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Psychological maltreatment and loneliness in Chinese children: The role of perceived social support and self-esteem
Journal Pre-proofs Psychological Maltreatment and Loneliness in Chinese Children: The Role of Perceived Social Support and Self-esteem Shilan Luo, Yunyan Liu, Dajun Zhang PII: DOI: Reference:
S0190-7409(19)30687-5 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.104573 CYSR 104573
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Children and Youth Services Review
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Please cite this article as: S. Luo, Y. Liu, D. Zhang, Psychological Maltreatment and Loneliness in Chinese Children: The Role of Perceived Social Support and Self-esteem, Children and Youth Services Review (2019), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.104573
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Psychological Maltreatment and Loneliness in Chinese Children: The Role of Perceived Social Support and Self-esteem Shilan Luo1, Yunyan Liu*1 & Dajun Zhang2
*
Corresponding author: Yunyan Liu, Email: [email protected]
1
Faculty of Education, Southwest University, Chongqing, China;
2
Research Center of Mental Health Education & Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University,
Chongqing, China
Psychological Maltreatment and Loneliness in Chinese Children: The Role of Perceived Social Support and Self-esteem
Abstract Psychological maltreatment is quite common and related to a wide range of social, emotional, and behavioral problems and
it is necessary to explore the
factors affecting children's loneliness and the mechanisms underlying this relationship. Therefore, the purpose of present study is to examine the mediation of psychological maltreatment and loneliness. A total of 1302 Chinese children (aged 9–13, mean age 11.31 ± 0.97) were involved in this study. Participants completed the self-report measures in 30 minutes. Results showed that psychological maltreatment could increase the risk for children’s loneliness, and structural equation modelling revealed that the association between psychological maltreatment and loneliness was partially mediated by two indirect paths, the one was from psychological maltreatment to loneliness through perceived social support, and the other one was from psychological maltreatment through perceived social support and self-esteem to loneliness. The findings of this study support the importance of perceived social support and self-esteem on children’s loneliness, help to explain the association between psychological maltreatment and loneliness, and provide new perspectives regarding the prevention of loneliness. Keyword psychological maltreatment; perceived social support; self-esteem; loneliness; children
Introduction In recent years, child maltreatment incidents has aroused widespread concern and profound reflection in society,㻌psychological maltreatment is invisible but cannot be ignored, because it is a central issue in all forms of child maltreatment(Miller-Perrin and Perrin 2012). Psychological maltreatment is a repeated behavior pattern that expresses to children that they are worthless, unwanted, unloved, or only of value in meeting another’s needs that leads to lasting damage to their mental health and development(Brassard et al. 1991), and includes acts of rejecting, terrorizing, isolating, intermeddling 㻝㻌 㻌
and exploiting(Pan et al. 2010; Glaser 2002; Rossman and Rosenberg 1997). Psychological maltreatment is quite common in Chinese society(Wong et al. 2009;㻌Zhang et al. 2016; Liu et al. 2019), ranging from 28.7%- 51.0% of children (Yang 2012; Song and Liu
2013;Cheng et al. 2018), and the
situation of belittling and terrorizing is relatively more serious among children in grades 3-6( Li, 2018). This is largely related to Chinese traditional value and philosophy on child rearing(e.g., Confucianism and filial piety). As indicated by the Chinese proverb㻌䇾Beating and scolding is the emblem of love䇿,
䇾Spare the rod and spoil the child䇿, harsh and disciplinary parenting behaviors have been recognized as an indication of parental authority, involvement, and caring(Wong et al. 2009; Wang and Liu, 2014), however, such behaviors may invisibly cause psychological burden and stress, even psychological abuse to children. Researches have indicated that psychological maltreatment is associated with a wide range of social, emotional, and behavioral problems( Arslan 2016; Lowell et al. 2014), leads to significant undesirable outcomes for individuals’ mental health and development, and is significant risk factor for
well-being(Hart and Glaser 2011).
Moreover,
psychological maltreatment㻌
Flett et al. 2016 㻌
㻌 psychological
㻞㻌 㻌
. Perceived social support is the support that individuals experience subjectively, referring to an individual's emotional experience or satisfaction of feeling respected, supported and understood in society(Sarason et al. 1990, 1991),and may be influenced by subjective value judgments regarding the relationship contexts where supportive behaviors occur(Sarason et al. 1995; Wu et al. 2011). Although received support may more objectively reflect the actual support received from others, the support an individual experiences subjectively is more likely to determine one’s interpretation and response of others' supportive behaviors(Barrera 1986;
Eagle et al. 2019). And according to the buffering model of social support, effective social support networks lessen the adverse psychological consequences of life stress, and prevent negative feelings of loneliness(Rook, 1987). However, recent studies have revealed that psychological abuse and neglect during childhood are generally related to lower levels of perceived social support in adulthood(Sperry and Widom 2013;㻌Horan and Widom 2015), individuals who perceived lower support across multiple contexts experienced damaged socioemotional functioning, less perceived support from others would increase the chances of experiencing loneliness(Cavanaugh and Buehler 2016;㻌Zhao et al. 2019). Based on this evidence, child psychological maltreatment may be associated with higher levels of loneliness, due to impaired social support. Self-esteem
Self-esteem is an important
construct in children’s development, and includes positive or negative evaluations about oneself(Zaff and Hair 2003), which may predict success and well-being in life domains such as relationships, work, and health(Orth and Robins 2014). Previous studies have revealed a strong association between psychological maltreatment and individual's 㻟㻌 㻌
ş
psychological
children's
low self-esteem would intensify feelings of loneliness(Du et al.
