Distinct patterns of grandparenting and their associations with Chinese preschoolers’ social-emotional development

• In Event: Examining Family Processes across Culturally Diverse Families: A Focus on Family Functioning within Black, Latinx, and Chinese Families

Abstract

Grandparents’ participation in childrearing is prevalent in contemporary China, especially for the care of young children. According to a national survey, about 72% of Chinese grandparents were involved in taking care of their grandchildren (China Aging Research Center, 2012). Grandparents’ involvement in childrearing adds complexity to family dynamics. Many aspects of grandparenting can influence children’s development, such as the level of involvement of grandparents, the quality of interactions between grandparents and children, and the coparenting relationships between grandparents and parents (Chadda & Deb 2013; Hank, Cavrini, Di, & Tomassini, 2018; Li, 2019; Pei, 2005). However, previous studies often only focused on one or very limited aspects of grandparenting. In addition, research on the linkages between grandparenting and children’s development is limited and hasn’t reached consensus, which may be partially attributed to the multi-dimensional nature of grandparenting. Therefore, in this study, we assessed grandparenting behaviors from multiple aspects based on which we explored the different patterns of grandparenting using a person-centered approach — the latent profile analysis (LPA). We also examined the relationship between different patterns of grandparenting and children’s social-emotional development.

The study took place in Shangdong Province, China. A diverse sample of 497 families with preschool-aged children (48.1% girls; Mean age = 53.83±10.35 months) were recruited from three preschools located in the urban, rural, and suburban area, respectively. Parents reported grandparents’ frequency of participation in childrearing using the Grandparenting Questionnaire (Luo, Wang, & Zhou, 2019) which includes three subscales, namely Breadth, Initiative, and Decision. Multiple dimensions of parent-grandparent coparenting relationship were reported by parents using the revised Coparenting Relationship Scale (Li & Wei, 2016), such as closeness, conflict, support, and the division of labor. Grandparents were asked to report their quality of grandparenting practices through the revised Parent Behavior Report (Pei, 2005). In addition, parents reported children’s social skills and behavioral problems using the Social Skills Improvement System Rating Scale (SSIS-RS; Gresham & Elliott, 2008).

Analyses were conducted via Mplus 7.4 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998–2015). First, we used LPA to explore potentially heterogeneous patterns of grandparenting. As shown in Figure 1, the analyses demonstrated four grandparenting profiles: initiative grandparenting, passive grandparenting, harmonious grandparenting, and escaping grandparenting. Second, we examined the associations between grandparenting profiles and children’s social-emotional development using multiple regression analyses. A series of covariates, including child and parent/grandparent demographic variables were included in the analyses. As shown in Table 1, children from the harmonious grandparenting families were more likely to show better social skills compared with children experiencing the other three patterns of grandparenting. Moreover, the harmonious grandparenting families were associated with children’s fewer behavioral problems compared with the passive grandparenting families and the escaping grandparenting families, but children would show more behavioral problems compared with children from the initiative grandparenting families. The current study extends existing grandparenting literature by exploring heterogeneous patterns of grandparenting using a person-centered approach and demonstrating meaningful links between grandparenting patterns and children’s social-emotional development.

Authors

• Weiman Xu, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
  Presenting Author

• Lixin Ren, East China Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Xinyu Zhou, East China Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author