Psychological Development and Education ›› 2022, Vol. 38 ›› Issue (1): 64-71.doi: 10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2022.01.08

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Relationship between Mother's Son Preference and Parent-child Communication: The Moderating Role of Children's Gender

LIU Chunhui1, LIU Sijia1, GUO Xiaolin1, LUO Liang1,2   

  1. 1. Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment toward Basic Education Quality, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875;
    2. Institute of Developmental Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875
  • Published:2022-02-17

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Abstract: Son preference is a phenomenon in which parents prefer sons, breed more sons and invest more in sons. In present study, the mothers of 653 fifth grade students were surveyed in order to explore the relationship among son preference, parent-child communication and children's gender. Results are below:(1) Mothers of non-only and migrant children, with lower levels of education, more than 2 children in the family, and children ranked second and above with the children tested have higher levels of son preference; (2) Moderation modeling indicated that children's gender plays a significant moderating role in the relationship between mothers' son preference and the parent-child communication. Further simple slope test showed that for girls, parent-child communication showed a significant downward trend with the increase of mothers' son preference; for boys, mothers' son preference did not significantly predict parent-child communication. This moderating effect reveals the negative impact of son preference on daughters' parent-child communication, suggesting that in the context of emphasizing gender equality, son preference is still a noticeable phenomenon, especially in the key period of child personality and habit formation, mothers who are the primary caregivers deserve more attention.

Key words: son preference, parent-child communication, children's gender

CLC Number: 

  • B844
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