2019; Vanhalst et al. 2013) and other mental health problems psychological
children's
What’s more, self-esteem has been proved to be very closely related to perceived social support( Bum and Jeon 2016; Ikiz and Cakar 2010; Liu et al. 2018), individuals with extremely low social support would rarely be satisfied with themselves and more likely result in low self-esteem, which would significantly exacerbate their psychological well-being(Yang 2012). Sociometer theory suggests that self-esteem is a measure of one’s social belonging and the quality of one’s interpersonal relationships, and monitors others’ reactions and alerts the individual to the possibility of social exclusion (Leary et al. 1995). Researches have shown individuals with better peer and family social support tended to have higher levels of self-esteem(Arslan 2009; Ikiz and Cakar 2010), and that within-person changes in social support were directly related to changes in self-esteem levels(Magro et al. 2019). In line with sociometer theory, the self-esteem consequence model suggests that self-esteem may be a reflection of being socially connected or valued, positive social support produces higher self-esteem(Marshall et al. 2014), supporting this model, longitudinal studies showed that in adolescence, perceived social support predicted self-esteem, but not vice versa.( Asendorpf and Van Aken 2003; Qiao et al. 2014). Therefore, we argued that children who suffered from psychological low self-esteem, finally aggravate the sense of loneliness. Although many studies have been conducted on the single effects of psychological perceived social support and self-esteem on children’s loneliness, it remains unclear how perceived 㻠㻌 㻌
social support and self-esteem mediate in the relationship between psychological loneliness. Given the previous findings encouraging the association between variables and theoretical framework, it was hypothesized that perceived social support and self-esteem would be mediators in loneliness. To this end, we
the relationship between psychological hypothesized that psychological perceived social support and self-esteem㻌
Additionally, perceived
social support and self-esteem would respectively mediate the impact of psychological (Hypothesis 2). Finally, perceived social support and self-esteem would chaining mediate the influence of psychological
(Hypothesis 3).
Method Participants The data were collected from a sample of 1302 pupils (646 boys, 656 girls) aged 9–13 years(Mean = 11.31, SD = 0.97 ) from the eastern, central, and western economic regions of China, the classification of the nation into three economic regions in the Seventh Five-Year Plan (1986–1990) of China was based on diơ erent geographic locations and regional economic development levels. The sampling design was based on educational statistics released by the Ministry of Education in the People’s Republic of China. Of the participants, 450 (34.6%) were in 4th grade, 359 were in 5th grade (27.6%) and 493 were in 6th grade (37.9%). Procedure Our university approved the study, and we obtained both written and informed consent from all participants and their parents. The assessments were conducted in the respective classrooms of the participants. Before the questionnaires were distributed to students during one of their normal classes, 㻡㻌 㻌
teachers explained and assured the participants that the study was conducted purely for research purposes and that participation was voluntary. The students were free to decline participation without any negative consequences. Participants completed the battery of questionnaires in their respective classrooms in 30 minutes, after completing the self-report survey anonymously, students handed them into their teachers. Measures Child Psychological Maltreatment Scale(CPMS) The CPMS(Pan et al. 2010) is a 23-item (e.g., “Parents laugh at me.”) self-report instrument that was developed to assess psychologically abusive parental behaviors in children. The scale consists of five subscales, which are terrorizing, ignoring, belittling, intermeddling and conniving. The scale’s items are rated using a 5-point Likert-type scale (0 = almost never ; 4=almost always), with higher scores denoting higher levels of psychological maltreatment. In this study, the Cronbach’s alpha was 0.84, and CFA indicated that the CPMS was suitable for use in our sample: χ2 (225, N = 1302) = 1124.818 (p < 0.001); CFI = 0.906, TLI = 0.894; RMSEA = 0.055; SRMR = 0.049. However, we found the standardized regression values of㻌 conniving dimension was only 0.14, and less than 0.40 (Wu 2010),which was in line with other research results(Zhang et al. 2017; Liu et al. 2018), the two items(“Parents don't stop me from drinking”, and “Parents don’t stop me from gambling”) of conniving dimension may be not suitable for children aged 9-12 years old to answer, because they are too young to drink or gamble in the context of Chinese education culture, so we decided to delete this dimension. Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS) The MSPSS(Zimet et al. 1988; translated into Chinese by Huang and Jiang, 1996) is a 12-item self-report measure of perceived social support. The measure provides a subjective assessment of social 㻢㻌 㻌
support from family, friends, and others. To make the “others” more suitable for school students, we adopted the practices of Chen et al.䠄2017䠅and converted “leaders, relatives, colleagues” into “teachers, classmates, relatives” (e.g., “I can share happiness and sadness with others (classmates, relatives, teachers) ” ). Participants were asked to report the extent to which they agree with each item using a 7-point Likert scale (1 = very strongly disagree; 7 = very strongly agree). In this study, CFA indicated that MSPSS was suitable for use in our study( χ2 (51, N = 1302) = 469.348 (p < 0.001); CFI = 0.941, TLI = 0.924; RMSEA = 0.079; SRMR = 0.039) and the Cronbach’s alpha was 0.91. In this study, perceived family support, perceived friends support, and perceived others support were used as indicators of the perceived social support latent variable. Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale (RSES) The RSES(Rosenberg, 1965) is a self-report measure of global self-esteem that consists of 10 items (e.g., “Overall, I am satisfied with myself.”). Participants rated the items using a 4-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree; 4 = strongly agree). The negatively worded items㻌were reverse scored, and higher scores on the scale indicate greater self-esteem. The RSES has been widely used to test self-esteem and has shown good validity and reliability (Wang et al. 1999). However, due to the cultural differences and controversies between the Chinese and Western cultures in item 8 (I hope I can win more respect for myself), Chinese subjects tend to choose very much, in particular, Chinese culture advocates that “humility is a virtue”, “pride makes people fall behind, and modesty makes people progress”, people with high self-esteem may also show an open-minded attitude and hope to continue to earn more respect for themselves, so the item is possible to be positive, not negative in Western culture. This study adopts the practice of (Farruggia et al. 2004; Tian 2006) , and we deleted it. Cronbach’s alpha in this study was 0.78. 㻣㻌 㻌
