On Resilience Formation Of Left-behind Children

Left-behind children in rural areas are formed in the context of three rural issues. Due to cultivation inefficiency and deficiency of parent-child separation families, left-behind children face more risks and pressures than other children. Meanwhile, because of left-behind secondary risks, such as, adverse family relations and parent-child communication difficulties, left-behind children have to face more adversities. It is the core subject of resilience study to make sure the reason why some of the left-behind children can develop well even excellent when they are in the same adverse situation. For left-behind children, what will bring their successful resilience? How do these affect the resilience process? This study will focus on these questions and aims to explore resilience formation mechanism of left-behind children, as well as the cultivation mechanism to improve left-behind children’s resilience.This study adopts qualitative and quantitative multiple method research focused on qualitative methods and supplemented by quantitative methods. From the perspective of left-behind children’s growth life cycle, this study will introduce the view of ecological system theory to explore the resilience formation mechanism of left-behind children in their ecosystem. In qualitative analyzing part, it will analyze the factors affecting successful resilience of left-behind children by classifying them into micro system, inner system and external system. In quantitative analyzing part, it transfers resilience (dependent variable) process into cognitional adaptation, learning adaptation and mental adaptation. Affecting factors of three systems are the independent variable examining the qualitative analyzing results of different systems. The resources of this study originate from two parts. One is depth interview research taking cases from Qin-Ba Mountain Areas,60 depth interviews containing left-behind children and children’s parents. The other is questionnaire adopting the rural children’s survey data (2499 left-behind children,5961 non-left-behind children) of China education track baseline survey data (CEPS). Through utilizing the data of these two parts, this study primarily clarifies left-behind children’s particular risks in order to make sure influence factors of their resilience formation and to examine the efficiency of these factors. It then brings about the resilience formation mechanism and cultivation strategy of left-behind children.Left-behind children micro system is the core of resilience formation, including biological system, mental environment and social cognition. Biological system determines the material base of resilience formation. The initiate left-behind age and gender are the important influence factors of resilience. It is estimated that the younger they are, the more difficult for them to resist successfully. Boys do better in cognitional adaptation and mental adaptation, while girls adapt better in learning. Attachment relationship, self-conception and explanatory style in mental environment is the mental base on left-behind children’s resilience formation. Left-behind children’s resilience process can be effectively adjusted by safe attachment relationship, high self-esteem, high self-complexity and real idea-self; left-behind children can face pressures and challenges independently by positive emotion and optimistic belief; social cognition is formed in left-behind children’s social interaction process. Left-behind children’s self-serving bias attraction is the effective reaction mechanism to resilience, while their perception level to external social support is the key defense to successful resistance. Hypothesis verification discovers left-behind children’s gender, age, future confidence and active self-cognition contribute to the result of resilience reconstruction, and the rate of contribution is from 0.06 to 0.10.Left-behind children inner system plays an important buffering role in resilience process, including the buffering and compensation from families and extended families. Left-behind children’s family subsystem has a compensation to the deficient family function; clear family rules provide boundaries between left-behind children and others, even promote left-behind children’s sense of belonging; sound family relation is helpful to cultivate left-behind children’s optimistic quality; frank family communication can help left-behind children acquire pressure handling strategy, promote positive interaction and cooperate to solve problems in order to promote self-efficiency and buffer the negative influence of risks and adversities. In most cases, extended families are agent guardians of left-behind children. These people with affinity providing safe attachment relations, clarifying guardian duty and social learning role model can compensate left-behind children’s family deficiency. Compensation relies on guarding attachment relations, rule boundary, communication function by accelerating left-behind children’s efficiency and sense of belonging to form resilience. Hypothesis verification discovers parents’ education background, parents’ confidence in their children, family economic status, parent-child interaction, parents’ guardian and parents’ relations contribute to the result of resilience reconstruction, and the rate of contribution is from 0.06 to 0.12.Left-behind children external system is the remote resource protection mechanism in resilience. A decent relation between teachers and students in school is helpful for left-behind children to acquire the sense of belonging in school. Teachers’ expectation can help stimulate their learning efficiency; companionship is the out-group resources of left-behind children’s self-identification in their adolescent period. The fine interaction with neighborhoods and communities can satisfy their sense of safety. Hypothesis verification discovers companions’ quality, positive cognition of schools, learning attitudes and problem behavior in schools contribute to the result of resilience reconstruction, and the rate of contribution is from 0.07 to 0.13.Based on the above research, the conclusion is drawn as resilience is the result of interaction between individual and ecosystem. When left-behind risks affect children, children’s original state will turn into unbalance. At that time, if protective resources may buffer and protect the original state, left-behind children’s resilience will be formed and developed to resist successfully. However, if support and protection in the environment cannot deal with left-behind pressures and risks, children’s resilience won’t be formed or developed by failing to resist. Besides, resilience exists in two forms, namely, context intercommunity and context specificity. Safe attachment and high self-esteem develop resilience under context intercommunity part. While left-behind age and family subsystem function form and develop resilience under context specificity.Left-behind children’s resilience cultivation mechanism can be divided into two phases. In the first phase, the core cultivation strategy is to promote left-behind children’s self-efficiency. It attaches much importance to their confidence, self-awareness and self-control; in the second phase, the protective resources in left-behind children’s ecosystem are cultivated. It may start with family, school and community to strengthen family subsystem function, promote the utilization of family resources, shape active school environment and focus on building the neighborhood community support network.