Open Access

ARTICLE

Rethink Left-Behind Experience: New Categories and Its Relationship with Aggression

Chunyang Zhang¹, Yijun Lin¹, Yuyang Zhou², Wei Xu^1,3,*

1 Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education (Beijing Normal University), Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China
2 College of Business, Florida International University, Miami, 33199, USA
3 School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, 210097, China

* Corresponding Author: Wei Xu. Email:

International Journal of Mental Health Promotion 2021, 23(4), 443-454. https://doi.org/10.32604/IJMHP.2021.017229

Received 24 April 2021; Accepted 06 June 2021; Issue published 28 October 2021

Abstract

Left-behind experience refers to the experience of children staying behind in their hometown under the care of only one parent or their relatives while one or both of their parents leave to work in other places. College students with left-behind experience showed higher aggression levels. To further explore the relationship between left-behind experience and aggression, the current study categorized left-behind experience using latent class analysis and explored its relationship with aggression. One thousand twenty-eight Chinese college students with left-behind experience were recruited, and their aggression levels were assessed. The results showed that there were four categories of left-behind experience: “starting from preschool, frequent contact” (35.5%), “less than 10 years in duration, limited contact” (27.0%), “starting from preschool, over 10 years in duration, limited contact” (10.9%), and “starting from school age, frequent contact” (26.6%). Overall, college students who reported frequent contact with their parents during the left-behind period showed lower levels of aggression than others did. Females were less aggressive than males in the “starting from preschool, frequent contact” left-behind situation, while males were less aggressive than females in the “starting from school age, frequent contact” situation. These findings indicate that frequent contact with leaving parents contributes to decreasing aggression of college students with left-behind experience. Meanwhile, gender is an important factor in this relationship.

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Keywords

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