Perceived discrimination and self‐esteem of left‐behind children: The mediating effect of grit

Abstract

Although perceived discrimination has been found to diminish self‐esteem, the mechanism of such effect and potential protective factors demands further study. Grit has been suggested to moderate the effect of risk factors affecting Chinese left‐behind children, but few studies have considered that being left behind might diminish the family and social conditions needed for nurturing grit, and therefore grit might mediate the effect of being left behind and perceived discrimination upon self‐esteem. With the questionnaire data collected from 974 Chinese rural children among whom 517 were left‐behind children, the present study shows that perseverance of effort mediates the effect of being left behind upon self‐esteem. Moreover, within the subsample of left‐behind children, perceived discrimination was found to mediate the effect of time length of being left behind on self‐esteem, while a chain mediation effect was found where perceived discrimination and consistency of interest mediated the effect of the time length of being left behind on self‐esteem. Findings suggest that for left‐behind children, while the adverse social conditions reflected by perceived discrimination affects self‐esteem by diminishing consistency of interest, the absence of adequate parental regulation more directly affects perseverance of effort and therefore affects self‐esteem. Further research directions about practices and interventions targeting at protecting self‐esteem through fostering grit are discussed.

Discrimination perception and problem behaviors of left-behind children in China: the mediating effect of grit and social support

“…Due to the low economic status of their families, leftbehind children are prone to explicit and implicit discrimination, such as rejection or even physical attack, and are forced to live under the subjective experience of discrimination pressure for a long time. Previous studies have shown that stress is significantly negatively correlated with grit, and individuals with long-term stress experience have poor grit quality (Sun & Fu, 2024;O'Neal et al, 2016). As a positive psychological quality, grit is positively correlated with good behaviors or positive results, such as positively predicting individual life satisfaction (Zhang et al, 2021) and academic performance (Guan et al, 2015).…”

“…Adolescence is a critical and sensitive period of personal growth. Cultivating their grit quality is regarded as an important positive psychological resource for individuals to deal with life stress (Glen Johan Ri et al, 2024), which can help them carry out self-regulation (Wolters and Hussain, 2015;Datu et al, 2016) and self-control (Maddi et al, 2013), improve their academic performance (Li and Liu, 2021;Eskreis-Winkler et al, 2014;We and Hu, 2017;Du & Zhu, 2020) and individual mental health level (Sun & Fu, 2024;Duckworth and Gross, 2014;Maddi et al, 2013), reduce drug abuse and other dangerous behaviors (Guerrero et al, 2016), etc. While there is a lack of research on the mediating role between discrimination perception and problem behaviors of focusing on the grit of left-behind children.…”