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Background and Aim: Physical activity is an important means to promote the comprehensive and healthy development of children's bodies and minds. The national health strategy and population policy adjustment, the development of kindergartens, and the deterioration of children's physical health have all worked together to bring unprecedented opportunities for the development of children's sports in China. The purpose of this paper is to study the background information of the contents of the curriculum of preschool physical education ability of year 4 students and develop the curriculum to improve the preschool physical education ability of year 4 students. Materials and Methods: The researcher has studied the literature on the development of physical education teachers' physical education ability curriculum to cultivate year 4 students' physical education ability from the aspects of the curriculum development process, components, implementation, and evaluation, and has studied the quality of students' teachers from textbooks, academic documents, and related research. The researcher also used a simple random sampling method to have 4 teachers as a sample. The population is 8 expert teachers in physical education. The research instruments of this study are an interview questionnaire on preschool's physical education ability and lesson plans. Results: Research findings: 1) The 6 components of the course include principles, objectives, content, instructional strategies using situational teaching methods, materials, and evaluation. 2) Preschool physical education ability which includes: 2.1) General ability, 2.2) Special ability, and 2.3) Application ability. After that, the researcher designed and completed the training course components of preschool physical education, and then evaluated the quality by five experts. The IOC value was between 3.80-4.00, and the interrater reliability value was between 0.77-0.79> 0.5. The course components were modified according to the experts' suggestions. Conclusion: The components of the course which include 6 components could improve the preschool physical education ability of year 4 students effectively.

In this study, 285 Chinese core journal papers involving early childhood sports in the CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure) database from 1993 to 2022 were selected as samples. Text mining and data statistical analysis tools, such as BICOMB2.0, SPSS22.0, UCINET6.0, EXCEL2016, and other research methods in bibliometrics, such as word frequency analysis, co word clustering analysis, multidimensional scale analysis, and strategic coordinate map analysis, were used to explore the status and evolutionary trends of early childhood sports in China. The results are as follows: Since 2011, the annual number of documents has indicated a wave-like increasing trend every year, reaching its peak in 2020. In total, 237 institutions participated in this study. The journal distribution of papers in this field was close to the 1:4:16 ratio of Bradford's law. A relatively stable periodic group was formed. 12 cluster themes have been formed in the field of children's sports in China.

Sustainable Development Goal Target 4.2.1 is monitored by determining the proportion of children aged 24 to 59 months who are developmentally on track in the domains of health, learning, and psychosocial well-being. UNICEF has developed a caregiver report measure, the Early Childhood Development Index 2030 (ECDI2030), to measure progress towards this target. This paper examines whether a newly developed tool, the Early Childhood Development Assessment Scale--Direct Assessment (ECDAS-DA) can add value to the measurement of Target Indicator 4.2.1 by complementing UNICEF's ECDI2030, and explores the psychometric properties of the ECDAS-DA. A total of 956 children (476 girls) aged 3 to 5 years from Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar were administered the ECDAS-DA in individual sessions. Caregivers provided responses to a survey based on UNICEF's ECDI2030. Confirmatory Factor Analyses indicated that learning, health, and psychosocial well-being domains of the ECDAS-DA were three component parts of one underlying construct of early child development. Significant correlations between the ECDAS-DA and the caregiver-reported ECDI2030 survey were found in the learning and health domains but findings were mixed for the psychosocial well-being domain. Multiple measures of early development could be important in measuring SDG Target 4.2.1 and the ECDAS-DA has the potential to complement UNICEF's ECDI2030.

This paper explains various good practices and perspectives of Early Childhood Education across the nation. A good number of reviews across the globe has collected from various sources, research projects, PhD thesis and so on which put categorized as knowledge base, developmentally appropriate practice, observation and assessment, positive behavior guidance, inclusive practices, personal professional development. The research mainly focused on the pedagogical process, language development, social and cultural perspectives of preschools. Theses good practices also implemented and recommended at national level of those nations to their preschool/ Early Childhood Education Curriculum policies.

Integration of teaching protocol is an original creation of China's basic education. This model emphasizes the balance between the student as the subject and the teacher as the dominant. "Target-Guided Teaching" refers to the use of target guidance strategy to improve teaching, enabling students to effectively use information tools and resources to improve their learning and adapt to social development. This paper studies the target guidance model based on the integration of teaching protocol. After analyzing the early studies, we defined the concepts related to the target guidance model based on the teaching protocol, and elaborated on the strategies for determining learning and using goals for the reference of front-line education workers.

