The Effect Of Parental Companionship On Adolescents' Non-cognitive Abilities

The quality of human capital is a key factor in determining the economic and social development of a country,Traditional research on the quality of human capital only considers cognitive ability,using indicators such as test scores,IQ levels,or years of education to measure it.Recent research shows that,in addition to cognitive ability,social skills,achievement motivation,self-esteem,leadership,and other non-cognitive abilities that are relatively independent of cognitive abilities also predict individuals'future success.Very sensitive to non-cognitive interventions,adolescence is the golden period for the development of non-cognitive abilities and the importance of parents involvement at this stage is self-evident.However,with the rapid urbanization and fast-paced living style,parents generally spend less time with their children.It is common for parents in cities to leave their children to grandparents or other caregivers,and for parents in rural areas to migrate without children.Therefore,studying the impact of parental companionship on adolescents'non-cognitive ability is of great significance to understand the current status of adolescents' parental companionship,promote the development of adolescents' non-cognitive ability,and improve the future quality of human capital in China.Most literature involving the impact of parental companionship and parent-child interaction on adolescents' non-cognitive abilities focuses on parent-child interaction activities that represent higher requirements on parenting styles,such as supervising and counseling children's studies,reading with children,and taking children to participate in cultural activities.Few scholars have explored the impact of parental companionship on adolescents'non-cognitive abilities using indicators of the most common and basic daily activities,i.e.,family meals.At the same time,a large number of related studies use cross-section data,which will inevitably cause endogenous problems such as sample self-selection bias and ommited variable issues.This study uses parent-child meals,a basic proxy for parental companionship,to explore the connection between parental companionship and adolescents' non-cognitive abilities.According to whether the frequency of parent-child meals of the sample students in the two periods has changed,the sample students are divided into"experimental groups" and "control groups",and this paper uses Propensity Score Matching-Difference in Difference methods(PSM-DID)to explore the influence of parental absence on adolescents' non-cognitive ability.A total of 7,219 sample students who met the research criteria in the 2013-2014 school year and 2014-2015 school year of the China Education Panel Survey(CEPS)project were selected for the study.The project uses population education and mobility indicators as the basis for stratified random sampling across the country,covering 19,487 middle school students in 438 classes in 112 junior high schools in 28 county-level units nationwide(31 provinces,autonomous regions,municipalities,excluding Hong Kong,Macao and Taiwan).The project collected information on student characteristics,family background,and schools through field surveys.The results showed that reduced frequency of family meals has a significant negative impact on the overall level of non-cognitive abilities,including emotional stability,agreeableness and conscientiousness among adolescents.Conversely,increased frequency of family meals has a significantly positive impact on the overall level of non-cognitive ability of adolescents.However,this impact is limited to emotional stability and agreeableness,and does not affect conscientiousness.Based on the above results,combined with existing literature and current situation of adolescents' parental companionship,this paper proposes the following suggestions:(1)From the perspective of the family,parents should pay more attention to parent-child meals,listen to their children's troubles,strengthen emotional connection with their children,and give their children more emotional care.(2)From the perspective of the society,the importance of parental companionship in the socialization of children should attract more attention from the whole society.The whole society should create a good atmosphere of "child growth and parent companionship" and pay more attention to the development of adolescents' non-cognitive abilities.The community can enhance the awareness and behavior of parental companionship by holding collective parent-child activities.(3)From the perspective of the government,it is necessary to introduce relevant policies to promote the healthy development of adolescents,further urging parents to company their children,and create a more favorable legal environment for parents to company their children;in addition,as for the lack of parental companionship for left-behind children,Relevant departments need to accelerate the reform of various systems where migrant workers have flowed in,and to solve the obstacles in the education system and economic system to ensure that migrant children can live with their parents and get sufficient parental companionship and care.