Children’s Loneliness Scale (CLS) The CLS (Asher et al. 1984) is a self-report measure of children’s perceived loneliness that consists of 24 items, 16 of them focus on children’s subjective assessment of feelings of loneliness (e.g., “I feel alone at school”), their perceptions of social competence (e.g., “I’m good at working with other children in my class”), and their status among peers (e.g., “I am well-liked by my classmates”). There are 8 filler items in the scale (2, 5, 7, 11, 13, 15, 19, and 23) where students’ hobbies and preferred activities (e.g., “I like music”) were included to help children feel more open and relaxed about indicating their attitudes about various topics, and were not taken into consideration during scoring. Children㻌responded to the items on a 5-point Likert-scale ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’. In this study, the Cronbach’s alpha was 0.88. Family Socioeconomic status(SES) Information about family socioeconomic status was collected via sociodemographic questionnaire and included items pertaining to educational attainment (education lever for mother and father separately) and family income (estimated gross annual income). Parental education was coded into three categories: (a) less than primary school graduate, (b) junior high school graduate, (c) high school or technical secondary school, or some college, and (d) junior college or higher. Yearly family household income was coded into seven categories: (a) under ¥5,000, (b)㻌 ¥5,001–¥15,000, (c) ¥15,001–¥30,000, (d)㻌 ¥30,001–¥60,000, (e) ¥60,001–¥100,000, and (f) over ¥100,000.㻌 Parental education ratings for both parents were assigned a code number from 1 to 4, with higher numbers indicating greater educational attainment.㻌 Family income was assigned a number 1 to 6, with higher numbers indicating greater household income. Family income and maternal and paternal education were standardized and then summed together to 㻤㻌 㻌
create a composite measure of overall objective SES(Kraus et al. 2009). Data Analysis Descriptive analysis was conducted with the variables of interest for the total sample. Bivariate correlations between key variables were performed to examine the relationships between the study variables. All preliminary analyses were employed using SPSS version 22. Then, SEM was carried out using Mplus 7.2 to test if perceived social support or self-esteem mediate the relationship between psychological maltreatment and children’s loneliness (Muthñn & Muthñn, 1998-2012). Missing data were handled using the full information maximum likelihood (FIML) procedure. SEM was performed using the maximum likelihood (ML) for parameter estimation. Indirect effects were tested using bias-corrected bootstrapping procedures (Preacher and Hayes 2008).㻌The following indices were used to evaluate the model fit, as recommended by(Hu and Bentler 1999): standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) < 0.10, root mean square error of approximation(RMSEA) < 0.08, Comparative Fit Index (CFI)
> 0.95, and Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) > 0.95.
Results Descriptive analysis Before testing the measurement and structural model, descriptive statistics and bivariate correlation analysis were conducted. Results showed that psychological maltreatment was negatively correlated with perceived social support and self-esteem, while positively correlated with loneliness. Perceived social support and self-esteem were negatively correlated with loneliness (see Table 1). Table 1 Variables
Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations between variables. (N = 1302) M
SD
1.Gender
1.50
0.50
2.Age
11.31
0.97
-.050
3.SES
0.03
2.37
-.021
1
2
3
4
.005
㻥㻌 㻌
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
4. Terrorizing
0.97
0.74
-.047
.101**
.002
5. Ignoring
0.83
0.66
.007
.041
-.098**
.478**
*
.001
.691**
.515**
6. Belittling
0.41
0.63
-.008
.070
7. Intermeddling
0.65
0.62
-.060*
-.018
.000
.439**
.318**
.473**
8.FA
5.62
1.18
.031
-.059*
.210**
-.396**
-.410**
-.382**
-.190**
**
**
**
**
-.126**
.626**
**
.053
.160
9.FR
5.53
1.20
.073
10.OT
5.52
1.27
.078**
.004
.164**
-.339**
-.360**
-.331**
-.131**
.724**
.694**
11.Self-esteem
3.02
0.49
-.024
.085**
.288**
-.248**
-.256**
-.185**
-.118**
.446**
.367**
.424**
0.61
*
-.056
**
**
**
**
**
**
**
-.494**
12.Loneliness
1.84
-.058
-.232
-.237
.299
-.272
.347
-.257
.302
.153
-.444
-.514
Note. **p < .001; *p < .005. FA: perceived family support; FR: perceived friend support; OT: perceived others support Test of the measurement model Next, a measurement model was conducted before testing the structural equation model analysis. Measurement models specify the relationships between observed variables and their latent constructs, and this method allowed examination of the relationship between latent variables(Anderson and Gerbing 1988).㻌 Therefore, a measurement model was tested including latent constructs for psychological maltreatment, perceived social support, self-esteem and loneliness. In order to control for possible inflated measurement errors resulting from multiple items examining the latent variables of psychological maltreatment, perceived social support self-esteem and loneliness in the present study, we adapted random assignment(Matsunaga 2008) to create separate item parcels for variables of self-esteem and loneliness that because they are single-dimensional variables and adapted internal-consistency approach(Bandalos 2002). The number of items in each parcel was roughly equal and items’ average scores were used to evaluate the hypothetical model’s overall data fit.㻌After defining the latent construct, the measurement model was tested and found to have a good data-model fit: χ2 (59, N
= 1302)
= 337.085 (p < 0.001); CFI = 0.965, TLI = 0.953; RMSEA = 0.060 (90% CI = 0.054, 0.066);
SRMR = 0.043. All relationships between latent constructs were statistically significant, indicating that all latent factors were 㻝㻜㻌 㻌
-.537**
well represented by their respective indicators. Test of the Structural Model The model examined the associations between psychological maltreatment, perceived social support, self-esteem and loneliness (see Fig. 1). After controlling for gender, age, and family SES, results showed good data fit, χ2 (59, N = 1302) = 337.085 (p < 0.001); CFI = 0.965, TLI = 0.953; RMSEA = 0.060 (90% CI = 0.054, 0.066); SRMR = 0.044(Hu and Bentler 1999). Tests of the indirect effects indicated that psychological maltreatment exerted its effect on loneliness through a direct path from psychological maltreatment to loneliness (β = 0.123, SE = 0.034, p < 0.001, 95%CI = [0.055, 0.191]) and two indirect paths, the one was from psychological maltreatment to loneliness through perceived social support(β = 0.154, SE = 0.019, p < 0.001, 95%CI = [0.107, 0.198]), and the other one was from psychological maltreatment through perceived social support and self-esteem to loneliness(β = 0.119, SE = 0.013, p < 0.001, 95%CI = [0.088, 0.154]). (See Figure 1 and Table 2).
