with children’s social competence. In a recent study by Lam, Tam, Chung, and Li (2018), coparental cooperation was found to be particularly beneficial for the peer acceptance, social cognition, and social competence of children with high negative affect. Overall, the results of existing studies demonstrated similar patterns of findings with regard to the relationship between coparenting and children’s social-emotional development in Western and Chinese contexts.

In explaining why coparenting can influence children’s social-emotional adjustment, Karreman et al. (2008) argue that, mutual support and coordination in parents’ joint childrearing may promote a sense of security and belongingness in the family; in contrast, when parents undermine each other’s parenting efforts, they model negative patterns of negotiation in the family context and convey inconsistent environmental cues for children. Therefore, children from families with high-quality coparenting relationships demonstrated more socially appropriate behaviors, enhanced emotional security, higher self-regulatory abilities, and positive social-emotional adjustment.

Popular parenting literature often underscores the importance of providing young children with routines and structure. This idea has received some empirical support, as regular routines have been linked to children’s language, cognitive, and social-emotional development (Bater and Jordan, 2017, Ferretti and Bub, 2014, Lanza and Drabick, 2011). In the current study, we focused on child routines, defined as “observable, repetitive behaviors which directly involve the child and at least one adult acting in an interactive or supervisory role, and which occur with predictable regularity in the daily and/or weekly life of the child” (Sytsma, Kelley, & Wymer, 2001, p. 243). Common routines for young children often involve play, reading, mealtime, and bedtime (Ferretti & Bub, 2014). Consistent routines can create predictability and stability within the family, which helps increase family cohesion and promote feelings of security and belongingness (Fiese et al., 2002). Sytsma et al. (2001) proposed a behavioral theory to explain how routines might affect child outcomes. According to the theory, parents provide their children with consistent and predictable environmental cues by implementing consistent routines, which facilitates children’s compliance and ensures that children perform daily activities in line with their parents’ expectations. Consistent routines were found to be associated with reduced problem behavior and enhanced social competence and self-regulation in children, providing support for Sytsma and colleagues’ theory (e.g., Bater and Jordan, 2017, Koblinsky et al., 2006, Lanza and Drabick, 2011, Ren et al., 2019).

In China, child routines have rarely been investigated in empirical research (Ren & Fan, 2019). However, the lack of research does not imply that routines are not as important in Chinese children’s daily life as their Western counterparts. Interestingly, Wang (2004) found that Chinese children’s autobiographic memory were more often centered on daily routines compared to Western children, suggesting that routine activities may actually provide an essential context of socialization in which children construct their social roles and identities in relation to others. Therefore, it is of great value to examine potential precursors and consequences of child routines in Chinese culture, in order to increase parents’ awareness of the important role that routines play in Chinese young children’s development. [Author’s name blinded for review] and colleagues (2018, 2019) provided initial evidence that regular child routines had positive associations with social skills and negative associations with problem behavior among Chinese children.

Despite the abundance of evidence showing the importance of coparenting for children’s social-emotional development, little research has examined pathways through which coparenting relates to children’s social-emotional functioning. Feinberg (2003) identified two potential mechanisms in his ecological model of coparenting—parental adjustment and parenting, which has received some empirical support. For instance, Cabrera et al. (2012) found that the quality of coparenting communication between mothers and fathers measured when their children were 24 months old had positive impact on children’s social skills measured at 48 months old via maternal supportiveness during child-mother interactions measured at 24 months, while coparenting conflict had an indirect negative effect on children’s social skills through increased maternal depressive symptoms. Similarly, researchers demonstrated that various dimensions of parenting could mediate the relationship between coparenting and young children’s social-emotional competence (e.g., maternal gentle guidance in Kwon et al., 2013; parental responsiveness in Lindsey & Mize, 2001; over-reactive parenting in O’Leary & Vidair, 2005).

Researchers have also explored other factors that may play an intermediary role in the relationship between coparenting and children’s social-emotional development, such as parenting stress, child and parental anxiety, children’s perceptions of family anger and aggression, and child effortful control (Jahromi et al., 2018, Majdandžić et al., 2012, McHale et al., 1999, Spjeldnes and Choi, 2008). Therefore, various parent- or child-level factors may serve as an intermediate link connecting coparenting and child developmental outcomes.

In the present study, we proposed that child routines might operate as a potential mechanism underlying the relationship between coparenting and child social-emotional adjustment. To our knowledge, there has been no research examining the mediating role of child routines in the link between coparenting and child social-emotional outcomes. However, emerging studies have demonstrated that child routines act as an intermediary factor linking parenting practices to children’s social-emotional functioning (Bater and Jordan, 2017, Ren et al., 2019). For instance, Ren et al. (2019) found that consistency in child routines mediated the effect of authoritative parenting on social skills and behavioral problems among Chinese elementary school children. As coparenting and parenting are closely related constructs despite their conceptual differences (Pedro et al., 2012), coparneting quality may also affect the formation of child routines through which it influences children’s social-emotional development.

We further contend that coparenting may be particularly important in establishing consistent routines for young children. First and foremost, because coparenting behavior often pertains to the division of labor related to children’s routine activities and parents’ agreement on important childrearing issues such as behavioral expectations and discipline for children (Feinberg, 2003), poor coparenting relationships may sabotage parents’ abilities to set consistent routines for children. In addition, as Karreman et al. (2008) have proposed, when a parent shows little support for his or her partner or undermines the partner’s parenting practices, their child may receive inconsistent environmental cues and become uncertain about how to act appropriately, leading to difficulties in forming consistent routines for the child. Moreover, high coparental conflict can cause negative emotional arousal in the child, which can interfere with the child’s abilities to regulate emotions and behaviors effectively (Davies & Cummings, 1994). The heightened uncertainty and negative emotional arousals caused by low levels of coparental support and high levels of coparental conflict may prevent children from successfully carrying out routine activities.

To fill the gaps in the literature, the current study was aimed to examine the potential mediating effects of child routines on the relationship between coparenting and child social-emotional adjustment. It was hypothesized that higher-quality coparenting would be related to higher levels of consistency in children’s daily routines, which, in turn, would be related to better social-emotional outcomes in children.