Abstract
Different family compositions and sizes may affect child development through the different modes of interaction between family members. Previous studies have compared only children with non-only children in cognitive/non-cognitive outcomes. However, relatively little research has systematically investigated the potential moderators among them. Using a large and representative sample of Chinese students (Grades 7–8; N = 5,752), this study examines the roles of demographic characteristics, such as gender, region, parental educational level, parental expectations, family socio-economic status and family structure, in the associations between only child status and cognitive/non-cognitive outcomes. For the cognitive outcomes, only child status exerts an influence on the students' academic performance in Chinese and mathematics in the sample of three districts' students. The examined associations between only child status and cognitive outcomes are different in region, parental education, parental expectations and family structure, while gender and family socio-economic status did not. For the non-cognitive outcomes, only child status exerts an influence on the students' school well-being, academic self-efficacy, academic self-concept, and internal academic motivation in the full sample of students, but not on external academic motivation. Further, the examined associations between only child status and non-cognitive outcomes are different in region, parental education, family socio-economic status and family structure, while gender and parental expectations did not. These findings suggest that the associations between only child status and cognitive/non-cognitive outcomes are heterogeneous in terms of some of the demographic characteristics. Possible explanations are proposed in some concepts of region and family environment in China.
Highlights
Since the implementation of China’s new family planning policy in 2016, which permits all couples to have two children, the one-child policy, which restricted urban Han Chinese couples to one child each, has ended (Peng, 1991; White and White, 2012)
We found that female only children were significantly better at Chinese and mathematics
Analyses that studied differences by demographic groups found that region, parental education, parental expectations and family structure moderated the associations between only child status and cognitive outcomes, while gender and family socio-economic status did not
Summary
Since the implementation of China’s new family planning policy in 2016, which permits all couples to have two children, the one-child policy, which restricted urban Han Chinese couples to one child each, has ended (Peng, 1991; White and White, 2012) It had been in place for more than 30 years. According to the basic data from the sixth census in 2010, the number of only children reached ∼164 million (Gu, 2016) and this number is currently still increasing These significant changes in family structure prompt questions regarding the consequences of growing up without siblings and what the potential moderators might be
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