The Impact of Differential Parenting: Study Protocol on a Longitudinal Study Investigating Child and Parent Factors on Children’s Psychosocial Health in Hong Kong

Abstract

Adolescents who believe that their parents treat them differently from their siblings have poorer psychosocial well-being than otherwise. This phenomenon, which is known as parental differential treatment or PDT occurs in up to 65% of families. Past studies have examined socio-demographic variables (e.g., child gender, age, and birth order) as predictors of PDT, but these immutable characteristics do little to inform interventions and help these adolescents. Hence, this study extends past research by investigating links among parent empathy, parent perception of PDT, child perception of PDT, child perception of fairness and child well-being (self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and trust in the relationship with parents). Furthermore, this study tests whether adolescent personality (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism), child empathy, and child perception of fairness moderate these links. This study will utilize a two-wave longitudinal design with a 1-year lapse. Data will be collected from 760 Chinese adolescents studying from Secondary One to Secondary Three in 18 schools in Hong Kong and from their parents. We test our theoretical model via a multilevel structural equation model (ML-SEM). This study both addresses (a) theoretical debates about relations among empathy, PDT, fairness, and psychosocial well-being and (b) focuses on modifiable factors and behaviors, to inform future interventions, such as parent education.

Emotional and Behavioral Changes in Preschool Firstborn Children During Transition to Siblinghood: A Mixed Methods Study

“…The partiality of the family to the second child may cause more complaints and problem behaviors of the firstborn child. 39 , 40 After 12 months of birth, the second child can move independently and walk in a small range. For various reasons, the child may be distracted by the activities of the second child, which interferes with the attention of the firstborn, and the older sibling’s craving for attention.…”

Perception of Official Corruption, Satisfaction With Government Performance, and Subjective Wellbeing—An Empirical Study From China

“…On the one hand, official corruption makes individuals fell a sense of unfairness and inequality. According to the distributive and procedural justice theory, people evaluate the outcomes based on the quality of distributions and procedures, distributive and procedural justice are associated with satisfaction and wellbeing ( Tang and Baldwin, 1996 ; Lucas et al, 2011 ; Ng et al, 2020 ), individuals who perceived injustices of corruption would have lower wellbeing. Corrupt officials may distort the public resource allocations: they are likely to spend more on those who can provide larger benefits to them ( Liu and Mikesell, 2014 ), and there will therefore be less money to spend on public goods which are necessary for ordinary people.…”

The relationship between maternal and infant empathy: The mediating role of responsive parenting

“…As mentioned earlier, parental traits (e.g., empathy) are considered important influences on child empathy development (Barnett et al, 1980;Eisenberg et al, 1989Eisenberg et al, , 1991Ng et al, 2020). Some twin studies have found that individual differences in infant empathy result from a confluence of genetic and environmental factors, which contain common elements related to parental empathy (especially maternal empathy; Volbrecht et al, 2007;Knafo et al, 2008).…”

“…During early childhood, empathy development relies on the progressive maturation of brain circuits and neural representations, constructed through interaction with the social environment (Dahl and Freda, 2017;Decety and Holvoet, 2021). Among family factors, scholars believe that parental dispositions (such as empathy), especially those of the mother (Fabes et al, 1990;Farrant et al, 2012), are related to infants' empathy development (Barnett et al, 1980;Eisenberg et al, 1991;Guo and Feng, 2017;Ng et al, 2020;Salvadori et al, 2021). Thus, excluding the influence of heredity, understanding the mechanisms through which parents' empathy influences children's empathy development would help provide caregivers with a clear practical framework and aid scholars in tracing the origins of individual differences in empathy during early childhood.…”