Figure 1. Structural equation model analysis performed to examine the pathways among psychological maltreatment, perceived social support, self-esteem and children’s loneliness. Table 2 Indirect effects and 95% CIs for the meditational model. Indirect
Standard
effect
Error
BC 95%CI
Model pathway
㻝㻝㻌 㻌
Lower
Upper
psychological maltreatment →loneliness䠄total䠅 Psychological
maltreatment→
perceived
social
0.287**
0.023
0.227
0.341
0.154**
0.019
0.107
0.198
0.119**
0.013
0.088
0.154
support→
loneliness psychological maltreatment →perceived social support → self-esteem →loneliness
Note. **p < 0.001, BC 95% CI for standardized indirect effects = bootstrapped bias-corrected confidence interval with sample 5000. Discussion In the present study, we used SEM to investigate the relationships among psychological maltreatment, perceived social support, self-esteem and children’s loneliness. Supporting our hypotheses, the results indicated that psychological
exerted its effect on loneliness
through a direct path from psychological maltreatment to loneliness and two indirect paths, the one was from psychological maltreatment to loneliness through perceived social support, and the other one was from psychological maltreatment through perceived social support and self-esteem to loneliness. As expected, we found that children’s psychological maltreatment was positively related to loneliness, which was consistent with previous research conclusions(Boyda and McFeeters 2015; Brown et al. 2016; Flett et al. 2016; Chen et al. 2018). Child psychological maltreatment is a severe and common problem in China(Fang et al. 2015; Wang et al. 2017), however, Chinese parents may not realize it, because they usually regard their own children as “private property” and think it is their right to insult or beat their children when they try to teach and discipline them, such cultural beliefs regarding child-rearing and discipline practice behaviors play a critical role in psychological maltreatment(Korbin, 1991).
Moreover, researches have shown a significant effect of maltreatment
on attachment style across abuse types(Aber and Allen 1987; Baer and Martinez 2006; Briere et al.
㻝㻞㻌 㻌
2012), and consistent with the network mediation model, attachment insecurity decreases one’s motivation to initiate contact and produces unsuccessful interactions(Larose et al. 2002), and in turn lead to experiencing great states of loneliness. sychological In line with previous studies, psychological experience of being pushed, slapped and threatened detracted from the individual's perception of social support available from family and friends(Haj-Yahia, 2019), which is important in shaping psychosocial development(Pepin and Banyard 2006) and plays a significant role in mediating and moderating some long term consequences of childhood maltreatment(Salazar et al. 2011; Sperry and Widom 2013).
This result adds new evidence of an important role of perceived social support between psychological maltreatment and children’s loneliness.
psychological maltreatment and loneliness,
perceived social support and
self-esteem played a chain mediating effect between psychological maltreatment and children’s loneliness. In line with previous studies,
psychological 㻝㻟㻌
㻌
maltreatment have lower levels of social connectedness and social acceptance(Arslan 2018), which is associated with lesser perceptions of social support(Zinn et al. 2017)
leads to a strong sense of loneliness.
I
psychological psychological
makes several important contributions. Firstly, to our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the relationship between psychological maltreatment and loneliness and the way in which this relationship is mediated by perceived social support and self-esteem. We found that childhood psychological maltreatment would increase the risk for children’s loneliness. Furthermore, this study provides a better understanding of the mediating roles of 㻝㻠㻌 㻌
Secondly, this study supports sociometer theory, provides novel evidence that self-perceived social support is a necessary link in the causal chain of the sociometer mechanism m psychological maltreatment on self-esteem is mediated by children’s perceived social support, which leads to children’s loneliness. Thirdly, this study adds new evidence of an important role of perceived social support between psychological maltreatment and children’s loneliness. So we should take it as a chance to provide intervention to enhance their ability to perceive social support, improve their self-esteem and, ultimately, reduce their feelings of loneliness. Finally, the present study has several limitations highlight the need for cautions interpretation of our finds and provide some guidance for future research. First, this study used a cross-sectional design, it was not able to test possible association between variables, longitudinal or experimental studies would provide a more accurate assessment of causality. Second, the data were collected by self-report measures, which are subjective and vulnerable to social desirability bias, although scales with good reliability and validity were selected, there was no way to completely avoid self-reporting biases. Future research can use multiple methods (e.g. other reports and collected data from parents, teachers or peers). Finally, the sample included only Chinese children aged 9-11, future research can expand to other cultures or age groups.
㻝㻡㻌 㻌
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Highlights
• Children psychological maltreatment requires more concern.
• Psychological maltreatment would increase the risk for children’s loneliness
• The influence of psychological maltreatment on self-esteem is mediated by children’s perceived social support, which in turn leads to children’s loneliness.
