ArticleFrontiers in psychiatry2026
Maternal education and adolescent psychological symptom severity: the synergistic reversal trade-offs between perceived maternal support and parental educational expectations.
Article in Frontiers in psychiatry, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
Background: Adolescence is a critical period with a high incidence of psychological and behavioral problems. In China, adolescent mental health presents a severe challenge. The family serves as the core environment for adolescent development, within which maternal education is a key factor influencing adolescent mental health. Methods: Based on the data from the "Database of Youth Health" (DYH), this study employed a cross-sectional design and used a quadratic regression model to examine the impact of maternal education on adolescent psychological symptom severity (APSS), with a focus on testing for non-linear effects. The robustness of the findings was verified through a U-test for non-linearity and an instrumental variable approach. Additionally, mediation and moderation analyses were conducted to explore the underlying mechanisms and heterogeneity involved. Results: Regression analysis revealed an inverted U-shaped relationship between maternal education and APSS (higher SCL-90 scores indicate greater severity), with the peak occurring at 6.442 years of maternal education. This non-linear relationship emerged from synergistic reversal trade-offs between perceived maternal support and parental educational expectations. Heterogeneity analysis indicated that before the educational inflection point, non-only children exhibited significantly lower APSS, whereas beyond this point, only children demonstrated a steeper reduction in symptom severity. Conclusion: This study reveals an inverted U-shaped relationship, driven by a "synergistic reversal trade-off" mechanism: as maternal education increases, both perceived maternal support and parental educational expectations simultaneously shift from risk to protective factors. The dual-pathway reversal is amplified in only-child families, revealing steeper risks at low education levels and stronger protective benefits at high levels. These findings offer empirical evidence for differentiated, mechanism-driven family interventions.
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