The Effects Of Household Chaos To Left-behind & Non-left-behind Children’s Early Mathematics Competence

This study drew upon an ecological framework to empirically investigate the relationships between home environment variables including household chaos, parental-child interactions, parenting and preschoolers’ mathematical competencies. It revealed the mechanism between home environment variables and early mathematical competencies, enriched the empirical evidence for researches and developments of household chaos, the mediating and moderate roles of home environment variables as well as early childhood mathematical cognitive.For this study, the following data were collected at 5-6 of age from 134 children and their family in rural areas of city L in Henan province. Household chaos, socioeconomic status(SES), parental-child interactions on math and parenting were reported by children’s first caregiver(usually mothers). Children’s overall mathematical competencies were measured by face to face assessment.Numerical analysis via SPSS19.0 and AMOS22.0 and the results are as follows:1. The left-behind children’s home chaos level is higher than non-left-behind children’s, the left-behind children encountered with worse family environment, early mathematics competencies scores lower than their counterparts.2. The parents in lower chaos family are fond of emotional warmth and understanding parenting which would raising the frequency and the quality of interactions on math.3. Home chaos affects children’s early mathematical competencies indirectly. The influencing path is: lower home chaos via emotional warmth and understanding parenting via high frequency of parental-child interaction on math to better mathematical competencies, suggesting that interaction may play a fully mediating role in the relations between household chaos, as well as parenting, and preschoolers’ math abilities. Meanwhile, emotional warmth and understanding parenting style plays a partial mediating role between chaos and interactions.This study represents a much-needed addition to the currently limited research examining environmental chaos and children’s developmental outcomes. Importantly, findings from this study elucidate an important process underlying the links between household chaos and children’s math development, which can inform interventions and policies designed to support families and children living in chaotic home environment especially for those left-behind children in rural areas.