Co-residence with both parents, attitudes toward parents, and psychological difficulties among Chinese secondary school students: indirect associations through social adaptability.

BACKGROUND

This cross-sectional study examined whether co-residence status and students' attitudes toward parents were associated with psychological difficulties directly and indirectly through social adaptability.

METHOD: A regional census cluster survey distributed questionnaires to 39,739 students in 20 secondary schools in one district of Chongqing, China. The analytic sample comprised 34,097 valid responses (85.80%). Psychological difficulties were represented by continuous scores from 35 Mental Health Test items covering academic anxiety, self-blame, and impulsivity. Two separate observed-variable path models were estimated with school-level clustering, maximum likelihood estimation, 5,000 cluster-bootstrap draws, and adjustment for sex and grade.

RESULTS

More positive attitudes toward parents were associated with fewer psychological difficulties through social adaptability (standardized indirect association = -0.148, bias-corrected 95% CI [-0.170, -0.129]); the total association was -0.196 [-0.228, -0.162]. Compared with students living with both parents, students living with others showed a small positive indirect association with psychological difficulties (0.034 [0.022, 0.050]) and a small total association (0.049 [0.033, 0.070]).

CONCLUSION

The findings were compatible with indirect associations through social adaptability, but the cross-sectional design does not establish temporal or causal mediation. Co-residence findings should be interpreted cautiously because the retained dataset did not preserve the original nonparental living-arrangement categories.