Beliefs About Adversity And Rural Left-behind Adolescents’Subjective Well-being:The Moderating Role Of Peer Acceptance And Peer Rejection

One of the critical goals in the development of individual’s life is to obtain subjective well-being.As to rural left-behind children,the parental absence increases their negative emotional distress including loneliness,depression,anxiety,and the possibility of a decline of their life satisfaction.A large number of studies in China have shown that rural left-behind children Subjective well-being is significantly lower than non-left-behind children.Recently,with the vigorous development of psychological resilience research,researchers gradually focus on children in disadvantaged situations,and believe that they still have the possibility of active adaptation,and emphasize that this positive adaptation depends largely on the internal and external resources of the individual.Researchers proposed that the ecological model of rural left-behind youth development pointed out that near-environmental factors will affect the development of adolescents by acting on individual’s characteristics.In addition,peer relationships play an increasingly important role in children’s lives.Peer acceptance and peer rejection are the protective factors and risk factors for the development of left-behind children,respectively.The current study explored the roles and mechanism of peer acceptance and peer rejection about adversity in subjective well-being among children from both-parent-migrant families and those from father-only-migrant families.A total of 570 adolescents including 154 children from both-parent-migrant families and 416 children from father-migrant families completed the self-report assessment on beliefs about adversity,peer acceptance,peer rejection,and subjective well-being,and peer acceptance,peer rejection moderated the relationship between beliefs about adversity and left-behind children’s subjective well-being.Conlusions of our study are as follows:1.Beliefs about adversity could have importantly effect on the two kind of left-behind children,and the peer rejection could only have importantly effect on the father-migrant children.2.The influence of beliefs about adversity on boys’ subjective well-being is greater than that of girls.3.For both-parent migrant children,peer rejection can moderate the relationship between believes about adversity and children’s negative effect.That is,when only at the lower the peer rejection level,the beliefs about adversity positively predict the negative effect of left-behind children.4.Only for father-only migrant children,the moderation effects of peer acceptance on left-behind children’s beliefs about adversity and their positive affect differ in gender.For boys,both at the lower peer acceptance level or the higher peer acceptance level,believes about adversity can positively predict children’s positive effect.For girls,when at the higher the peer acceptance,beliefs about adversity positively predict their positive effect.