• There is an urge need to provide intervention to enhance their ability to perceive social support, improve their self-esteem and, ultimately, reduce their feelings of loneliness.
S0190-7409(19)30687-5 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.104573 CYSR 104573
To appear in:
Children and Youth Services Review
Received Date: Revised Date: Accepted Date:
3 July 2019 21 October 2019 22 October 2019
Please cite this article as: S. Luo, Y. Liu, D. Zhang, Psychological Maltreatment and Loneliness in Chinese Children: The Role of Perceived Social Support and Self-esteem, Children and Youth Services Review (2019), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.104573
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© 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Psychological Maltreatment and Loneliness in Chinese Children: The Role of Perceived Social Support and Self-esteem Shilan Luo1, Yunyan Liu*1 & Dajun Zhang2
*
Corresponding author: Yunyan Liu, Email: [email protected]
1
Faculty of Education, Southwest University, Chongqing, China;
2
Research Center of Mental Health Education & Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University,
Chongqing, China
Psychological Maltreatment and Loneliness in Chinese Children: The Role of Perceived Social Support and Self-esteem
Abstract Psychological maltreatment is quite common and related to a wide range of social, emotional, and behavioral problems and
it is necessary to explore the
factors affecting children's loneliness and the mechanisms underlying this relationship. Therefore, the purpose of present study is to examine the mediation of psychological maltreatment and loneliness. A total of 1302 Chinese children (aged 9–13, mean age 11.31 ± 0.97) were involved in this study. Participants completed the self-report measures in 30 minutes. Results showed that psychological maltreatment could increase the risk for children’s loneliness, and structural equation modelling revealed that the association between psychological maltreatment and loneliness was partially mediated by two indirect paths, the one was from psychological maltreatment to loneliness through perceived social support, and the other one was from psychological maltreatment through perceived social support and self-esteem to loneliness. The findings of this study support the importance of perceived social support and self-esteem on children’s loneliness, help to explain the association between psychological maltreatment and loneliness, and provide new perspectives regarding the prevention of loneliness. Keyword psychological maltreatment; perceived social support; self-esteem; loneliness; children
Introduction In recent years, child maltreatment incidents has aroused widespread concern and profound reflection in society,㻌psychological maltreatment is invisible but cannot be ignored, because it is a central issue in all forms of child maltreatment(Miller-Perrin and Perrin 2012). Psychological maltreatment is a repeated behavior pattern that expresses to children that they are worthless, unwanted, unloved, or only of value in meeting another’s needs that leads to lasting damage to their mental health and development(Brassard et al. 1991), and includes acts of rejecting, terrorizing, isolating, intermeddling 㻝㻌 㻌
and exploiting(Pan et al. 2010; Glaser 2002; Rossman and Rosenberg 1997). Psychological maltreatment is quite common in Chinese society(Wong et al. 2009;㻌Zhang et al. 2016; Liu et al. 2019), ranging from 28.7%- 51.0% of children (Yang 2012; Song and Liu
2013;Cheng et al. 2018), and the
situation of belittling and terrorizing is relatively more serious among children in grades 3-6( Li, 2018). This is largely related to Chinese traditional value and philosophy on child rearing(e.g., Confucianism and filial piety). As indicated by the Chinese proverb㻌䇾Beating and scolding is the emblem of love䇿,
䇾Spare the rod and spoil the child䇿, harsh and disciplinary parenting behaviors have been recognized as an indication of parental authority, involvement, and caring(Wong et al. 2009; Wang and Liu, 2014), however, such behaviors may invisibly cause psychological burden and stress, even psychological abuse to children. Researches have indicated that psychological maltreatment is associated with a wide range of social, emotional, and behavioral problems( Arslan 2016; Lowell et al. 2014), leads to significant undesirable outcomes for individuals’ mental health and development, and is significant risk factor for
well-being(Hart and Glaser 2011).
Moreover,
psychological maltreatment㻌
Flett et al. 2016 㻌
㻌 psychological
㻞㻌 㻌
. Perceived social support is the support that individuals experience subjectively, referring to an individual's emotional experience or satisfaction of feeling respected, supported and understood in society(Sarason et al. 1990, 1991),and may be influenced by subjective value judgments regarding the relationship contexts where supportive behaviors occur(Sarason et al. 1995; Wu et al. 2011). Although received support may more objectively reflect the actual support received from others, the support an individual experiences subjectively is more likely to determine one’s interpretation and response of others' supportive behaviors(Barrera 1986;
Eagle et al. 2019). And according to the buffering model of social support, effective social support networks lessen the adverse psychological consequences of life stress, and prevent negative feelings of loneliness(Rook, 1987). However, recent studies have revealed that psychological abuse and neglect during childhood are generally related to lower levels of perceived social support in adulthood(Sperry and Widom 2013;㻌Horan and Widom 2015), individuals who perceived lower support across multiple contexts experienced damaged socioemotional functioning, less perceived support from others would increase the chances of experiencing loneliness(Cavanaugh and Buehler 2016;㻌Zhao et al. 2019). Based on this evidence, child psychological maltreatment may be associated with higher levels of loneliness, due to impaired social support. Self-esteem
Self-esteem is an important
construct in children’s development, and includes positive or negative evaluations about oneself(Zaff and Hair 2003), which may predict success and well-being in life domains such as relationships, work, and health(Orth and Robins 2014). Previous studies have revealed a strong association between psychological maltreatment and individual's 㻟㻌 㻌
ş
psychological
children's
low self-esteem would intensify feelings of loneliness(Du et al.