The body is the very basis of children's self-growth and their understanding of the world. However, children's body experiences of growing up have rarely been studied. This paper uses a hermeneutic phenomenological approach to study the body experience of 35 kindergarten children aged 5-6 from Nanjing, China. We found that children's body experiences can be grouped into two themes: the experience of body through physical changes, that is, children's experience of their physical changes; and the experience of body through actions, that is, children's experience of using their bodies to learn different skills and knowledge. Children's body experiences are multi-dimensional, ambivalent, and socially interactive throughout different events growing up. Even the same event involves multiple and contradictory experiences, which are influenced by both internal and external sources. Suggestions are discussed to address the problem of children's body experiences being neglected by adults.

The seven papers in this issue address a variety of challenges that parents in several different cultural places encounter as they do their best to ensure their children's safe, happy, and successful development from infancy through middle childhood: infant sleep, developmental agendas, temperament, preschools, academic success, and learning to be a parent in a new cultural environment. The authors use a varied of methods -- qualitative and quantitative -- to understand how parental figures in Botswana, China, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United States think about the needs of their children, their own role as parents, and the caretaking practices that follow. A final Commentary focuses on the power of parental ethnotheories in changing societies, and on the complexities and importance of cross-cultural research.

Although abundant evidence demonstrates that play is the source of development for preschool-aged children in various cultures, few studies have investigated the role of adult-children collective play in supporting the development of children in institutional care settings. This study examined whether and how a play-based programme created developmental opportunities for children in an orphanage in China. The focus child, Shanshan (pseudonym), three years and seven months old, was observed in the natural setting of an orphanage. Relevant to this paper, digital video observations and fieldnotes were used for data collection. The cultural-historical concepts of play and the social situation of child development were used to analyse how Shanshan changed through a ten-week intervention. Findings suggest that even within a short period of time, the implementation of collective play changed the social situation for the child in institutional care, and had considerable impact on the child's play development and engagement. This study contributes to understanding how collective play can act as an effective intervention strategy for children in institutional care.

The notion of learning dispositions has extended conceptions of learning in early childhood education to incorporate dimensions such as habits of mind and patterns of behaviour. This paper conceptualizes learning dispositions through a Chinese lens, and with conceptualizing this notion, explores associated pedagogical practices. The data are drawn from the field notes in an early childhood classroom and focus group interviews with sixteen early childhood teachers and three early childhood experts. The evidence indicates that disposition is an essential component on the participants' construction of children's learning as well as a deliberate focus of teachers' teaching. However, it is also revealed that children's learning dispositions are something of paradox, offering the potential of a learner-centred pedagogy and yet are grounded in teaching plans, prescribed goals and specific activities. Findings interrogate the positioning of learning dispositions in relation to the wider discourse of children's learning in the Chinese early childhood context.

The practice of integrating songs into educational research is seen as an emerging phenomenon, focusing on students' existential situation from the perspective of culture. This paper explores the connections between the songs selected and children's life experiences in different periods between the 1950s and the present. There exist numerous songs involving the theme of schoolbags over the past 70 years. In 14 typical popular songs, the cultural implications of schoolbags roughly fall into four categories, namely political, emotional, playful, and visionary, each respectively reflecting different degrees of weight captured by the song originators. Accompanied by the diversity of musical rhythms and melodies, the musical images of schoolbags may vary in terms of phenomenology and schooling culture. The nature of schoolbags in songs keeps changing, closely related to the micro-political experiences of the singers. Therefore, as a teaching resource outside the classroom, popular songs exert a greater influence on students' spiritual cultivation than formal knowledge.

