Peer-reviewed article
The Effect of Parenting Practices and Family Adjustment of Caregivers on Early Childhood Development in Rural China
Qiannan Song, Yali Zhang, Wenting Zheng, Ai Yue, Na Qiao ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined how parenting practices and family adjustment affect early childhood development in rural northwest China using data from 1,682 children aged 5 to 24 months. The researchers found that over half of the children showed signs of developmental delay across cognitive, language, motor, and social-emotional areas. Better parenting practices and family adjustment were associated with improvements in all areas of child development, with parenting practices being the strongest factor.
Key points
- 53.58% of children showed susceptibility to cognitive development delays
- 60.02% were at risk of language delays, 36.24% motor delays, and 40.11% social-emotional delays
- Parenting practices had the strongest relationship with all dimensions of child development
- Family adjustment had a significant positive effect on social-emotional development specifically
- Both parental consistency and reduction of coercive parenting were poor in the study population
Limitations
The document does not clarify whether this is observational/correlational analysis or a causal study design. The findings show associations but the direction of causality cannot be determined from this description alone.
Abstract
We used a unique panel dataset of 1682 children from villages in Northwest China. Our objective was to estimate the impact of parenting practices and family adjustment on early childhood development among infants aged 5 to 24 months. Within this cohort, an alarming 53.58% of children exhibited susceptibility to cognitive development delays. Additionally, 60.02%, 36.24%, and 40.11% were at risk of language, motor, and social-emotional delays, respectively. Moreover, parental consistency, coercive parenting and the parental adjustment of caregivers were relatively poor. Multivariate analysis revealed that total parenting practices and family adjustment had significant positive effects on all dimensions of early childhood development, including the cognitive, language, motor, and social-emotional dimensions; parenting practices had the strongest relationship with all dimensions of child development; and family adjustment had a significant positive predictive function only for social-emotional development.