Father love is as important as mother love for offspring development and well-being. Father involvement and secure father-child attachment are associated with reduced child psychopathology. Father absence in the divorced family has been found cause more child problem behaviors. One common “father absence” in rural areas of China is father rural-to-urban migration. With the China’s rapid progress of industrialization and urbanization, massive rural male labors migrate to cities to seek better employment, leaving behind their wives and children. Although father labor migration may economically benefit the family, there is also a great need for research on whether and how fathers’ labor migration duration affects children’s psychological adjustment, especially during early childhood.In this study, we investigate the effect of father’s labor migration duration on child emotional problems and its underlying mechanisms. We hypothesize that father migration would increase young children’s risk for internalizing symptoms, and mother’s ineffective parenting as well as child temperamental behavioral inhibition may mediate the negative effect of father migration.Participants were 2059 young children (age range = 3-6, 53.5% boys) recruited from the preschools in rural areas of China. All children were from families with two married parents and mothers had not ever migrated since child birth. Mothers rated their parenting styles and children’s temperamental behavioral inhibition and internalizing problems. The mothers also reported the status of parents’ rural-to-urban migration since child’s birth and the father’s migration duration in each past year. The children were then classified into three groups: 1) children whose parents had never migrated (N = 1466); 2) children whose father had ever migrated one to 12 months (N = 310); 3) children whose father had ever migrated more than 12 months (N = 283).Results showed that father’s migration duration was significantly related to children’s internalizing problems, behavioral inhibition and mother’s authoritarian parenting (Table 1). These associations were still significant after controlling for child age, maternal age, parents’ educational attainment, family income. Further analyses demonstrated that the effect of father’s migration on children’s internalizing problems was partly mediated by mother’s authoritarian parenting (Sobel test: Z =3.11, P =.002; Figure 1a), and child behavioral inhibition (Sobel test: Z =3.37, P <.001; Figure 1b).The findings confirmed the negative effect of father’s rural-to-urban migration duration on Chinese young children’s emotional problems. Moreover, we demonstrated two potential pathways through which father absence increase children’s internalizing problems: mother’s authoritarian parenting and child behavioral inhibition. Interventions focused on mother’s parenting skill and child behavioral inhibition may alleviate the cost of father labor migration.
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