In 2001, China's moral education curriculum reform called for a "returning to life" as a radical shift from its previous empty sermonic pedagogy, hoping to cultivate its twenty-first century children into ethical humans. Accordingly, a notion of "human ecology" appeared in the post-2001 textbook design, which became "co-being with" in the latest 2016 textbook redesign. This paper picks up this "co-being with" as a philosophical, ethical, and ecological notion and scrutinizes its relevance to the discursive construction of China's moral child in two steps. First, it draws upon Heidegger's thinking and the Chinese Daoist ecological understanding to explicate the philosophical significance of this "co-being with" for moral education. Second, it unpacks the discursive embodiments of this ethical-ecological "co-being" with in connection with the construction of moral subjects in the post-2001 and 2016 textbooks. Through rigorous textual analysis, this paper finds that the post-2001 textbook discourses embody an instrumental trope and a subject vs object binary style of reasoning, which possibly makes egoistic rather than ethical children. The 2016 textbook discourses, especially those on the theme of "co-being with," however, constrain the above instrumentality and envision cultivating ethical children. This paper argues this theorized "co-being with" provides some implications for moral education in China and the world, meanwhile raising some pedagogical challenges as well.

In a time when story-acting practices have gained increasing focus, little is known about the relations between family story acting and a child's interactions with the ideal models represented in stories. Drawing upon a cultural-historical perspective of play and development, this study is aimed at discovering how a child is able to interact with the conceptual models usually formed in stories such as "sharing" during family dramatic play. The case study reported in this paper related to a three-year-old child and the parents from Mainland China. A total 25.15 hours of video observations and interviews was collected over 16 family visits during 2 research periods. Findings suggested that a shared imaginary situation created during the co-construction of a play-world between a child and his/her parents had its importance in fostering the child's active explorations of the ideal descriptions of certain conceptual rules. A new interpretation of the play-world can be made considering the pretend form made in a play-world, which acts as a bridge between a child's real state of conceptual understanding and the ideal form of the concept described in a story-world.

This paper reviews the development of early childhood education and care (ECEC) in China. The historical context from 1900 is summarised, and then developments from the 1980s up to the present kindergarten expansion movement, starting in 2010, are covered in detail. The review shows that ECEC development in China has undergone great changes both in policy and practice. The clash between progressive ideas and existing kindergarten practices has been and remains a challenge. The "cultural appropriateness issue" is of concern, and there are strong voices for keeping valuable aspects of Chinese traditional culture. China has put great efforts recently into boosting kindergarten participation nationwide; yet, there have been and remain great social economic disparities at various levels. There is also growing concern that the programme quality cannot be maintained with the rapid kindergarten expansion process. Policy development for the childcare sector (0-3) in China is relatively thin compared to recent booms for kindergartens.

This paper examines outcomes associated with participation in short-term, international internship experiences. Results suggest short-term international internship experiences contribute to rich personal and professional development outcomes. Findings highlight participant challenges associated with initial internship experiences, professional growth in teaching skills and strategies, and personal growth in confidence, flexibility, and coping skills. Multicultural competencies and program-level learning goals were also supported through the international internship experience.

This paper provides a composite analysis of children's academic development grounded on the capability approach. The study utilises a panel dataset comprising 8,422 Chinese children and adolescents aged 6 to 16, observed between 2012 and 2018. It introduces a series of innovative indicators, including a parent advantage index to capture how parents influence their children and a ranking indicator for spending priorities to reify the value of children's education that families have reasoned. To address unobserved heterogeneity, we adopted fixed-effects models, multilevel modelling, and heteroskedasticity-based instrumental variables. Our primary results show that a 1% increase in the parent advantage index yields an increase of 13.85% to 21.31% in children's academic development, and the biggest leap in prioritising education-relevant spending increases the child outcomes by 2.88% to 6.57%. By highlighting the influence of parents' beings and doings, particularly the value they assign to education, this research contributes to the existing literature on child development, which often focuses predominantly on material dimensions. In sum, it expands the frontiers of the capability approach and related research on parental practices. It offers novel insights into how policies can be reinforced to equalise educational opportunities and to boost human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transition to school lays the foundation for development of children throughout the school year. It is a research topic of interest across many countries including China. Extant reviews on transition to school mainly addressed international research written in English, however, the major foci and research findings of Chinese research were not included. This review included 131 international studies and 113 Chinese studies on school readiness and transition to school, from 1999 to 2021, to identify major foci and findings of both international and Chinese research on this topic. A considerable of overlap of foci and consistent findings between