Study On The Relationship Between Parent-Child Relationship And Depression Of Boarding Students Under The COVID-19 Epidemic

COVID-19 is negatively impacting the mental health of adolescents.Boarding and non-boarding are two ways of school life for students,and the COVID-19 pandemic may have a greater negative impact on the parent-child relationship and mental health of boarding students.Based on the theoretical basis of the stress buffer model of social support and the reverse buffer model,this study explores three questions: First,whether there are significant changes in the parent-child relationship and depression of students before and after the outbreak,and whether there are differences between boarding and non-boarding and gender differences;Second,what is the longitudinal predictive relationship between parent-child relationship and depression level before the epidemic and during the epidemic,and whether the boarding situation will play a moderating role;Third,whether the horizontal relationship between parent-child relationship and depression differs before and during the epidemic,and between boarders and non-boarders.The research sample is 924 adolescents from the China Family Panel Studies(CFPS)in2018 and 2020.The results found that: First,the level of depression among students significantly increased during the epidemic compared to before,and there was no difference between boarding and non-boarding and gender differences in this change.The level of parent-child relationship of students during the epidemic did not change significantly compared with before the epidemic,and there were no differences between boarding and non-boarding and gender differences in the changes.There is no significant difference in parent-child relationship between boarding students and non-boarding students,and the overall parent-child relationship level of female students is worse than that of male students.Second,there is a mutual predictive relationship between parent-child relationship and depression across time points,that is,the parent-child relationship of students before the epidemic can significantly negatively predict the level of depression during the epidemic,and the level of depression before the epidemic can also significantly negatively predict parent-child relationship during the epidemic.Multi-group comparisons found that boarding conditions played a moderating role in the longitudinal predictive relationship between parent-child relationship and depression.For boarding students,the parentchild relationship before the epidemic can significantly negatively predict the level of depression during the epidemic,and the depression before the epidemic can predict the parent-child relationship during the epidemic.But for non-boarding students,parent-child relationship cannot predict their depression level across time points,and depression level can still predict parent-child relationship across time points.Third,the epidemic and boarding have an impact on the relationship between parent-child relationship and depression level of students at the same time point.Specifically,among boarding students,the epidemic led to an enhanced protective effect of parent-child relationship on depression,but among non-boarding students,the protective effect did not change significantly.In addition,there was no difference between boarding and non-boarding in the relationship between parentchild relationship and depression at the same time point before the epidemic.