A Research Of Rural Left-behind Children's Family Intergenerational Interaction

Along with the industrialization and urbanization process,many parents in rural families go out to work,leaving children to their grandparents.The old people and children form the most common family structure,children educated by grandparents become the main family education method of the left-behind children.This phenomenon entered the scholars' field of vision,many of them have done a corresponding study,including the causes of rural left-behind children's reared by grandparents,the main problems,the impact on children,the advantages and disadvantages of it,and so on.While in this study,researcher will focus on generation interaction,from the perspective of interpersonal communication to study the generation interaction between the left-behind children and grandparents in their families,paying attention to the similarities and differences between tradition families and left-behind children's families in generation interaction form,content and other aspects,exploring the generation relations differences between original families and left-behind children's families and the effects on children's growth.Through the comparison study in D village with 9 left-behind children's families and 6 traditional families,researcher found that under the guidance of common family goals,parents in left-behind children's families migrate to work,while grandparents are mainly responsible for raising children and regards this as their own obligations.At the same time,most grandparents are engaged in agricultural work to reduce the burden of parents.Older grandparents do less farm and need economical support from parents;while younger grandparents are independent in daily life and economy,they don't need economical support from parents,they even use their own money to raise left-behind children.Grandparents raise left-behind children as their own kids,equivalent of being parents again,they also recapture parents' feelings in the process.However,limited by their own literacy standards,educational concepts,educational methods,physical conditions and many other factors,grandparents rarely take the initiative to educate left-behind children,and take a laissez-faire attitude to them.The left-behind children's family education mainly relies on subtle influence of the grandparents.Grandparents showed everything to left-behind children in daily life,including their habits,behaviors,concepts and so on,undoubtedly children gradually become similar with their grandparents in many ways.Although grandparents don't expect any payback from left-behind children,children try hard to express their gratitude in practical action.In the long term of common life,grandparents and left-behind children formed a similarly parent-child relationship,which is far more deep than general grandparents and grandchild relationship.This stable and reliable relationship provides a strong support to the growth of left-behind children,but it also affects the relationship between parents and children,even threatens their relationship sometimes.Grandparents don't need left-behind children's return,nevertheless they regard it as strategic chip to require parents' support in the future,in order to increase living guarantee in their later years.Grandparents and parents don't have much dispute about supporting the old,both of them agreed that parents should take care of grandparents at home when they totally lose their able to work.In relation to the intergenerational relations of the whole family,left-behind children's family also showed a distinct characteristic,drawing attention to children and ignoring grandparents,family generation relationship canter moves downward,both grandparents and parents are paying for left-behind children.In the end,the meaning and influence of generation interaction is very great,it compensates for the parent-child relationship,causes the adjustment of family structure and function,accelerates the rural society and culture to decline.