Group Differences in Parental Stress, Parent-child Relationship, and Preschoolers’ Social Development: Evidence from Shandong, China
List of Authors
Amira Najiha Yahya, Vishalache Balakrishnan, Yixin Fu
Keyword
Parental Stress; Parent-child Relationship; Social Development; Demographic Factors
Abstract
The current study sought to investigate whether parental stress, parent-child relationship quality, and preschoolers’ social growth status differ across key demographic variables, including parental education level, child gender, child grade, and only-child status, in Shandong Province, China. Guided by Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory and Abidin’s Parental Stress Model, this study conceptualizes family processes as dynamic interactions between individual and contextual factors that jointly shape early development of preschoolers. As the historical center of Confucian culture, Shandong Province provides a distinctive sociocultural context for investigating variations in family stress, parent-child interactions, and social growth during early childhood. Using a cluster random sampling method, the study recruited parents from six kindergartens located in both urban and rural areas, who completed online self-administered questionnaires, yielding 510 valid responses. Statistical analyses, including independent samples t-tests, one-way ANOVA, MANOVA, and LSD post hoc tests, were conducted to assess group-level differences across demographic variables. The results indicated that: (1) parental stress varied significantly according to parental education level and preschooler’ only-child status; (2) parent-child relationship quality differed across grade levels of preschoolers; and (3) preschooler’ social competence and behavioral outcomes varied by only-child status. These outcomes highlight the differential roles of demographic characteristics in shaping family functioning and child development, offering empirical evidence to inform early childhood education management, parental support programs, and culturally responsive interventions within diverse sociocultural contexts.