international and Chinese transition research were found in this review. The unique focus of Chinese research on psychological pressure of children in transition to school and its implication were discussed. Differences of methods adopted in international and Chinese studies were identified. Conclusions about the trends and future research directions are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The recognition of culture and context as pivotal influences on the developmental trajectory of young children has been underscored by numerous developmental theories. Localized knowledge is essential for comprehending cultural universality with specificity for early childhood development (ECD). Methods: Thirteen focus group discussions were conducted with professionals, caregivers, and teachers from four regions in China. Thematic content analysis was employed to identify patterns and themes, followed by coding to identify more conceptual units of meaning. Results: The findings reveal distinct culture-based skills across four domains of ECD in China. These highlight a local culture that embraces a comprehensive, dynamic, and staged perspective on the development of young children. This study elucidates the multidimensional impact of the environment on young children's development, with a focus on children's behavioral characteristics and temperament traits, ECEC practices, and ECEC beliefs that transcend identity, culture, and the economy. Discussion: This study contributes to the assessment of ECD for future cultural comparisons and enhances the scientific understanding of the interplay between developmental skills in young children and diverse cultural expectations and backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peer relationships play an indispensable role in the social, emotional, and cognitive development of children. However, children exhibiting social withdrawal, such as unsociability, may face challenges in social adjustment. In collectivistic cultures like China, unsociability may be perceived negatively, aligning poorly with collective norms. The objective of the present investigation was to examine the associations between unsociability, receptive vocabulary, and indicators of social adjustment in a cohort of young migrant children residing in urban regions of mainland China. The study mainly aimed to investigate the potential moderating influence of receptive language on these associations. The study involved 148 young children (82 boys, 66 girls, Mage =62.32months, SD =6.76) enrolled in preschools or kindergartens in Shanghai, People's Republic of China. Multiple sources of assessment were utilized, encompassing evaluations from mothers (about child unsociability), teacher (assessing social adjustment), and standardized tests (measuring receptive vocabulary). The results indicated that the relations between unsociability and peer exclusion were more positive among children with lower levels of receptive vocabulary but not significant for children with higher levels of receptive vocabulary. Similarly, the relations between unsociability and peer exclusion were more negative among children with lower levels of receptive vocabulary but not significant for children with higher levels of receptive vocabulary. Thus, this study informs us about how receptive vocabulary is jointly associated with unsociable children's development. As well, the findings highlight the importance of considering the meaning and implication of unsociability in Chinese culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many children with autism spectrum disorder do not have symbolic play skills. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a training procedure on the acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of object-substitution symbolic play in children with autism spectrum disorder. A single-case experimental design (multiple-probe across four behaviors) was used. One girl (5 years) and two boys (4–5 years) participated in this study. The training procedure involved withdrawing necessary items in play activities, supplying multiple substitutes, and providing hierarchical assistive prompts. Each child's symbolic play responses across baseline, intervention, and follow-up conditions were recorded and graphed. Data analysis involved visual inspection of graphs. The results indicated that the procedure effectively increased and maintained object-substitution symbolic play. Generalization to untaught play activities occurred in all children, and symbolic play increased in the free play setting for one child. Arranging play activities with missing items increased opportunities for children to engage in symbolic play. The training procedure can be used in clinical and educational settings as an initial step to establish and improve complex play behavior in children with autism spectrum disorder who lack such skills. Many children with autism spectrum disorder have inappropriate play behaviors and do not demonstrate symbolic play. Arranging play activities with missing items and systematic assistive prompts effectively increased object-substitution symbolic play. Generalization of symbolic play to untrained play activities occurred after the intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article engages with the question of how theorisation of the social construction of childhood can be applied across cultural contexts, taking China and Britain as examples. The paper draws on collaborative dialogue between scholars from the People's Republic of China and Britain, and literatures from both Anglophone and Mandarin sources. It takes forward emergent work on theorising childhood from diverse global perspectives by focusing on the institutionalisation of childhood in these countries, with particular reference to language, conceptualisation and legal frameworks relating to chronological age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to examine the lasting effects of childhood experiences of being left behind on the cognitive abilities of Chinese adults. To investigate the impact of children being left behind on adult cognitive capacity, we utilized an instrumental variable (IV) approach and the instrumental variable quantile regression (IVQR) method with data from the 2010 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). The