The impact of family socioeconomic status and parenting styles on children's academic trajectories: A longitudinal study comparing migrant and urban children in China

Abstract

The positive development of migrant children in China is hampered due to their unequal accessibility to quality urban education resources. This research aimed at exploring the developmental trajectories of migrant and urban children's literacy and mathematics performance, as well as the impact of family socioeconomic status (SES) and parenting styles, including the mediating effect of parenting styles, by comparing migrant children with their urban counterparts. Growth mixture modeling identified distinguishable trajectories of mathematics development for migrant children (i.e., "falling behind" and "keeping pace" groups) and urban children (i.e., "catching up" and "keeping pace" groups), as well as distinguishable trajectories of literacy development for migrant children (i.e., "jumpstarting" and "keeping pace" groups) and urban children ("falling behind" and "steadily progressing" groups). Multinomial logistic regression analyses further clarified that authoritative parenting increased the likelihood of favorable trajectories of migrant children's mathematics development and urban children's literacy and mathematics development. Family SES enhanced migrant children's mathematics development. Family SES contributed to urban children's literacy development through authoritative parenting, yet such a mediating effect was not observed for migrant children. This study highlights the importance of focusing on distinct trajectories of migrant

Migrant youths: Typical aspects of development during the adolescent years, specific challenges of growing up somewhere else, and some things we need to understand better

“…Those young migrants who made the poor-to-rich transition often meet stronger challenges facing the developmental tasks of their period of the lifespan than do majority youths in the receiving country. Several studies in this Issue focused on the mastery of, for example, academic demands and the educational career (e.g., Wang et al, 2021;Yan et al, 2021) as well as on the domain of establishing peer relations (Chavez et al, 2021;Karataş et al, 2021). However, we did not learn about how migrant youths approach the domain of romantic relations.…”

“…It is a particular merit of this Issue to have brought together studies that shed light on the many and varied conditions of development of adolescents who experienced migration themselves or are children of migrant parents. The different host contexts where this research has been conducted are a case in point including countries such as the United States (Patel et al 2021;Yan et al, 2021), Chile (Chávez et al, 2021), Sweden (Gyberg, Svensson, Wängqvist, & Syed, 2021), the UK (Cavdar, McKeown, & Rose, 2021), Germany, Israel (Benbow, Aumann, Paizan, & Titzmann, 2021), Turkey (Akgül, Klimstra, & Çok, 2021;Karataş, Crocetti, Schwartz, & Rubini, 2021), and China (Wang, Chen, & Gong, 2021).…”

“…Refugees who left other Middle East countries such as Syria and Iraq because of armed conflicts and civil war (e.g., Akgül et al, 2021;Karataş et al, 2021) are represented as are young people who escaped from gang violence and crime in Central America (e.g., Patel et al, 2021), or the offspring of Turkish families who migrated to the UK hoping for more favorable economic and occupational opportunities in Northern Europe (Cavdar et al, 2021). Different again is the case of within-country migration as addressed in a study of sons and daughters of migrant workers who left their homes in rural China to make their living in a large Chinese city (Wang et al, 2021). While the majority of studies in this Issue focuses on young people who experienced migration themselves, some also shed light on the situation of the second generation (e.g., Cavdar et al, 2021;Gyberg et al, 2021).…”

“…A case in point is the role that parents play in adolescent migrants' development. Wang et al (2021) examined patterns of experiences of young Chinese who left their rural homes together with their parents and now attend schools in a big city. Even though a comparison with their urban school-mates pointed to differences in academic trajectories across the year of study, it also showed that both groups of Chinese youths systematically benefited from authoritative parenting in mastering the demands faced in school (cf.…”

The impact of migration on child and adolescent development: Diversity in migration pathways and experiences

“…A different form of migration is tackled in the study of Wang et al (2021). The authors spotlight the impact of internal migration flows in China, from rural to urban areas.…”