ArticleFrontiers in psychology2020
Who Benefits From Being an Only Child? A Study of Parent-Child Relationship Among Chinese Junior High School Students.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Mental health status of secondary school students: a meta-analysis of comparative studies between one-child and multi-child families in China.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Prevalence of prolonged grief disorder and its symptoms in Chinese parents who lost their only child: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2022Pooled it
- Factors Associated With Non-suicidal Self-Injury in Chinese Adolescents: A Meta-Analysis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2021Pooled it
- Mothers' experiences of having a daughter with breast cancer in Chinese families: A qualitative study.Asia-Pacific journal of oncology nursing · 2026Article
- The correlations between psychotic symptoms and childhood maltreatment as well as sex differences in adolescents with major depressive disorder.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2026Article
- Associations Between Traumatic Event Exposure and Depressive Symptoms Among Chinese University Freshmen: A Conditional Process Analysis of Interpersonal Difficulties and Only-Child Status.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Intergenerational associations of depression and anxiety among adult mother-daughter dyads in China.European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists · 2026Article
- Spiritual emptiness and depression among university students: the roles of perceived support and age.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- A Cluster Analysis of EPOCH Questionnaire Data from University Students in Sichuan, China: Exploring Group Differences in Psychological Well-Being and Demographic Factors.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The impact of only-child status on adolescent mental health: a multi-center cross-sectional study using propensity score matching in Western China.BMC public health · 2025Article
- A Study on the Differences in Parental Educational Expectations and Adolescents' Academic and Psychological Development: A Comparative Analysis of Only Children and Non-Only Children.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Exploring the influence of social relationships on adolescents' multiple sleep problems via a school-based China education panel survey: the moderating role of depressive emotion.BMC public health · 2025Article
- The Relationship Between Mental Health Literacy and Social Well-Being: A Longitudinal Study in China.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- The prevalence of suboptimal health status among Chinese secondary school students and its relationship with family health: the mediating role of perceived stress and problematic internet use.BMC public health · 2024Article
- Parenting styles and personal belief in a just world among Chinese children and adolescents: gender, living location, and age as moderators.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- How positive childhood experiences foster college students' adjustment: the role of sibling number and self-esteem.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- The health benefits of bicycling to school among adolescents in China: A propensity score matching study.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- [Differences in non-suicidal self-injury behaviors between only-child and non-only-child adolescents with mood disorders: a cross-sectional study].Zhongguo dang dai er ke za zhi = Chinese journal of contemporary pediatrics · 2022Article
- Family socioeconomic status and the parent-child relationship in Chinese adolescents: the multiple serial mediating roles of visual art activities.BMC public health · 2022Article
- Comparison of factors influencing the willingness to donate biospecimens among guardians of children with cancer and adult cancer patients.Cancer medicine · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
After more than three decades of implementation, China's one-child policy has generated a large number of only children. Although extensive research has documented the developmental outcomes of being an only child, research on the parent-child relational quality of the only child is somewhat limited. Using China Education Panel Survey (2014), this study examined whether the only child status was associated with parent-child relationships among Chinese junior high school students. It further explored whether children's gender moderated the association between the only child status and parent-child relationships. Two-level ordered logit models suggested that only children were more likely to report a close relationship with their mothers and fathers compared to children from multiple-child families (including two-child families). Taking birth order into consideration, we found that, only children were more likely to have close parent-child relationships than firstborns, whereas no significant differences were found between only children and lastborns. Interaction analyses further suggested that the only child advantages were gender-specific: the positive effects of the only child status were stronger for daughters than for sons, that is, daughters benefited more from being only children. Our findings highlight the importance of considering children's gender and birth order in exploring the only child effects in the Chinese context. Additional analyses about sibling-gender composition indicated female children were more likely to be disadvantaged with the presence of younger brothers, whereas male children benefited more from having older sisters. This reveals that the son preference culture is still deep-rooted in the Chinese multiple-child families.
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