Chapter 6. CONCLUSION
6.2. Discussion
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dietary needs and demands, ignoring modern nutrition guidelines, often resulting in children with anemia, low body weight, and short stature, among other consequences. Educational neglect among LBCs who lived with grandparents is also mainly due to grandparents’ low education levels and the lack of timely guidance and education from parents. These children’s learning opportunities are correspondingly low and these children indicate weaker interest in learning. As a result, these children are generally less educated, and most eventually become migrant workers. Additionally, LBCs are constrained by the basic medical conditions in rural areas and the generally poor economic condition of LBCs’ families. Furthermore, grandparents’ lack of basic modern medical knowledge and weak sense of modern disease prevention and healthcare standards contribute to high medical neglect rates; these children are sent to hospitals only when they have a serious illness(Li, 2017).
The present study also used hierarchical regression analysis to control for other independent variables to assess whether they affected differences in child neglect levels between LBCs and non-LBCs.
Consistent with the study’s t-test result, most of these variables had no statistically significant effects on child neglect level between LBCs and non-LBCs (Figure 2). This contrasts with results from previous studies, (e.g., Yang et al., 2014). However, this study’s hierarchical regression analysis did find that the sociodemographic variables of gender, age, and family income were significantly correlated with child neglect level. Boys had higher levels of neglect than girls. This may be due to traditional Chinese beliefs that boys should be stronger and can endure hardship; caregivers may therefore be less concerned about boys and more likely to neglect them. Overall, neglect level decreased with age, potentially because older children require less
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care, if necessary, they will take the initiative to demand; therefore, caregivers may be able to meet the needs of older children with less effort, thus reducing the level of neglect. This negative correlation between age and neglect has also been found in previous studies (Gu et al., 2011; Zhong et al., 2012; Yang et al., 2014). Higher family income levels were also correlated with lower level of neglect, potentially suggesting that if migrant parents can increase their families’ income, this can help mitigate the risk of neglect.
However, our findings are consistent with the results of research by Tao et al. (2006), which found that compared with non-LBCs, children whose parents both migrated for employment were at higher risk of being emotionally neglected by a caregiver.
6.2.2 The relationship between child neglect and social-emotional development among LBCs
As shown by Figure 2, child neglect negatively affected social- emotional development among all children in our sample (Table 5-4-2A) but was especially true for the LBCs (Table 5-4-2B). This finding is consistent with previous studies (Zheng & Tao, 2001; Zhu, 2011; Han, 2012), which have found that neglected children have lower self- esteem, less resilience, and lower life satisfaction, and will be risk of stunted social-emotional development. In the present study, we used the sub-scales of child neglect of children to analyze the effects of different types of neglect on social-emotional development and found that both emotional and safety neglect had statistically significant negative effects on social-emotional development among all children (both LBC and non-LBC). This means that the "SED" is not entirely influenced by individual aspects such as PHN, EMN, MEN, EDN and SAN, but an overall negative effect. Because the neglect experienced
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by children is not a single, but complex, multiple neglect(Euser et al., 2010; Ye et al., 2010; Gu, 2012; Liu, 2012; Yang et al., 2014).
Moreover, among LBCs, social-emotional development was significantly correlated with several other factors, including whether one or both parents had migrated, age. A potential explanation for the correlation between increased age and compare to two parents migrate, only one parent migrate had better social-emotional development.
6.2.3 Peer and student-teacher relationships as moderating variables on social-emotional development among neglected LBC
Firstly, the present study tested whether the relationship between child neglect and social-emotional development was moderated by peer and student-teacher relationships (Table 5-4-3A). Some factors appear to protect neglected children from the social-emotional development risks of neglect(Parker & Asher, 1993). For LBC, parent and family protective factors may be absent, so social and environmental protective factors consequently play an important role (Family Support Network, 2002). In the present study, peer relationships were found to reduce the effect of child neglect on social-emotional development. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the moderating effect of peer relationships on social-emotional development among neglected children.
On the other hand, our results found that student-teacher relationship did not have a significant impact on social-emotional development among neglected children. This may be due to several reasons. First, teachers mainly pay attention to students’ academic performance, and it is difficult to pay attention to other aspects of the
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students. Second, the student-teacher relationship is not equal, and it is difficult to form close relationships. Third, there are many students in rural schools, but teachers are few. Teachers cannot take care of all children, most of whom, in rural schools, are LBCs. The student- teacher relationship thus cannot reduce the effect of neglect on social- emotional development.
However, when testing whether the relationship between five sub- scales of child neglect and social-emotional development were moderated by peer and student-teacher relationships (Table 5-4-3B).
For LBCs, peer and teacher-student relationships were both not found to reduce the effect of PHN, EMN, MEN, EDN and SAN on social- emotional development.