The Influence Of Family Parenting Behavior And Temperament On The Advantages And Difficulties Of Mobile And Urban Children's Social Development

Based on Bronfenbrenner's bio-ecological model of human development,this study adopted a three-wave longitudinal research approach to investigate the developmental trajectories of migrant and urban children's strengths and difficulties of social development(i.e.,prosocial behavior and emotional symptoms),and how parenting behaviors(i.e.,parental warmth and corporal punishment)and temperament(i.e.,negative emotionality)influenced the developmental trajectories of prosocial behavior and emotional symptoms.Meanwhile,this study also compared the similarities and differences between migrant and urban children with regard to the aforementioned relations.This research contained two studies:the pilot study and main study.The pilot study sampled 875 7th to 9th grade middle school students and their parents in Nanjing and Shanghai,including 382 migrant children and 442 urban children.The pilot study aimed to examine the psychometric properties and application of three questionnaires in the sample.The questionnaires were children-report Emotional Symptoms and Prosocial Behavior Subscales of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire(SDQ),Negative Emotionality Subscale of Revision of the Early Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire(EATQ-R),and parent-report Warmth and Corporal Punishment Subscales of the Parenting Style and Dimensions Questionnaire(PSDQ).Additionally,it also preliminarily examined the influences of parenting behaviors and negative emotionality of temperament on migrant and urban children's prosocial behavior and emotional symptoms.The main study adopted the three revised measures in the pilot study in a sample of 631 7th grade middle school students and their parents in Nanjing and Shanghai,including 316 migrant children and 269 urban children from May 2015(T1)to May 2016(T3).The purpose of the main study was to examine the developmental trajectories of migrant children's prosocial behavior and emotional symptoms and compared the similarities and differences with their urban counterparts.Furthermore,the main study also investigated the roles of parenting behaviors and temperament in the developmental trajectories of prosocial behavior and emotional symptoms,especially the moderating function of negative emotionality in the relations between parenting behaviors and the developmental trajectories.The pilot study found that:(1)the psychometric properties and measurement invariance of the three questionnaires across migrant and urban children groups were acceptable,indicating the applicability of the three measures into migrant and urban children.(2)The influences of parenting behaviors and negative emotionality on migrant children's social developmental strengths and difficulties were partly different from that of their urban counterparts.Similarly,negative emotionality significantly and positively predicted migrant and urban children's emotional symptoms.Differently,negative emotionality only had negative influence on migrant children's prosocial behavior.Parental corporal punishment only positively and negatively predicted migrant children's emotional symptoms and prosocial behavior.In addition,maternal warmth only positively predicted urban children's prosocial behavior.(3)Negative emotionality only moderated the relation between maternal corporal punishment and urban children's prosocial behavior.No significant interaction of parenting behavior and negative emotionality was found for emotional symptoms among migrant and urban children.The results of the main study went as follows:(1)all the three questionnaires had acceptable psychometric properties and met the measurement invariance across migrant and urban children.Besides,the Emotional Symptoms and Prosocial Behavior Subscales also met the measurement invariance over time.(2)Heterogeneities were found in the developmental trajectories of both emotional symptoms and prosocial behavior among migrant and urban children,as well as similarities and differences between the two groups.Regarding emotional symptoms,two trajectories of were identified for migrant and urban children,respectively,that was,the high-decreasing trajectory(10.1%of migrant children,17.3%of urban children)and low-increasing trajectory(52.2%of migrant children,82.7%of urban children).Besides,stable middle-level emotional symptoms trajectory(37.7%of migrant children)was additional identified for migrant children.Regarding prosocial behavior,heterogeneities were also found for migrant and urban children.Two trajectories were identified for urban children,whereas four trajectories were identified for migrant children.There was one similar trajectory between migrant and urban children,namely,the high-decreasing trajectory(41.5%of migrant children,56.5%of urban children).Moreover,three additional trajectories,including the low-increasing(6.6%),stable relatively high-level(26.6%)and stable middle-level(25.3%)were found among migrant children,and one additional trajectory was middle-increasing(43.5%)were found among urban children.(3)There were similarities and differences in the relations of emotional symptoms and prosocial behavior to parenting behaviors and negative emotionality.Only negative emotionality had direct prediction on the developmental trajectories of emotional symptoms and its influence was similar between migrant and urban children.Migrant and urban children with high negative emotionality had higher levels of emotional symptoms.Regarding prosocial behavior,similarly,parental warmth positively predicted its developmental trajectories among migrant and urban children.Different from that of urban children,negative emotionality only negatively predicted the developmental trajectories of prosocial behavior among migrant children.(4)The moderating function of negative emotionality was only found in the relations between parenting behaviors and migrant children's emotional symptoms.Specifically,negative emotionality only moderated the association between paternal warmth and migrant children's developmental trajectories of emotional symptoms.There was no significant interaction between parenting behaviors and negative emotionality on both migrant and urban children's developmental trajectories of prosocial behavior.In conclusion,heterogeneities were found in the developmental trajectories of both emotional symptoms and prosocial behavior among migrant and urban children,as well as similarities and differences between the two groups.Parenting behavior only affected the emotional symptoms of migrant children,but had no effect on the emotional symptoms of urban children and their development trajectory,but had an impact on the prosocial behavior and their development trajectory of migrant and urban children.Negative emotionality had an impact on the emotional symptoms and their development trajectory of migrant and urban children,but it only affected the prosocial behavior and their development trajectory of migrant children,and had no impact on the prosocial behavior and development trajectory of urban children.The moderating function of negative emotionality was found in the parenting behaviors influenced on migrant children's emotional symptoms and urban children's prosocial behavior.