Associations of latent patterns of parent‒child communication with communication quality and mental health outcomes among Chinese left-behind children

Abstract

Background: Parent‒child communication in migrant families is essential to family bonds and the mental health of left-behind children (LBC). Little is known about the different patterns of communication between migrant parents and LBC and associated communication quality and mental health outcomes.

Methods: A sample of 2,183 Chinese children (mean age = 12.95 ± 1.29 years) from Anhui province, including LBC whose parents had both migrated (n = 1,025) and children whose parents had never migrated (never-LBC, n = 1,158), was analyzed. With the LBC sample, latent class analysis was applied to identify the patterns of parent‒child communication. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was conducted to assess the associations between the sociodemographic variables and class membership of LBC. Analysis of covariance and chi-square tests were used to compare communication quality and mental health outcome differences among the classes of LBC and between each of the classes and never-LBC.

Results: Five latent classes of communication formed through different media or channels between migrant parents and their LBC were identified. Higher household economic status (OR = 2.81, p < 0.05) was associated with adequate communication. LBC in Class 1, defined by frequent technologically-mediated and face-to-face communication, had a significantly higher quality of communication with their migrant parents (F = 8.92, p < 0.001) and better mental health than those in other latent classes; these children did not have significantly worse mental health outcomes compared to never -LBC.

Conclusions: Facilitating multichannel parent‒child communication is a practical way of reducing mental health inequities between LBC and their peers.

Keywords: China; Health inequity; Labor migration; Left-behind children; Mental health; Parent‒child communication.