Parent–child Cohesion, Beliefs About Adversity And Left-behind Children's Positive/Negative Emotion In Rural China

Emotional adaptation has been one of a major concern of developm ental psychology. A good e motional state is particul arly pertinent to prom ote mental and behavioral development of adolescence. Positive emotion can stimulate the potential of individual, positive words and behavior, whereas negative emotion can reduce a person' s enthusiasm and activity ability. Parental absence often has considerable emotional costs for their left-behind ch ildren. Previous studies indicate that left-behind children experience lower positive emotion and higher negative em otion. Currently, emotional adaptation of rural left-behind children has become the focus of researchers. Therefore, exploring the f actors and m echanism of posi tive/negative emotion adjustment have far-reaching significance to promote the positive development of left-behind children. This study will exploring the protective effect of parental cohesion and beliefs about adversity, exam ining simultaneously the mechanism of this variables as protectors of positive/negative emotion.A total of 560 adolescents were recruited from a rural area in Shandong province of China, including 173 children from parent-migrant families, 167 children from father-migrant families and 220 from nonm igrant families. These children completed a self-report assessment on te sting the protective effects of parental cohesion and beliefs about adversity on positiv e/negative emotion, and beliefs about adversity mediated the relationship between parental cohesion and children' positive/negative emotion. Main conclusions of this study are as follows:1. There w as a sta tistically significant main effect for l eft-behind status for positive/negative emotion: children from parent-migrating families reported lower levels of positive emotion and hig her levels of negative e motion than those f rom nonmigrant families. Statistically significant main effects for gender were found for negative emotion: girls reported higher le vels of negative emotion than boys. There was a statistically significant m ain effect for left-behind status for beliefs about adversity: children from parent-migrating families reported lower lev els of beliefs about adversity than those from father-migrant and nonmigrant-families.2. Parental cohesion was positively correlated with children' s positive emotion and was negatively co rrelated with children' s negative emotion. In addition, beliefs about adversity were positively correlated with children' s positive emotion.3. Beliefs about adversity partially m ediated the rela tionship between pa rental cohesion and children' positive emotion.4. The predictive effects of Beliefs a bout adversity on children's em otional adaptation vary on different types of emotion.5. The predictive effects of parental cohesion on children's beliefs about adversity differ in the status of parent' s migration.