The Research On The Mental Process Of Parent-Child Separation Of Left Behind Children’s Mother

In recent years,the expanding scale of population movement in China has brought about many social concerns and the parent-child separation is one of them.Relative to their left-behind children,the mothers away from home received little attention.Considering on their unsatisfied emotional needs,the mothers’ work and life would be affected if they could not get used to the separation from home and children.Therefore,the parent-child separation process of mothers should be paid attention to.In this paper,the qualitative research paradigm of life history research method was used to examine the psychological process of eight young mothers during their separation from hometown and children.Firstly,the factors influencing the separation of mothers and their children were analyzed.And the economic factors were found to be the main determinants that made mothers decide to leave their children behind.At the same time,the higher living costs in big cities prevented the left-behind children from being brought to cities and living together with their parents.Besides,in fear of changes in the feelings between their husbands and themselves,young mothers had to choose to leave their children behind and live along with their husbands.What’s more,the mothers’ decision would also be affected by social environment and the opinions of other important members in the family.Secondly,this paper described in detail the characteristics of the various stages of the mentality of the mothers during the mother child separation process.After making mind to leave home,mothers felt sad for the upcoming separation and also helpless for nothing could be done to change the decided fact.In the early stages of separation,mothers would miss and be worried about their children,and they would often try to get in touch with their children by telephone or video.Then the decision of young mothers for leaving home or not in the following days would be affected by the state of their children on the first time they came back to hometown.And several repeated separations would make the mothers adapt to this process.Meanwhile,throughout the separation process,young mothers were most worried about their children’s daily life,learning and emotional changes.Thirdly,this paper analyzed factors that affect the adaption of mothers to the separation process.The mother’s personal condition,the child’s characteristics,the satisfaction of the dependents and the degree of perfection of her social support network all affect the mother’s adaptation to the separation process.Finally,from the perspectives of left-behind children’s mother,the actual dependents of left-behind children,the relevant government departments and other aspects,the author puts forward some suggestions to reduce the negative effects on left-behind children and their mothers caused by the parent-child separation.