A Longitudinal Study Of The Effects Of Parent-child Attachment And Emotional Regulation On The Development Of Mobility And Urban Children's Friendship Quality

Based on the Brofenbrenner's bio-ecological model of human development, the current research focused on the relationship between parent-child attachment, emotion regulation and friendship quality among a group of migrant and urban children. Specifically, this research compared the similarity and difference between those migrant and urban children in the development characteristics of friendship quality and the effects of parent-child attachment and emotion regulation on the development of friendship quality, especially the mediational function of emotion regulation in the relationship between parent-child attachment and friendship quality.This research includes study 1 and study 2. In study 1, 383 migrant children and 431 urban children were recruited to test the psychometric properties of the questionnaires used in the research and to preliminarily investigate the relationship among parent-child attachment,emotion regulation and friendship quality. Study 2 then investigated 423 migrant children and 347 urban children, examining whether there were similarities and differences in the development characteristics of friendship quality between the urban and migrant children.Study 2 also explored the effects of parent-child attachment and emotion regulation on the development of friendship quality, especially the mediational role of emotion regulation in the relationship between parent-child attachment and friendship quality.The results of study 1 showed that the measures had acceptable psychometric properties, including the retrospective report of parents' behavior, emotional adjustment for children and adolescents, and the revised friendship quality questionnaire. There was relationship between parent-child attachment, emotion regulation and friendship quality, but the correlation had similarities and differences between migrant and urban children. For example, positive friendship quality was closely relative to secure attachment in migrant and urban children; the correlation between positive friendship quality and avoidant attachment was not significant in migrant children, but positive friendship quality was negatively relative to avoidant attachment to mother in urban children. The findings of study 2 go as follows: (1)In general, for migrant and urban children, the positive friendship quality showed a decreasing trend, whereas the negative friendship quality showed an increasing trend. And there was difference in the developmental trajectories of quality of friendship between migrant and urban children. Specifically, In Time 3, migrant children's positive friendship quality development level higher than urban children, negative friendship quality development level lower than urban children; On the development of children's friendship quality rate, migrant children's positive friendship quality decreased slower than urban children. (2) In migrant and urban children, the explained variance of the development of friendship quality by parent-child attachment and emotion regulation had both similarities and differences. Similarly, safety parent-child attachment and cognitive reappraisal could promote the development of positive friendship quality for both urban and migrant children.Cognitive reappraisal can positively predict the quality of positive friendship. Differently, in migrant children, the avoidance attachment to fathers and the anxiety attachment to mothers could aggravate the development of negative friendship quality, cognitive reappraisal could also restrain the development of negative friendship quality, and expression suppression could worsen the development of negative friendship quality. But in urban children, the avoidance attachment to mothers could aggravate the development of negative friendship quality. (3) Emotion regulation played a mediating role in the relationship between parent-child attachment and friendship quality, and the mediation had both similarities and differences between the migrant and urban children. Similarly, (a) cognitive reappraisal played a mediating role in the relationship between avoidant attachment to mother and friendship quality; (b) emotion regulation had null mediation in the relationship between the safety attachment, the ambivalent attachment and friendship quality. Differently, (a) The avoidance attachment to father reduced positive friendship quality and exacerbated negative friendship quality through migrant children's cognition reappraisal, whereas emotion regulation had null mediation in the relationship between the avoidant attachment to father and urban children's friendship quality; (b) The avoidance attachment to mother exacerbated negative friendship quality through migrant children's cognition reappraisal,whereas this avoidant attachment to mother reduced positive friendship quality through urban children's cognition reappraisal.Finally, this research drew the conclusion and summarized the contributions and limitations. In addition, the implications for education are also discussed.