Abstract
Due to the prevalence of grandparents’ co-parenting of children in China, this study aimed to examine its influence on young children's personality and adaptation. With the cooperation of a kindergarten in Shanghai, 530 parents of children 3-6 years of age were invited to answer the questionnaire after giving their consent, and 422 of the questionnaires were effective. Three factors were extracted by Exploratory Factor Analysis for children's temperament: Fearfulness in Strange Situations (FS), Intensity of Reaction (IR) and Pro-social Activity (PA). Two factors were examined for children’s adaptation: Separation Anxiety in attending kindergarten (SA) and Anxious Preoccupied Attachment (APA, one of the insecure types for parent-child attachment relationship). The results show that the children raised by only parents had higher PA than those co-raised by grandparents and lower APA than those raised by only grandparents. Even after controlling for the influence from temperament and grades, the effect of parenting styles on APA was still significant. For Grade 1 children, the parenting style was also significantly related to children's temperament (IR).
Highlights
1.1 Prevalence of Grandparents’ Co-parentingBecause of parental problems, such as parental substance abuse, incarceration, mental health problems, divorce, abandonment, economic difficulties, or maltreatment, the number of children who live in custodial grandparent families is growing (Hayslip & Kaminski, 2005)
Understanding who will be the main attachment figure in such situation is an interesting research question, this study focuses on whether the attachment relationship developed in this type of co-parenting style will function well in children’s social adaptation
The temperament and adaptation of preschool children was compared by grades using the one-way analysis of variance
Summary
1.1 Prevalence of Grandparents’ Co-parentingBecause of parental problems, such as parental substance abuse, incarceration, mental health problems, divorce, abandonment, economic difficulties, or maltreatment, the number of children who live in custodial grandparent families is growing (Hayslip & Kaminski, 2005). In Shanghai (the second biggest city in China), more than 60% of families rely on grandparents to co-parent their children (Wang & Cheng, 2014) during the day time while parents are working, after maternal childcare leave (usually four months after childbirth, according to Chinese Labor Law) or even from the first day of birth. Given that this is a becoming a prevalent social phenomenon, more research regarding the influence of grandparents’ parenting/co-parenting in normal three-generational families is necessary
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