results reveal that childhood experiences of being left behind, especially by mothers during late childhood, have significant negative effects on cognitive abilities in adulthood. Short-term and long-term left-behind experiences both have detrimental effects on cognitive development. Women, those born in the late 1980s, individuals from middle and low-income households, those living in rural areas, and those with siblings are more vulnerable to these effects.The IVQR analysis demonstrates that the negative effects of childhood experiences of being left behind are more pronounced among those with lower levels of cognitive ability. Furthermore, our findings suggest that educational human capital could serve as a possible channel linking early left-behind experiences to adult cognitive ability. Our research provides a better understanding of how parental migration can impact the cognitive development of children left behind in China and other developing countries in the long term. These study results may assist policymakers in implementing measures to protect left-behind children from negative repercussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We examine the other-regarding preferences of grade 3 and 5 rural and urban children in China. • We run a lab-in-field experiment using three simple allocation games. • We compare rural children by parent migration status to each other and city children. • For rural children, altruistic preferences developed most among those left behind by both parents. • By grade 5 the preferences of these children most resembled those of city children. Other-regarding preferences have a profound influence on both individual and societal success. In this paper, using a unique sample from China, we study the impact of two family background characteristics: parental migration and rural/urban status on both the level and the developmental formation of other-regarding preferences during childhood. Decades of economic reform have led to an unprecedented growth of economically driven rural-to-urban internal migration in China. Many migrant parents leave their children behind. According to figures from China's 2010 census, more than 61 million children from birth to 17 years were "left behind." In this lab-in-field experiment, we use three simple allocation games to study samples from four populations: rural children left behind by both parents, rural children left behind by one parent, rural non-left-behind children, and urban children. We expected that the development of altruistic preferences would be positively associated with parental presence. However, we found this was not the case. In fact, among rural children the development of altruistic preferences from Grade 3 to Grade 5 was most pronounced among those who were left-behind by both parents. Moreover, by Grade 5, it was these children whose preferences most resembled those of the urban children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Home education plays a unique, vital role in child development that differs from that of formal education. Currently, there is an abnormal phenomenon in Chinese basic education: home education becomes academically focused. This article gives an overview of skewed home education in basic education students, analyzes its causes and harms, and proposes relevant suggestions for a more reasonable implementation of home education with the aim of promoting legitimate home-school partnerships for student healthy growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese Hukou system, a major tool for social control employed by the government, has undergone various fundamental reforms and has received increasing attention in recent years. This study investigates the relationship between Hukou policy innovations and migrant children's cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes, which are vital to the lifetime development of individuals. On the basis of 2654 children holding non-local Hukou from the 2013–2014 wave of the China Education Panel Survey, the results show that migrant students who expect to have fair access to local senior high schools have significantly higher test scores and higher educational aspirations than their counterparts. The expectation of attending a local senior high school improves migrant students' relationship with teachers and the social acclimation with classmates. These findings carry policy implications for addressing migrant children's educational challenges and shed light on China's reform of its Hukou system to achieve social justice and equality. • This paper analyzes the impacts of Hukou reforms on migrant students. • Test scores are higher for migrant students expecting fair access to local senior high schools. • Fair access is positively related to higher educational aspirations. • Fair access improves student-teacher relationships for migrant students. • Fair access improves classmate relationships for migrant students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impacts of both the availability and the quality of village preschools on student enrollment and longer-term outcomes in the context of the rapid development of early childhood education in the poorest areas of China. After the implementation of one of the world's largest universal preschool programs for a decade, the number of preschools in China has more than doubled while annual enrollments have increased by 60%. Using nationally representative survey data tracking children from 2010 to 2018, we identify the causal impacts of village preschools using a difference-in-differences instrumental variable approach. Building new preschools substantially increased students' access to early childhood education in low-income villages. We also find suggestive evidence of positive impacts on their cognitive skills four years after preschool enrollment, but not their non-cognitive skills. To identify the impacts of preschool quality, we re-examined the "One-Village-One-Preschool" experiment in one of China's poorest counties. High-quality preschools substantially improved students' academic outcomes, particularly among disadvantaged students. Our findings contribute new evidence on how early childhood education affects human capital development in low-income regions. • The number of preschools in China has