2019; Vanhalst et al. 2013) and other mental health problems psychological
children's
What’s more, self-esteem has been proved to be very closely related to perceived social support( Bum and Jeon 2016; Ikiz and Cakar 2010; Liu et al. 2018), individuals with extremely low social support would rarely be satisfied with themselves and more likely result in low self-esteem, which would significantly exacerbate their psychological well-being(Yang 2012). Sociometer theory suggests that self-esteem is a measure of one’s social belonging and the quality of one’s interpersonal relationships, and monitors others’ reactions and alerts the individual to the possibility of social exclusion (Leary et al. 1995). Researches have shown individuals with better peer and family social support tended to have higher levels of self-esteem(Arslan 2009; Ikiz and Cakar 2010), and that within-person changes in social support were directly related to changes in self-esteem levels(Magro et al. 2019). In line with sociometer theory, the self-esteem consequence model suggests that self-esteem may be a reflection of being socially connected or valued, positive social support produces higher self-esteem(Marshall et al. 2014), supporting this model, longitudinal studies showed that in adolescence, perceived social support predicted self-esteem, but not vice versa.( Asendorpf and Van Aken 2003; Qiao et al. 2014). Therefore, we argued that children who suffered from psychological low self-esteem, finally aggravate the sense of loneliness. Although many studies have been conducted on the single effects of psychological perceived social support and self-esteem on children’s loneliness, it remains unclear how perceived 㻠㻌 㻌
social support and self-esteem mediate in the relationship between psychological loneliness. Given the previous findings encouraging the association between variables and theoretical framework, it was hypothesized that perceived social support and self-esteem would be mediators in loneliness. To this end, we
the relationship between psychological hypothesized that psychological perceived social support and self-esteem㻌
Additionally, perceived
social support and self-esteem would respectively mediate the impact of psychological (Hypothesis 2). Finally, perceived social support and self-esteem would chaining mediate the influence of psychological
(Hypothesis 3).
Method Participants The data were collected from a sample of 1302 pupils (646 boys, 656 girls) aged 9–13 years(Mean = 11.31, SD = 0.97 ) from the eastern, central, and western economic regions of China, the classification of the nation into three economic regions in the Seventh Five-Year Plan (1986–1990) of China was based on diơ erent geographic locations and regional economic development levels. The sampling design was based on educational statistics released by the Ministry of Education in the People’s Republic of China. Of the participants, 450 (34.6%) were in 4th grade, 359 were in 5th grade (27.6%) and 493 were in 6th grade (37.9%). Procedure Our university approved the study, and we obtained both written and informed consent from all participants and their parents. The assessments were conducted in the respective classrooms of the participants. Before the questionnaires were distributed to students during one of their normal classes, 㻡㻌 㻌
teachers explained and assured the participants that the study was conducted purely for research purposes and that participation was voluntary. The students were free to decline participation without any negative consequences. Participants completed the battery of questionnaires in their respective classrooms in 30 minutes, after completing the self-report survey anonymously, students handed them into their teachers. Measures Child Psychological Maltreatment Scale(CPMS) The CPMS(Pan et al. 2010) is a 23-item (e.g., “Parents laugh at me.”) self-report instrument that was developed to assess psychologically abusive parental behaviors in children. The scale consists of five subscales, which are terrorizing, ignoring, belittling, intermeddling and conniving. The scale’s items are rated using a 5-point Likert-type scale (0 = almost never ; 4=almost always), with higher scores denoting higher levels of psychological maltreatment. In this study, the Cronbach’s alpha was 0.84, and CFA indicated that the CPMS was suitable for use in our sample: χ2 (225, N = 1302) = 1124.818 (p < 0.001); CFI = 0.906, TLI = 0.894; RMSEA = 0.055; SRMR = 0.049. However, we found the standardized regression values of㻌 conniving dimension was only 0.14, and less than 0.40 (Wu 2010),which was in line with other research results(Zhang et al. 2017; Liu et al. 2018), the two items(“Parents don't stop me from drinking”, and “Parents don’t stop me from gambling”) of conniving dimension may be not suitable for children aged 9-12 years old to answer, because they are too young to drink or gamble in the context of Chinese education culture, so we decided to delete this dimension. Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS) The MSPSS(Zimet et al. 1988; translated into Chinese by Huang and Jiang, 1996) is a 12-item self-report measure of perceived social support. The measure provides a subjective assessment of social 㻢㻌 㻌
support from family, friends, and others. To make the “others” more suitable for school students, we adopted the practices of Chen et al.䠄2017䠅and converted “leaders, relatives, colleagues” into “teachers, classmates, relatives” (e.g., “I can share happiness and sadness with others (classmates, relatives, teachers) ” ). Participants were asked to report the extent to which they agree with each item using a 7-point Likert scale (1 = very strongly disagree; 7 = very strongly agree). In this study, CFA indicated that MSPSS was suitable for use in our study( χ2 (51, N = 1302) = 469.348 (p < 0.001); CFI = 0.941, TLI = 0.924; RMSEA = 0.079; SRMR = 0.039) and the Cronbach’s alpha was 0.91. In this study, perceived family support, perceived friends support, and perceived others support were used as indicators of the perceived social support latent variable. Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale (RSES) The RSES(Rosenberg, 1965) is a self-report measure of global self-esteem that consists of 10 items (e.g., “Overall, I am satisfied with myself.”). Participants rated the items using a 4-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree; 4 = strongly agree). The negatively worded items㻌were reverse scored, and higher scores on the scale indicate greater self-esteem. The RSES has been widely used to test self-esteem and has shown good validity and reliability (Wang et al. 1999). However, due to the cultural differences and controversies between the Chinese and Western cultures in item 8 (I hope I can win more respect for myself), Chinese subjects tend to choose very much, in particular, Chinese culture advocates that “humility is a virtue”, “pride makes people fall behind, and modesty makes people progress”, people with high self-esteem may also show an open-minded attitude and hope to continue to earn more respect for themselves, so the item is possible to be positive, not negative in Western culture. This study adopts the practice of (Farruggia et al. 2004; Tian 2006) , and we deleted it. Cronbach’s alpha in this study was 0.78. 㻣㻌 㻌
