Parenting Practices and the Psychological Adjustment of Children in Rural China

206 Pages·2014·0.66 MB·English

by  Xiaodong Liu

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Gansu Survey of Children and Families
Gansu Survey of Children and Families
Dissertations
January 2003
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Xiaodong Liu
University of Pennsylvania
Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/gansu_dissertations
Liu, Xiaodong, "Parenting Practices and the Psychological Adjustment of Children in Rural China" (2003).
Gansu Survey of Children and Families Dissertations. 2.
https://repository.upenn.edu/gansu_dissertations/2
A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Education of Harvard University in Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education.
Advisors: Gil G. Noam, Terry Tivnan, Emily Hannum
This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/gansu_dissertations/2
For more information, please contact [email protected].
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In this dissertation, guided by the conceptual framework of the ecological model, I investigated (1) the
relationship between parental behaviors and children's psychological well-being in the contexts of family
and community; and (2) the intermediate role that parental behaviors play in linking children's and other
familial characteristics with children's mental health in a sample of 2000 children in rural northwest China.
The hypotheses leading this study are that (1) the effects of parental behaviors on children's
psychological adjustment differ depending upon familial and communal characteristics; (2)
characteristics of children, families, and communities affect parenting behaviors, which, in turn, are
directly linked to children's psychological adjustment. This dissertation is composed of a general
introduction, three articles, and a general conclusion. Using multiple regression analysis, I inspected the
relationships between parental behaviors and child psychological maladjustment in the first article. In the
second article, multilevel regression analysis was used to examine the impacts of community SES and
community environment of parenting on child maladjustment and on the parenting-child-development
relationships. In the third article, I used structural equation modeling to test the mediating role of parental
behaviors in connecting the paths from child characteristics and family variables to child internalizing and
externalizing problems. Each article has its own abstract. This study is one of the first studies using a
large-scale survey data to investigate the effect of parenting practices on children's psychological
adjustment in a poor, rural population. The findings from this study not only contribute additional insight
to our view of the variability that characterizes parental behaviors and children's developmental
trajectories, but also serve as a guide for integrating family processes and communal contexts in
prevention and intervention directed at children and adolescent psychological health in this under-studied
population.
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A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Education of Harvard University in Partial
Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education.
Advisors: Gil G. Noam, Terry Tivnan, Emily Hannum
This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/gansu_dissertations/2
Parenting Practices and the Psychological Adjustment of Children
in Rural China

Xiaodong Liu

Gil G. Noam
Terry Tivnan
Emily Hannum

A Thesis Presented to the Faculty
of the Graduate School of Education of Harvard University
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of Doctor of Education

2003
© 2003
Xiaodong Liu
All Rights Reserved
i

To
my father 刘瑞庭 (Liu, Ruiting)
and
the memory of my mother 黄淑琼 (Huang, Shuqiong)
ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my deep thanks to the children and their parents in my study.
Data collection for the Gansu Survey of Children and Families (GSCF) was supported by a
major grant from The Spencer Foundation to Dr. Emily Hannum.

I wish to thank my advisor Gil Noam, for his always encouragement and high
standard. Thanks are also due to Terry Tivnan, a member of my Committee, for the long
talks, the insightful comments and critiques, and the laughs and supports. I also want to
thank Emily Hannum of the University of Pennsylvania, another member of my Committee
and the principal investigator of the GSCF project, who gave me the great opportunity to
work in the GSCF research team, for her mentoring, guidance, and unyielding help.

I want to acknowledge, in addition, the role models whose teaching and wisdom
contributed to my knowledge and work: Suzanne Graham, Judith Singer, Robert Selman,
Catherine Snow, Robert LeVine, Kurt Fischer, Eleanor Drago-Severson, and Robert
Brennan. I also want to thank John Willett for his advices on the SEM part. Thanks are
also due to Dr. Arthur Kleinman for his comments on doing research in rural China. My
appreciation is also to the intellectual contributions of the “motivators” in my doctoral
support group – Helen Snively (the head of the “motivators” group), Son-May Chiu,
Mehyun Song, Yi Yang, and Jennifer Chen.

I would also like to express my indebtedness to my friends, 漆凉铭(Qi, Liangming)
and 刘东海(Liu, Donghai). Without their support, I could not have crossed the ocean to
begin my journey at Harvard Graduate School of Education at the beginning.

