Abstract
The issue of left-behind children has become a key focus in China. In this study, we investigate the mediating role of social support between social anxiety and the subjective quality of life among left-behind children in China (N = 379, Mage = 13.65). A total of 710 junior high school students were recruited using clustering random sampling from five middle schools in China and investigated using the Social Anxiety Scale for Children, Social Support Rating Scale for Adolescents, and Inventory of Subjective Life Quality. The results show that social anxiety is negatively associated with social support and subjective quality of life, and social support is positively correlated with subjective quality of life. In addition, social support partially mediates the relationship between social anxiety and subjective quality of life. In conclusion, these findings provide new insights to improve the subjective quality of life of left-behind children. The focus should be on alleviating social anxiety and increasing social support in order to help left-behind children improve their subjective quality of life.
Highlights
Left-behind children (LBC) is a term that refers to children whose parents leave their hometown for work for at least 6 months (Zhao et al, 2014; Fellmeth et al, 2018)
The results show that social support (SS) and subjective quality of life level (SQOL) are respectively negatively associated with Social anxiety (SA) (r = −0.17, p = 0.001; r = −0.27, p < 0.001), indicating that LBC reported low levels of SS and SQOL if they had high levels of SA
This meant that the higher the levels of SS in LBC, the higher the levels of SQOL
Summary
Left-behind children (LBC) is a term that refers to children whose parents (either one or both) leave their hometown for work for at least 6 months (Zhao et al, 2014; Fellmeth et al, 2018). The approximate proportion of LBC among children under 16 was 1:35.6 (2.81%), which is a small percentage accompanied by a considerable absolute number. Compared with their peers, who are referred to as non-left-behind children (NLBC), LBC confronted more psychological adversities (Liang et al, 2017; Fellmeth et al, 2018; Wu et al, 2019; Li et al, 2021), were more exposed to moderate abuse, experienced loneliness, attempted suicide when they experienced high levels of loneliness (Chang et al, 2017), and faced a higher suicide risk (Xiao et al, 2019). A study centered on children aged 12–16 showed that the prevalence of mental health problems was 30.8% in NLBC and 43.4% in LBC, with a higher prevalence of psychological
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