A Study On The Relationship Between Parent-Peer Attachment And Self-Consciousness And Depression In Primary School Students

Family is a basic unit of society and it is also an environment in which the individual grows up,and an environment in which other elders,fathers,mothers,and children,has the very vital influence to the child’s physical and the psychological health growth.In the family,the biggest influence on the children is the parents.In primary school,children have a very close relationship with their parents.Attachment is an important indicator of an individual’s mental health,which affects children’s mood,personality,social behavior and basic attitudes towards people(Bowlby,1973).So,for elementary school students,how do they rate themselves? Do they have depression? Do these evaluations and emotions have anything to do with parental or peer attachment?In this study,842 students from a primary school in Taiyuan were investigated by using parent-peer attachment questionnaire(IPPA),Piers-Harris child self-concept scale(PHCSS)and depression scale(Phq-9),SPSS26.0 and Excel were used to analyze the data in order to understand the overall mental health of pupils in liberal education,and to explore the influence of parents and peer attachment on pupils’ self-cognition and mental health.The findings are as follows:(1)Among the demographic variables,there was no significant difference in the quality of attachment between parents and peers of elementary school students in terms of gender,but there were significant differences in the trust and communication dimensions between parents and peers,there were significant differences only in the dimension of communication between parents,and there were significant differences in the three dimensions of father attachment,there were significant differences in mother attachment only in communication dimension,and almost no significant differences in peer attachment.(2)Among the demographic variables,there were no significant differences in gender,household registration and father’s occupation,but there were significant differences in grade,family situation,father’s education,Mother’s education and mother’s occupation.(3)The general depression situation of primary school students(3.41 ± 4.19)was good.In demographic variables,there were no significant differences in depression scores among sex,family situation,whether only child,grade,household register,Father’s educational background and mother’s educational background.(4)On the whole,the quality of maternal attachment(104.13 ± 15.26)was significantly higher than that of paternal attachment(97.29 ± 17.77)and peer attachment(95.14 ± 18.25).The quality of paternal attachment was slightly higher than that of peer attachment.(5)There was significant correlation between parent-peer attachment and self-consciousness and depression,and the higher the score of parent-peer attachment,the higher the score of self-consciousness and the lower the score of self-evaluation of depression.(6)Father attachment has the greatest influence on the development of children’s mental health.The better the quality of children’s attachment to father,the better the psychological condition of children,and the more distant the father is from the children,the more likely the children are to feel depression,the association between maternal attachment and depression was not as strong.Overall,there was a good correlation between parental,peer attachment and depression.(7)In a partial correlation analysis between parental,peer attachment and depression,when self-awareness was excluded,the trust and communication dimension of PCD decreased significantly with the depression scale when the influence of self-consciousness was excluded,even no significant correlation.To study the mediating role of self-consciousness in the influence of parent-peer attachment on depression,the coefficient of attachment entry equation was reduced from 0.428 to-0.091 with primary school students’ depression as dependent variable and primary school students’ attachment as independent variable,the results showed that self-consciousness had a certain influence on parents,peer attachment and depression.The main conclusions of this study are as follows: there is a significant negative correlation between parents,peer attachment and depression scores,and there is a significant negative correlation between self-consciousness and depression scores,the self-consciousness level of primary school students played a part of mediating role in the influence of parents and peer attachment on the depression level of primary school students.