Children’s Loneliness Scale (CLS) The CLS (Asher et al. 1984) is a self-report measure of children’s perceived loneliness that consists of 24 items, 16 of them focus on children’s subjective assessment of feelings of loneliness (e.g., “I feel alone at school”), their perceptions of social competence (e.g., “I’m good at working with other children in my class”), and their status among peers (e.g., “I am well-liked by my classmates”). There are 8 filler items in the scale (2, 5, 7, 11, 13, 15, 19, and 23) where students’ hobbies and preferred activities (e.g., “I like music”) were included to help children feel more open and relaxed about indicating their attitudes about various topics, and were not taken into consideration during scoring. Children㻌responded to the items on a 5-point Likert-scale ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’. In this study, the Cronbach’s alpha was 0.88. Family Socioeconomic status(SES) Information about family socioeconomic status was collected via sociodemographic questionnaire and included items pertaining to educational attainment (education lever for mother and father separately) and family income (estimated gross annual income). Parental education was coded into three categories: (a) less than primary school graduate, (b) junior high school graduate, (c) high school or technical secondary school, or some college, and (d) junior college or higher. Yearly family household income was coded into seven categories: (a) under ¥5,000, (b)㻌 ¥5,001–¥15,000, (c) ¥15,001–¥30,000, (d)㻌 ¥30,001–¥60,000, (e) ¥60,001–¥100,000, and (f) over ¥100,000.㻌 Parental education ratings for both parents were assigned a code number from 1 to 4, with higher numbers indicating greater educational attainment.㻌 Family income was assigned a number 1 to 6, with higher numbers indicating greater household income. Family income and maternal and paternal education were standardized and then summed together to 㻤㻌 㻌
create a composite measure of overall objective SES(Kraus et al. 2009). Data Analysis Descriptive analysis was conducted with the variables of interest for the total sample. Bivariate correlations between key variables were performed to examine the relationships between the study variables. All preliminary analyses were employed using SPSS version 22. Then, SEM was carried out using Mplus 7.2 to test if perceived social support or self-esteem mediate the relationship between psychological maltreatment and children’s loneliness (Muthñn & Muthñn, 1998-2012). Missing data were handled using the full information maximum likelihood (FIML) procedure. SEM was performed using the maximum likelihood (ML) for parameter estimation. Indirect effects were tested using bias-corrected bootstrapping procedures (Preacher and Hayes 2008).㻌The following indices were used to evaluate the model fit, as recommended by(Hu and Bentler 1999): standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) < 0.10, root mean square error of approximation(RMSEA) < 0.08, Comparative Fit Index (CFI)
> 0.95, and Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) > 0.95.
Results Descriptive analysis Before testing the measurement and structural model, descriptive statistics and bivariate correlation analysis were conducted. Results showed that psychological maltreatment was negatively correlated with perceived social support and self-esteem, while positively correlated with loneliness. Perceived social support and self-esteem were negatively correlated with loneliness (see Table 1). Table 1 Variables
Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations between variables. (N = 1302) M
SD
1.Gender
1.50
0.50
2.Age
11.31
0.97
-.050
3.SES
0.03
2.37
-.021
1
2
3
4
.005
㻥㻌 㻌
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
4. Terrorizing
0.97
0.74
-.047
.101**
.002
5. Ignoring
0.83
0.66
.007
.041
-.098**
.478**
*
.001
.691**
.515**
6. Belittling
0.41
0.63
-.008
.070
7. Intermeddling
0.65
0.62
-.060*
-.018
.000
.439**
.318**
.473**
8.FA
5.62
1.18
.031
-.059*
.210**
-.396**
-.410**
-.382**
-.190**
**
**
**
**
-.126**
.626**
**
.053
.160
9.FR
5.53
1.20
.073
10.OT
5.52
1.27
.078**
.004
.164**
-.339**
-.360**
-.331**
-.131**
.724**
.694**
11.Self-esteem
3.02
0.49
-.024
.085**
.288**
-.248**
-.256**
-.185**
-.118**
.446**
.367**
.424**
0.61
*
-.056
**
**
**
**
**
**
**
-.494**
12.Loneliness
1.84
-.058
-.232
-.237
.299
-.272
.347
-.257
.302
.153
-.444
-.514
Note. **p < .001; *p < .005. FA: perceived family support; FR: perceived friend support; OT: perceived others support Test of the measurement model Next, a measurement model was conducted before testing the structural equation model analysis. Measurement models specify the relationships between observed variables and their latent constructs, and this method allowed examination of the relationship between latent variables(Anderson and Gerbing 1988).㻌 Therefore, a measurement model was tested including latent constructs for psychological maltreatment, perceived social support, self-esteem and loneliness. In order to control for possible inflated measurement errors resulting from multiple items examining the latent variables of psychological maltreatment, perceived social support self-esteem and loneliness in the present study, we adapted random assignment(Matsunaga 2008) to create separate item parcels for variables of self-esteem and loneliness that because they are single-dimensional variables and adapted internal-consistency approach(Bandalos 2002). The number of items in each parcel was roughly equal and items’ average scores were used to evaluate the hypothetical model’s overall data fit.㻌After defining the latent construct, the measurement model was tested and found to have a good data-model fit: χ2 (59, N
= 1302)
= 337.085 (p < 0.001); CFI = 0.965, TLI = 0.953; RMSEA = 0.060 (90% CI = 0.054, 0.066);
SRMR = 0.043. All relationships between latent constructs were statistically significant, indicating that all latent factors were 㻝㻜㻌 㻌
-.537**
well represented by their respective indicators. Test of the Structural Model The model examined the associations between psychological maltreatment, perceived social support, self-esteem and loneliness (see Fig. 1). After controlling for gender, age, and family SES, results showed good data fit, χ2 (59, N = 1302) = 337.085 (p < 0.001); CFI = 0.965, TLI = 0.953; RMSEA = 0.060 (90% CI = 0.054, 0.066); SRMR = 0.044(Hu and Bentler 1999). Tests of the indirect effects indicated that psychological maltreatment exerted its effect on loneliness through a direct path from psychological maltreatment to loneliness (β = 0.123, SE = 0.034, p < 0.001, 95%CI = [0.055, 0.191]) and two indirect paths, the one was from psychological maltreatment to loneliness through perceived social support(β = 0.154, SE = 0.019, p < 0.001, 95%CI = [0.107, 0.198]), and the other one was from psychological maltreatment through perceived social support and self-esteem to loneliness(β = 0.119, SE = 0.013, p < 0.001, 95%CI = [0.088, 0.154]). (See Figure 1 and Table 2).
