Abstract
ABSTRACT: Studying the influencing factors and interventions of mental health in rural China has important practical significance for promoting personal development and social progress. Using the 2016 waves of the China Family Panel Studies data, this paper examined the effect of adult sons’ marriage squeeze on parents’ mental health in rural China and its corresponding mechanisms. Our study showed a significant negative association between adult sons’ marriage squeeze and the mental health status of rural parents. Moreover, the negative association of adult sons’ marriage squeeze with mental health is larger for female parents, parents who are less than 60 years old and parents living with children. In addition, we investigated possible mechanisms of the effect, including intergenerational support, intergenerational relationship and neighborhood relationship, and that adult sons’ marriage squeeze mainly damages the mental health of rural parents by increasing the downstream intergenerational support of rural parents and worsening intergenerational and neighborhood relationships.
Highlights
As the proverb goes, “The body is the capital of revolution”, which means maintaining wellbeing is a prerequisite for an individual to achieve his or her self-value and happiness
In terms of parent’s living arrangement, whether having unmarried adult sons aged 28 years old and above coefficient is significantly larger for parents living with children, showing that adult sons’ marriage squeeze has a greater negative impact on the coresiding parents’ mental health than parents living alone or only living with the spouse
The previous sections have shown a significant and negative association between adult sons’ marriage squeeze and rural parental mental health. How does this association arise? we apply a stepwise approach to identify the mechanisms of the effect, which consists of two steps: firstly, we examine the effects of adult sons’ marriage squeeze on possible intermediate factors which may affect rural parents’ mental health; secondly, we include intermediate factors that are significant in the first step as independent variables alongside adult sons’ marriage squeeze measure in modelling parental mental health outcomes
Summary
“The body is the capital of revolution”, which means maintaining wellbeing is a prerequisite for an individual to achieve his or her self-value and happiness. According to the World Health Organization’s definition of health, human health does not refer to physical health, it includes mental health as well. Mental health and physical health are of equal importance to human beings. Due to limitations of objective conditions and personal cognition, we tend to pay more attention to the physical health, and neglect people’s mental health. In modern China, especially in rural China, mental health issues have become salient public health issues and prominent social issues, which we must take seriously. With the rapid rural population migration and its accompanying social structure changes, the prevalence of mental illness among rural Chinese people has continued to rise.
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