Comparative Study On Family Function, Feeling Of Inadequacy And Mental Health Between Left-behind Children And Non-Left-behind In Rural China

Children in rural is a vital force for building the future of our country.The healthy development of them decides the destiny of our country,social harmony and progress. A family function in good condition plays an important role in the healthy growth of children. Well, domestic study on feeling of inadequacy is still on an initial step, and study in defects on rural children is still blank. Thus, this research takes rural children as study object,apply Family Assessment De-vice(Epstein,1983), The Feelings of Inadequacy scale(Epstein,1983), Mental health scale for middle school students(Wang Ji sheng) and personal talking method , to explores and analysis the family function, feeling of inadequacy and mental health on children left-behind or non- Left-behind in rural on a comparative way. And the results are following:(1)In General, there does exist a significant difference on the totality of family function, the communication and the overal functional factors between children left-behind or non- Left-behind.(2)The overall level of feeling of inadequacy of left-behind children is lower significantly than children non- Left-behind, shows stronger feeling of inadequacy and lower self-esteem of them.(3)The mental health of left-behind children is more worrying than non-left-behind children.(4)It shows significant gender differences on hostility, pressure sense of study, mood stable and psychological balance in rural children. And also there is a significant difference on mental health level among different grades, that is, children’s mental health level becomes lower as grade becomes higher. It still tell that the mental level will be higher when parents’ cultural and economic level higher.(5)There are significant gender and grade differences on the communication, the emotional involvement of family function in rural children. There will be a better family function when parents’ cultural and economic level higher.(6)There is no grade but significant gender differences on the feeling of inadequacy. Whereas, there is lower feeling of inadequacy when their parents got higher level of educational and economic conditions.(7)The study shows a significant positive correlation between the family function and mental health in rural children and a significant negative correlation between the feeling of inadequacy and mental health.(8)The family functions of left-behind or non- left-behind rural children has a direct effect, on mental health. The sense of inadequacy have some mediating effect, and the mediating effect of left-behind children is higher than that of non-left-behind children.