Figure 1. Structural equation model analysis performed to examine the pathways among psychological maltreatment, perceived social support, self-esteem and children’s loneliness. Table 2 Indirect effects and 95% CIs for the meditational model. Indirect
Standard
effect
Error
BC 95%CI
Model pathway
㻝㻝㻌 㻌
Lower
Upper
psychological maltreatment →loneliness䠄total䠅 Psychological
maltreatment→
perceived
social
0.287**
0.023
0.227
0.341
0.154**
0.019
0.107
0.198
0.119**
0.013
0.088
0.154
support→
loneliness psychological maltreatment →perceived social support → self-esteem →loneliness
Note. **p < 0.001, BC 95% CI for standardized indirect effects = bootstrapped bias-corrected confidence interval with sample 5000. Discussion In the present study, we used SEM to investigate the relationships among psychological maltreatment, perceived social support, self-esteem and children’s loneliness. Supporting our hypotheses, the results indicated that psychological
exerted its effect on loneliness
through a direct path from psychological maltreatment to loneliness and two indirect paths, the one was from psychological maltreatment to loneliness through perceived social support, and the other one was from psychological maltreatment through perceived social support and self-esteem to loneliness. As expected, we found that children’s psychological maltreatment was positively related to loneliness, which was consistent with previous research conclusions(Boyda and McFeeters 2015; Brown et al. 2016; Flett et al. 2016; Chen et al. 2018). Child psychological maltreatment is a severe and common problem in China(Fang et al. 2015; Wang et al. 2017), however, Chinese parents may not realize it, because they usually regard their own children as “private property” and think it is their right to insult or beat their children when they try to teach and discipline them, such cultural beliefs regarding child-rearing and discipline practice behaviors play a critical role in psychological maltreatment(Korbin, 1991).
Moreover, researches have shown a significant effect of maltreatment
on attachment style across abuse types(Aber and Allen 1987; Baer and Martinez 2006; Briere et al.
㻝㻞㻌 㻌
2012), and consistent with the network mediation model, attachment insecurity decreases one’s motivation to initiate contact and produces unsuccessful interactions(Larose et al. 2002), and in turn lead to experiencing great states of loneliness. sychological In line with previous studies, psychological experience of being pushed, slapped and threatened detracted from the individual's perception of social support available from family and friends(Haj-Yahia, 2019), which is important in shaping psychosocial development(Pepin and Banyard 2006) and plays a significant role in mediating and moderating some long term consequences of childhood maltreatment(Salazar et al. 2011; Sperry and Widom 2013).
This result adds new evidence of an important role of perceived social support between psychological maltreatment and children’s loneliness.
psychological maltreatment and loneliness,
perceived social support and
self-esteem played a chain mediating effect between psychological maltreatment and children’s loneliness. In line with previous studies,
psychological 㻝㻟㻌
㻌
maltreatment have lower levels of social connectedness and social acceptance(Arslan 2018), which is associated with lesser perceptions of social support(Zinn et al. 2017)
leads to a strong sense of loneliness.
I
psychological psychological
makes several important contributions. Firstly, to our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the relationship between psychological maltreatment and loneliness and the way in which this relationship is mediated by perceived social support and self-esteem. We found that childhood psychological maltreatment would increase the risk for children’s loneliness. Furthermore, this study provides a better understanding of the mediating roles of 㻝㻠㻌 㻌
Secondly, this study supports sociometer theory, provides novel evidence that self-perceived social support is a necessary link in the causal chain of the sociometer mechanism m psychological maltreatment on self-esteem is mediated by children’s perceived social support, which leads to children’s loneliness. Thirdly, this study adds new evidence of an important role of perceived social support between psychological maltreatment and children’s loneliness. So we should take it as a chance to provide intervention to enhance their ability to perceive social support, improve their self-esteem and, ultimately, reduce their feelings of loneliness. Finally, the present study has several limitations highlight the need for cautions interpretation of our finds and provide some guidance for future research. First, this study used a cross-sectional design, it was not able to test possible association between variables, longitudinal or experimental studies would provide a more accurate assessment of causality. Second, the data were collected by self-report measures, which are subjective and vulnerable to social desirability bias, although scales with good reliability and validity were selected, there was no way to completely avoid self-reporting biases. Future research can use multiple methods (e.g. other reports and collected data from parents, teachers or peers). Finally, the sample included only Chinese children aged 9-11, future research can expand to other cultures or age groups.
㻝㻡㻌 㻌
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㻞㻢㻌 㻌
Highlights
• Children psychological maltreatment requires more concern.
• Psychological maltreatment would increase the risk for children’s loneliness
• The influence of psychological maltreatment on self-esteem is mediated by children’s perceived social support, which in turn leads to children’s loneliness.
• There is an urge need to provide intervention to enhance their ability to perceive social support, improve their self-esteem and, ultimately, reduce their feelings of loneliness.