more than doubled in the past decade under one of world's largest universal preschool programs. • Building new preschools substantially increased students' access to early childhood education in low-income villages. • We find evidence of positive impacts on students' cognitive skills four years after preschool enrollment, but not their non-cognitive skills. • High-quality preschools substantially improved students' academic outcomes, particularly among disadvantaged students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To examine the possible reciprocal associations between supportive parenting and children's social skills, the present study tested three cross-lagged models in 305 Chinese preschool children: the parent-driven model, the child-driven model, and the reciprocal model. Mothers reported on their supportive parenting and rated children's social skills at three time points, once in each year of preschool (ages 4, 5, and 6). The results indicated that the reciprocal model fit the best to explain the association between supportive parenting and children's social skills. In the reciprocal relationship between supportive parenting and children's social skills, the parent-driven effect was significantly stronger than the child-driven effect among children aged 4 to 5, but the child-driven effect was significantly stronger than the parent-driven effect for children aged 5 to 6. The findings contribute to our understanding of dynamic associations between supportive parenting and children's social skills in the Chinese context. Implications for educational practices are discussed. Highlights: The reciprocal model produced the best fit in explaining the association between supportive parenting and children's social skills among Chinese preschoolers. The parent-driven effect was significantly different from the child-driven effect in the reciprocal association. A random intercepts cross-lagged panel model was used to compare the parent-driven model, the child-driven model, and the reciprocal model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mindfulness emphasizes the awareness of the “here-and-now.” Studies in the recent decade have found that mindfulness can affect positive change in child and adolescent school performance. As an emerging field, however, the mechanisms and effects of mindfulness practice on academic performance for children in developing countries have not been elaborated sufficiently in previous studies. Using China as an example context, this paper examines the relationship between mindfulness practice and academic performance of migrant children, and explores the role of executive function in this relationship. Through a survey with 219 fifth-graders in two migrant schools in Beijing, this study validates the positive association between mindfulness, executive function, and better school grades in Chinese, math, and English tests. Additionally, this study adds empirical evidence to the roles of mindfulness in child development, and also sheds light on the pathway through which mindfulness positively correlates with academic performance. These findings provide implications for addressing child academic challenges and conducting further research among migrant children in China and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childhood circumstances may have a long-term impact on individual life-cycle outcomes. Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, we explore the long-term effect of childhood left-behind experience due to parental rural-to-urban migration. The extended regression model is employed to address the potential endogeneity of being left-behind children with an instrument variable. The results indicate that the left-behind experience in childhood leads to a significantly lower income in adulthood. Robustness checks using the probability of being relative poverty validate our findings. Mechanism analysis shows that parental migration would reduce household income per capita, childrenʻs health outcomes, and the probability of enrolling in post-compulsory education, which were the possible channels. Our analysis highlights the long-term consequences of childhood left-behind experience, which suggests the need for preventive intervention to improve the early development of left-behind children and throughout the life course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known on the financial well-being of families raising children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Family financial well-being has important impacts on the development of children with ASD. The study uses a 2019 survey collected from Chinese families raising a child with ASD (N = 3064) to examine their financial well-being and its association with health expenditures for children. Extensive control variables (i.e., demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of children, respondents, and their families) are adjusted in analyses. Findings suggest that the amount of health expenditures is negatively associated with respondents' perception of their financial status. The significance of health expenditures disappears after household material hardship is adjusted. Health expenditures affect financial well-being mainly through resource competitions against family needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the developing world, children are at high risk of growing up without one or both parents for extended periods of time during childhood, largely due to parental labor migration. Limited work has studied the potential impact of parental migration on early childhood development (ECD), and longitudinal data to address this question is particularly lacking. Using three waves of the China Family Panel Studies data collected in 2010, 2012 and 2014, the current study examines the association between parental migration and a number of ECD outcomes. We address the complexity and dynamic processes of family migration by categorizing patterns of parental migration during the first 5 years of children's lives, taking into account timing and sequencing of parental migration events, as well as children's cumulative experience with parental migration. We then associate various patterns of parental migration with the trajectories of childhood linear growth, childhood illness and home environment