Last, but by no means least, I wish to express my deep gratitude to my father and the
memory of my mother for the dreams they passed on; to my three sisters, 晶 (Jing), 茂君
(Maojun), and 俊芳 (Junfang), for their love and their untiring support and unlimited belief
in me; to my brother 小明 (Xiaoming) for his wisdom and his willingness to be there while I
am away from home; and to my wife, 洁 (Jie), for the great support she has offered
throughout the whole process.
iii

Table of Contents

General Introduction ……………………………………………………………. 1

Article 1: Parenting Practices and Child Internalizing and Externalizing Problems
in Rural China ……………………………………………………….... 6

Article 2: Communities Influences, Parenting Practices, and Child Adjustment in
Rural China: A Multi-level Analysis …………………………………. .52

Article 3: Socio-economic and Demographic Characteristics and Child Adjustment
in Rural China: the Mediating Role of Parenting……………………... 93

General Conclusion ……………………………………………………………138

Appendices …………………………………………………………………… 149

References ………………………………………………………………….... 170

Vita ………………………………………………………………………….…189
iv
List of Tables

Article 1

Table 1. Descriptions, Means, Standard Deviations, and Ranges of the Variables
analyzed in this study ………………………………………………….…..24

Table 2. Intercorrelations Among the Predictive Variables……………………….... 27

Table 3. Intercorrelations Among the Child Outcomes and Correlations between
Predictive Variables and Each of the Child Outcomes …………………… 28

Table 4. The Fitted Multiple Regression Models in Which Child Internalizing Problems
Are Predicted by Parenting Behaviors, Controlling for Demographic Variables
and Other Familial Characteristics ……………………………………….. 30

Table 5. The Fitted Multiple Regression Models in Which Child Externalizing
Problems Are Predicted by Parenting Behaviors, Controlling for
Demographic Variables and Other Familial Characteristics ………………. 35

Table 6. Summary of the Main Effect and Interaction Effect of Parental Warmth
and Punishment on Child Internalizing and Externalizing Problems
by Data Source …………………………………………………………....40

Article 2

Table 1. Correlations between Village-level Outcome Variables and Predictive
Variables, and Among Village-level Predictive Variables (n=100) .………. 69

Table 2. The Estimates from the Fully Unconditional Models for Each Outcome.
Estimates Were Obtained Using Proc Mixed (Gansu Survey data, individual
n=2000, village n=100) …………………………………………………... 70

Table 3. The Estimates from the Conditional Models which Contains individual-level
variables for Child Internalizing and Externalizing Problems. Estimates Were
Obtained Using Proc Mixed (Gansu Survey data, individual n=2000, village
n=100) ……………………………………………………………………72

Table 4. The Estimates from the Conditional Models which Contains Individual-level
and Village-level Variables for Child Outcomes. Estimates Were Obtained
Using Proc Mixed (Gansu Survey data, individual n=2000, village n=100)... 75
v

Article 3

Table 1. Descriptions, Means, Standard Deviations, and Ranges of the Variables
Analyzed in This Study (n=2000) .………………………………………..113

Table 2. Correlation Matrix for the Whole Sample (n=2000)...……………………..115

Table 3. The Common Metric Completely Standardized Solutions Showing the
Intermediate Effects of Parental Behaviors (gender comparison, n=1078
for boys, n=922 for girls) ………………………………………………...124

Table 4. The Common Metric Completely Standardized Solutions Showing the
Intermediate Effects of Parental Behaviors (village comparison, n=660
for low SES, n=660 for middle SES, n=680 for high SES) ………………126
vi
List of Figures

Article 1

Figure 1. The Effect of Parental Punishment on Child Internalizing Problems as a
Function of Child Gender …………………………………………………32

Figure 2. The Effect of Parental Warmth on Child Internalizing Problems as a
Function of Child Age and Sibship Size for Girls ………………………….33

Figure 3. The Effect of Parental Punishment on Child Externalizing Behaviors as a
Function of Child Achievement ……………………………………..……..37

Figure 4. The Effect of Parental Punishment on Child Externalizing Problems as a
Function of Child Gender ………………………………………….………38

Figure 5. The Effect of Parental Warmth on Child Externalizing Behaviors as a
Function of Child Age for Girls ……………………………………………39

Figure 6. The Effect of Parental Warmth on Child Externalizing Behaviors as a
Function of Child Age for Boys ……………………………………………39

Article 2

Figure 1. Village-level Child Internalizing Problems as a Fucntion of Village Prevalence
of Punitive Parenting and Village SES ……………………………………...76

Figure 2. The Association Between Child Internalizing Problems and Parental
Punishment as a Function of Village Prevalence of Warm Parenting…….….78

Figure 3A. The Association Between Child Internalizing Problems and Parental
Warmth as a Function of Village Prevalence of Punitive Parenting among
Low SES Villages …………………………………………………………. 79

Figure 3B. The Association Between Child Internalizing Problems and Parental
Warmth as a Function of Village Prevalence of Punitive Parenting among
High SES Villages …………………………………………………………. 79

Figure 4A. The Association Between Child Externalizing Problems and Parental
Punishment as a Function of Village Prevalence of Warm Parenting among
Low SES Villages …………………………………………………………. 80

Figure 4B. The Association Between Child Externalizing Problems and Parental
Punishment as a Function of Village Prevalence of Warm Parenting among
High SES Villages …………………………………………………………..80