Promoting Psychosocial Adjustment Among Chinese Migrant Families Through Parallel Parent-child Mindfulness Intervention

• In Event: Programs and Policies to Support Families Experiencing Challenge

Abstract

Background: Globalization and growing socioeconomic inequalities have prompted nearly one billion migrants worldwide to leave their homes in search of better life opportunities, the majority of whom are internal migrants who move within their countries. However, many of these internal migrants are channeled into low-status, low-income occupations and their access to public services and legal rights are restricted. Migration research has identified effective adjustment to new environments as a key predictor of migrants’ well-being, while recent research of mindfulness points to several conceptual links to greater adjustment. Mindfulness may enable migrants to learn new cultural skills with an openness to new experiences, perceive adjustment difficulties as opportunities for growth through cognitive reappraisal, and establish integrated dual cultural identity through enhanced cognitive flexibility. However, research has rarely explored the effects of mindfulness on migrant populations, and the role of mindfulness in migrants’ psychosocial adjustment has not been empirically examined. Additionally, since parent and child adjustment mutually influence each other and are equally important to building supportive family relationships, current mindfulness-based intervention research with migrants should adopt a family-based approach targeting parent and child simultaneously.

Method: Twenty-one Chinese migrant parents and one child of each parent were assigned to an 8-week parallel mindfulness intervention group (1 session/week, 2.5 hours/session, n = 11 pairs) or a waitlist control group (n = 10 pairs) that continues to receive routine community services. The intervention focused on integrating mindfulness in daily parent–child interactions, such as mindful observation, conflict resolution, and empathy for family members. Semi-structured qualitative interviews and pre–post quantitative measures were used to assess intervention feasibility and effects. The outcomes measures included parental stress, mindfulness in parenting, child behaviors, and child perception of parent-child attachment.

Results: Qualitative interviews suggest mindfulness training promotes family well-being through helping parents cope with parenting stress, fostering awareness in the parent–child interaction process, and enhancing parental and child emotional regulation. Quantitative results suggest within-group parenting stress significantly decreased in the intervention group (partial η2 = .423) but not in controls (partial η2 = .000); between-group analyses showed a nonsignificant, medium effect size on parenting stress (partial η2 = .069).

Conclusions: The parallel parent–child mindfulness intervention shows good feasibility and initial support for reducing parenting stress and enhance psychological adjustment of migrant families, particularly for parents who are faced by high work- and life-related stress. Future research requires a larger randomized controlled trial among high-stress populations such as migrant families.

Authors

• Shuang Lu, University of Central Florida
  Presenting Author

• Renhui Lyu, University of Hong Kong

• Hui Hu, University of Hong Kong (HKU)

• Christine Ng, University of Hong Kong