from age 1 to age 5, and with pre-primary school enrollment, social behavioral development, and cognitive stimulation measured at age 4 or 5. Our findings indicate that parental migration, regardless of the number of absent parents, was not associated with childhood illness, behavior, or preschool enrollment. We observe a negative association between parental migration and both cognitive stimulation and the quality of the home environment. The strength of the associations is stronger when migration involved two parents. Children of returned migrants exhibit a slower rate of linear growth, on average. The results are largely insensitive to the timing of parental migration. The implications of lower levels of cognitive stimulation and quality of the home environment on left-behind children's cognitive development deserve further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Caregivers' parenting knowledge is of importance to child development and to achieve positive child outcomes. Even though some caregiver education programs have demonstrated positive effects, most of them are carried out in developed countries and among western samples. As a developing country with the second‐largest child population worldwide, China has initiated caregiver education programs to promote parenting knowledge among caregivers since 2016. This study examines the effect of an innovative caregiver education program on caregivers' perceived increase of parenting knowledge. Methods: A total of 310 caregivers with a child aged between 0 and 3 from Z city, China, were randomly selected to complete a survey. Caregivers' perceived increase of parenting knowledge was assessed by five specified knowledge dimensions, namely, child growth, feeding behaviours, daily care, disease prevention and safety. The independent variable was program participation, measured by respondents' use of program services. OLS regression was employed to assess the association between caregivers' program participation and their perceived increase of knowledge, controlling basic demographic and socio‐economic factors. Results: In general, program participation had statistically significant associations with caregivers' perceived increase of parenting knowledge. The associations varied by service type. Particularly, online development evaluations and in‐home sessions showed relatively consistent and positive effects on caregivers' perceived increase of parenting knowledge. Conclusions: This caregiver education program had a positive effect on caregivers' perceived increase of parenting knowledge, particularly through the use of the online development evaluations and in‐home sessions. As one of the earliest initiatives of this kind in China, the findings reveal the promise of an innovative program to advance caregivers and children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the representation of parental practices in Parenting Science, the first and longest running parenting magazine published in China since 1980. Drawing on Foucault's work on governmentality and biopolitics as well as their current development in cultural studies and sociology of health, this article critically investigates the cultural frames that surround parental practices relating to the health and development of young children. It explores how issues of medicalisation, intensive parenting, responsibility and self-management are represented in the magazine, 'reflecting' as well as 'reinforcing' dominant cultural ideas of parenting and childrearing in China. Based on a qualitative content analysis of 2295 items from 37 issues of the magazine (1980–2016), including editorials, feature stories, standard articles, Q&As, adverts and other short items, this article has identified three major frames of parental practices in monitoring and facilitating children's health, development and wellbeing: (1) the medicalisation of children's health problems, (2) the rise of expert authority and (3) the responsibilisation of parents. This article argues that these frames underpin the construction of an intensive and anxious parenting culture in China and serve as powerful tools of biopolitical control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Depression is highly prevalent among parents around the world. Although there has been substantial research on maternal depression, few studies have additionally considered paternal depression and examined the independent and potentially interactive influence between paternal and maternal depression on children's development. The objectives of this study were to investigate the unique association between paternal depression and children's later socioemotional development, and explore whether this association was moderated by maternal depression. We used data from the 2012 and 2014 waves of the China Family Panel Studies. We used multivariable linear regression models to examine the association between paternal depression, as measured using the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale, and children's socioemotional development, as measured using the Positive Behaviors Scale. We also explored whether there was effect modification by maternal depression. The sample comprised of 1615 children (Mage = 7.38 years; 48.5% female) and their parents. Twenty-four percent of fathers and 33% of mothers were depressed. We found that paternal depression was negatively associated with children's socioemotional development (β = - 0.18; 95% CI - 0.31, - 0.03), controlling for maternal depression and other sociodemographic covariates. Moreover, we found that the association was moderated by maternal depression, whereby the negative association was stronger when mothers were not depressed (β = - 0.30; 95% CI - 0.52, - 0.08) versus null when mothers were depressed (β = - 0.02; 95% CI - 0.24, 0.20). Parenting interventions should promote the mental health of fathers, in addition to mothers, as a more holistic and family-based approach for improving both the wellbeing of parents and behavioral development of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Choosing a valid and feasible method to measure child developmental outcomes is key to addressing developmental delays, which have been shown to be associated with high levels of unemployment, participation in crime, and teen