The Detention of Migrant Families

Social avoidance and social adjustment in Chinese preschool migrant children: the moderating role of teacher-child relationships

Objectives

This study aimed to explore the moderating role of teacher-child relationships in the relations between social avoidance and social adjustment (i.e., prosocial behavior, peer exclusion, and anxious-fearful behavior) in Chinese migrant preschoolers.

Methods

Participants were 148 migrant children aged 4-6 years (82 boys, M_age = 62.32, SD = 6.67) attending kindergartens in Shanghai, People's Republic of China. Mothers reported children's social avoidance, and teachers rated teacher-child relationships and children's social adjustment.

Results

Results indicated that social avoidance was positively related to peer exclusion and negatively related to prosocial behavior. Teacher-child relationships moderated those associations. Specifically, teacher-child closeness buffered the relationship between social avoidance and peer exclusion, whereas teacher-child conflict exacerbated the relations between social avoidance and peer exclusion and anxious-fearful behavior.

Conclusion

The current finding informs us of the importance of improving teacher-child closeness and reducing teacher-child conflict to buffer the negative adjustment among socially avoidant young children who migrated from rural-to-urban China. The findings also highlight the importance of considering the meaning and implication of social avoidance for migrant preschoolers in Chinese culture.

Parental Harsh Discipline and Migrant Children's Anxiety in China: The Moderating Role of Parental Warmth and Gender

The present study examined the moderating effects of both parents' warmth in the relations between parental harsh discipline (psychological aggression and corporal punishment) and migrant children's anxiety and parent and child gender differences in the moderating mechanism in Chinese society. This study used a sample of 477 elementary school-age children and both their parents in Chinese migrant families. We constructed a Structural Equation Model to explore the relation between parental harsh discipline (psychological aggression and corporal punishment) and migrant children's anxiety and the moderating role of parental warmth. Our findings revealed that maternal but not paternal psychological aggression was found to significantly predict boys' anxiety. Moreover, maternal warmth exacerbated the relations between paternal corporal punishment and girls' anxiety. The findings provide partial support for the "healthy context paradox" and highlight the importance of considering how the broader family emotional context may interact with parental harsh discipline to influence child adjustment.

The Mental Health Effects of Migrant Family Separation

Many major medical organizations have asserted that family separation is a traumatic childhood experience due to critical disruptions in attachment and the child’s environment. In this commentary, we aim to provide physicians with a growing body of recent data that examines the particular effects of separation on migrant families. Of note, there are myriad scenarios by which vulnerable youths who are fleeing torture and persecution may be separated from a primary attachment figure. Causes of premigration separation include diaspora of family members to avoid violence or persecution, as well as the separation that results from family members being kidnapped, trafficked, or murdered. During migration, family members may travel separate routes based on the physical abilities of travelers. This Commentary will examine the mental health impacts of postmigration separation: separation that occurs at the border upon arrival or that is experienced by resettled refugees separated from family members who continue to reside in refugee camps or the country of origin. This Commentary may allow psychiatrists a more nuanced perspective regarding the mental health of migrant families, while also enabling more effective advocacy through emerging data.

Editors' Best of 2020

There is, in the content of the Journal, an embarrassment of riches, and picking a "best" seems to demand a certain qualification: is the "best" the most interesting, most surprising, most educational, most important, most provocative, most enjoyable? How to choose? We are hardly unbiased and can admit to a special affection for the ones that we and the authors worked hardest on, hammering version after version into shape. Acknowledging these biases, here are the 2020 articles that we think deserve your attention, or at least a second read.