Poster #29 - Linking Grandparental Involvement to the Trajectories of Young Children’s Social-Emotional Development

• In Event: Poster Session 19

Abstract

Social-emotional development in early childhood is related to a wide range of psychosocial and academic outcomes in later years (Bornstein et al., 2010). Grandparents constitute an important subsystem in families and have received increasing scholarly attention over recent years (Cox & Paley, 1997; Luo et al., 2020). However, the impact of grandparental involvement on child social-emotional development can vary across cultures. Grandparents in Chinese families participate in childrearing more frequently and differ from western grandparents in involvement reasons and ways (Xu & Chi, 2011). Findings regarding the association between grandparental involvement and children’s social-emotional development among Chinese families are limited and mixed, and furthermore, there is a need to better understand the mechanism behind it (Goh & Kuczynski, 2010). Based on the ecological model of coparenting (Feinberg, 2003), we explored whether the degree of grandparental involvement could predict children’s trajectories of social-emotional development directly or indirectly through parent-grandparent coparenting.

This study included 129 families with preschoolers (Mage = 48.97 months at T1, SDage = 6.00, 51.16% boys) in China. Data were collected at four time points with a six-month interval. The primary parental caregiver reported the degree of grandparental involvement using the Grandparent Involvement Questionnaire (GIQ; Luo et al., 2019) and the parent-grandparent coparenting relationship using the Grandparents-Parents Coparenting Relationships Scale (CRS; Li & Wei, 2018) at T1. We assessed child social-emotional development using the Social Skills Improvement System-Rating Scales (SSIS-RS; Gresham & Elliott, 2008).

Latent growth modeling analyses indicated that children showed overall increases in social skills (Mslope = .19, p <.001) with the average growth rate decreasing over time (i.e., a quadratic pattern of growth; Mquadratic = –.05, p <.001), yet problem behaviors remained stable (Mslope = .03, p = .125). Both the intercept (σss2 = .11, p <.001; σpb2 = .12, p <.001) and slope (σss2 = .01, p = 01; σpb2 = .02, p = .003) parameters had statistically significant variances. Multiple regression results indicated that the degree of grandparental involvement was significantly associated with parent-grandparent coparenting (for positive coparenting, ß = .73, p <.001; for negative coparenting, ß = –.25, p = .02), but not with child social-emotional development. Positive parent-grandparent coparenting could positively predict child social skills initial level (ß = .53, p = .002), while more coparenting conflicts were associated with higher levels of problem behaviors at T1 (ß = .28, p = .04). The mediation effect of parent-grandparent coparenting only showed up on the relation between the degree of grandparental involvement and children’s social skills at T1 (see Figure 1; indirect effect = .38, p = .01). Greater grandparental involvement was associated with more positive parent-grandparent coparenting, and, in turn, children tended to have a better initial level of social skills. We didn’t find direct effects of the degree of grandparental involvement on child social-emotional development, but indirect effects via parent-grandparent coparenting emerged. More research is needed to explicate the complex dynamics among grandparents, parents, and children in understanding whether and how grandparents influence children’s development.

Authors

• Weiman Xu, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
  Presenting Author

• Chunyuan Xi

• Lixin Ren, East China Normal University