pregnancies. However, measuring early childhood development (ECD) with multi-dimensional diagnostic tests such as the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development III (Bayley-III) can be time-consuming and expensive; therefore, parental screening tools such as the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ-3) are frequently an alternative measure of early childhood development in large-scale research. The ASQ is also becoming more frequently used as the first step to identify children at risk for developmental delays before conducting a diagnostic test to confirm. However, the effectiveness of the ASQ-3 is uncertain. In this study, we evaluate the accuracy of the ASQ-3 as a screening measure for children at risk of developmental delay in rural China by age group. To do so, we administered the Bayley-III, widely considered to be the “gold standard” of ECD diagnostic tests, to a sample of 1,831 five to twenty-four month-old children and also administered the ASQ-3 to their caregivers. We then compared the outcomes of the ASQ-3 test to those of the Bayley-III. We find that the ASQ-3 was significantly though weakly correlated with the Bayley-III and that the strength of this correlation increased with child age and was stronger when the mother was the primary caregiver (as compared to the grandmother). We also find that the sensitivity and specificity of ASQ-3 ranged widely. The overall findings suggest that the ASQ-3 may not be a very accurate screening tool for identifying developmentally delayed children, especially for children under 13 months of age or children whose primary caregiver is not the mother. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examined authoritative parenting and associations with parenting sense of competence and social support in Chinese mothers of children with intellectual disability and mothers of typically developing children. One hundred and sixty-seven mothers of children with intellectual disability with a mean age of 10.89 years (SD = 1.74) and 119 mothers of typically developing children with a mean age of 10.55 years (SD = 1.10) participated in a survey. Mothers of children with intellectual disability reported similar levels of parental warmth, and less use of reasoning and autonomy support compared with mothers of typically developing children. Parenting efficacy contributed uniquely to three dimensions of authoritative parenting for mothers of children with intellectual disability. By comparison, parenting efficacy did not contribute to use of reasoning and autonomy support for mothers of typically developing children. Social support made a unique but small contribution to parental warmth but not to parental reasoning and autonomy support for mothers of children with intellectual disability. For mothers of typically developing children, social support was associated with both parental warmth and autonomy support. This study suggests that child disability status is related to maternal authoritative parenting, and additionally, parenting efficacy plays a more critical role in predicting authoritative parenting of Chinese mothers of children with intellectual disability than mothers of typically developing children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: China's unprecedented internal migration has left 61 million rural children living apart from parents. This study investigates how being left behind is associated with children's growth, by examining children's height and weight trajectories by age, testing the accumulation and critical period life course hypotheses.Methods: Data were drawn from five waves of the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). Multiple cohorts of children under 6 years old from 1997-2009 were examined (N = 2,555). Growth curve models investigated whether height and weight trajectories differ for children who were left behind at different stages of the life course: in early childhood (from ages 0-5 but not afterwards), in later childhood (from ages 6 to 17 only), and in both early and later childhood (from ages 0-5 and from ages 6-17), compared to their peers from intact households.Results: Boys who were left behind at different life stages of childhood differed in height and weight growth compared with boys from intact families. No significant associations were found for girls. As young boys turned into adolescents, those left behind in early childhood tended to have slower height growth and weight gain than their peers from intact households. There was a 2.8 cm difference in the predicted heights of boys who were left behind in early childhood compared to boys from intact households, by the age of 14. Similarly, the difference in weight between the two groups of boys was 5.3 kg by the age of 14.Conclusions: Being left behind during early childhood, as compared to not being left behind, could lead to slower growth rates of height and weight for boys. The life course approach adopted in this study suggests that early childhood is a critical period of children's growth in later life, especially for boys who are left behind. The gender paradox in China, where sons are preferred, but being left behind appears to affect boys more than girls, needs further exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the potential effects of migration on the cognitive development of children in origin communities reflect both household‐ and community‐level processes, few studies have examined how community‐level migration affects child cognitive development. By applying multilevel methods to nationally representative data of 2,248 children from 427 villages in China, we examine whether village migration intensity influences child cognitive ability and if so, what accounts for this influence. The findings suggest lower cognitive achievement in communities that experience high migration intensity. Living in a community with a large proportion of people who have migrated away from the community is associated with a 3.57‐unit decrease in verbal scores and a 1.54‐unit decrease in maths scores, which is equivalent to missing 1.67 and 0.87 years of schooling, respectively. A possible explanation for this effect is the change in demographic composition such that communities are depleted of better educated adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]