Intensive Mothering and Young Children’s School Readiness in Contemporary China: The Good and the Bad

• In Event: School Readiness: Contributions of children's individual differences during interactions in classroom and home environments

Abstract

Intensive mothering has prevailed in many cultures as a preferred way of parenting, which impels mothers to invest tremendous time, energy, and money in childrearing (Hays, 1996). The ideology of intensive mothering has long been under attack for its potential impact on mothers’ psychological well-being, especially the increase of maternal stress (Rizzo et al., 2013). A substantial body of research has demonstrated that maternal stress would negatively affect child outcomes through jeopardizing parental involvement (Deater-Deckard, 1998). The current study aimed to investigate how Chinese mothers’ endorsement of intensive mothering might relate to children’s school readiness via maternal stress and maternal involvement. In addition, as middle-class Chinese mothers were believed to endorse intensive mothering more than working-class mothers (Tang, 2021), we also examined the moderating role of social class in the above association. The hypothesized model was displayed in Figure 1.
A total number of 401 mothers (Mage = 38.34 years, SD = 5.1; 44.4% middle-class, 53.1% working-class) with preschool-aged children (Mage = 70.7 months, SD = 6.8; 45.1% boys) were recruited from a preschool in eastern China. Mothers reported their endorsement of intensive parenting using the Intensive Parenting Attitude Questionnaire (Liss et al., 2013). It includes five aspects: Essentialism (women are inherently more adept at childrearing than men), Fulfillment (parenting is fulfilling), Stimulation (parents should provide children with sufficient cognitive stimulation), Challenging (parenting is demanding), and Child-Centered (parents should prioritize the needs of the children). They also reported maternal stress via the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form (Abidin, 2012) and their involvement in children’s education through the Chinese Early Parental Involvement Scale (Lau et al., 2012). School Readiness Checklist (Gai, 2007) was completed by mothers to measure children’s school readiness development.
First, we conducted bootstrapping analyses to explore the sequential mediation models without the moderator (i.e., social class). As shown in Table 1, both mothers’ endorsement of fulfillment and stimulation could positively predict children’s school readiness through maternal stress and parental involvement. However, mothers’ endorsement of essentialism, challengingness, and child-centeredness had a negative indirect relationship with children’s school readiness through maternal stress and involvement. Additionally, maternal stress partially mediated the negative role of mothers’ perceptions of essentialism, challengingness, and child-centeredness in children’s school readiness, as well as the positive association between mothers’ endorsement of fulfillment and children’s school readiness. Maternal involvement also positively mediated the relationships between the five aspects of intensive mothering and child school readiness. Next, we tested the interaction effect between social class and intensive mothering on maternal stress and involvement by comparing corresponding parameters in the models of middle-class and working-class mothers. No significant differences between the two social classes were found. The present study showed that the associations between intensive mothering and child school readiness might vary depending on the specific dimension of intensive parenting. It also revealed maternal stress and maternal involvement as possible mechanisms behind the linkage between intensive mothering and children’s adjustment.

Authors

• Yeqing Li, East China Normal University
  Presenting Author

• Lixin Ren, East China Normal University