| 英文摘要 |
In recent years, Parentification has continued to attract the attention of researchers within the Chinese academic community. However, the measurement tools predominantly rely on revised foreign scales, with fewer scales developed based on local lived experiences of parentification. Therefore, this study aims to build upon existing parentification theories and measurement tools and collecting items generated freely by participants that reflect their local lived experiences of parentification. By integrating these two sources, this study seeks to explore the specific manifestations and structural dimensions of parentification behaviors and feelings within the context of Chinese filial piety culture. Ultimately, the goal is to develop a parentification measurement tool suitable for mainland Chinese adolescents, thereby obtaining more localized evidence regarding the impact of parentification on adolescent mental health. This will contribute to advancing empirical research on parentification in Chinese contexts.
First, during the initial stage of scale item development, this study reviewed international scales used to assess adolescent parentification in previous research. These include the Parentification Scale (PS) (Mika et al., 1987), the Parentification Questionnaire—Youth Version (PQ-Y) (Godsall & Jurkovic, 1995), the Filial Responsibility Scale (FRS, later revised into Chinese) (Jurkovic & Thirkield, 1999; Shih, 2007), the Parentification Inventory (PI) (Hooper et al., 2011), and the Parentification Questionnaire for Youth (KPdM; Borchet et al., 2020). Among the scales developed within Chinese research are the Parentification Scale (Hou, 2008), the Parentification Scale for High School and Vocational Students (Chien, 2010), the Parentification Questionnaire for Junior High School Students (Xu, 2021), and the Multidimensional Assessment of Caring Activities Checklist (MACA-YC18) (Joseph et al., 2009). After consolidating overlapping items and removing those with redundant content, tangential descriptions, or items deemed inappropriate for the mainland Chinese context, 50 items remained.
Second, 106 students from junior high, high school, and vocational schools in Guangdong, Sichuan, Hunan, and Inner Mongolia—representing the eastern, western, southern, and northern regions of mainland China, respectively—were selected to complete an“Open-Ended Questionnaire on Family Life Experiences.”After preliminary organization of the data collected from the open-ended questionnaires, responses that were off-topic, semantically unclear, or ambiguous were removed, resulting in 669 descriptions of parentification behaviors and feelings. After merging duplicates, 164 unique descriptions remained. These were integrated with items from existing parentification scales to form an initial conceptual structure of parentification. Based on this, a preliminary version of the scale was developed for expert content validity assessment, consisting of 61 items across 9 dimensions. Following expert feedback, the scale was refined to 57 items, with 39 items in the“Parentification Behaviors”subscale and 18 items in the“Parentification Feelings”subscale. All items from both subscales were randomly ordered and combined with the GHQ-12 and the Adolescent Filial Piety Scale to form the final measurement tool.
Third, to ensure the representativeness of the sample for the formal measurement, one province was selected from each of the northeastern, northwestern, southwestern, southeastern, and central regions of mainland China. Within each province, the number of junior high, high school, and vocational students was balanced. A total of 700 questionnaires were distributed, with 663 valid responses collected, yielding an effective response rate of 94.71%. The valid data were then randomly split into two samples for cross-validation of the scale’s factor structure. Sample 1 (the exploratory sample, N = 307) was used for item analysis and exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) to examine and refine the scale’s factor structure. Sample 2 (the validation sample, N = 356) was used for ESEM to assess the fit of the revised model. Finally, the reliability and criterion-related validity of the final version of the scale were evaluated.
The results revealed that the final version of the“Adolescent Parentification Scale”consists of 39 items divided into two subscales. The“Parentification Behaviors”subscale (30 items) includes not only dimensions found in Western scales, such as“non-specific adult role taking,”“parental role vis-à-vis parent,”“spousal role vis-à-vis parent”and“parental role vis-à-vis siblings,”but also new dimensions deeply rooted in filial piety culture, such as“proactively entertain parents”and“make parents worriless.”The“Parentification Feelings”subscale (9 items) encompasses the“perception of unfairness”identified in Western scales, as well as the“perception of guilt”identified by Chinese researchers. Statistical tests of reliability and validity indicated that the“Adolescent Parentification Scale”developed in this study has acceptable reliability and validity and can be used to assess parentification behaviors and feelings among adolescents in Chinese cultural contexts.
This study also found that the total score and all dimensions of“Parentification Behaviors”were significantly positively correlated with“Reciprocal Filial Piety Beliefs”but significantly negatively correlated with“Mental Health Problems.”In contrast, the total score and all dimensions of“Parentification Feelings”were significantly positively correlated with“Mental Health Problems.”However, the relationship between“Parentification Feelings”and“Reciprocal Filial Piety Beliefs”was inconsistent across dimensions. Specifically, the total score of“Parentification Feelings”and the“perception of unfairness”dimension were significantly negatively correlated with“Reciprocal Filial Piety Beliefs,”while the“perception of guilt”dimension was significantly positively correlated with it. Additionally, this study found significant differences in parentification behaviors and feelings among adolescents of different genders, educational stages, and birth orders.
In summary, the use of exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) to test the structural validity of the parentification scale represents a methodological breakthrough in this study. The advantage of this approach is that ESEM not only provides a more parsimonious model for explaining complex structural relationships, demonstrating superior model fit indices, but also reduces research costs and participant burden associated with repeated testing. More importantly, the theoretical contribution of this study lies in expanding the conceptualization of parentification behaviors within the context of Chinese filial piety culture. Through data collection via open-ended questionnaires and statistical validation using ESEM, this study identified two new dimensions of parentification behaviors among mainland Chinese adolescents—“proactively entertain parents”and“make parents worriless”—which are deeply rooted in filial piety culture.
The dimension of“make parents worriless”refers to adolescents actively managing themselves at home, striving to meet parental expectations, and reducing parental worries, thereby indirectly contributing to family harmony and caregiving. In contrast to the dimensions of“parental role vis-à-vis parent,”“spousal role vis-à-vis parent”proposed by Mika et al. (1987), which involve children directly soothing parental emotions or mediating family relationships,“make parents worriless”adopts a more indirect and implicit approach. By managing themselves well, adolescents aim to minimize parental concerns and avoid disappointing their parents, thereby indirectly addressing parental emotional needs. As a dimension developed from the lived experiences of Chinese adolescents,“make parents worriless”should be emphasized in parentification measurement and not overlooked due to its indirect nature.
On the other hand,“proactively entertain parents”refers to adolescents taking initiative in family life to enhance family happiness, improve family atmosphere, or maintain family relationships. The key distinction between this dimension and existing Western parentification behaviors lies in its emphasis on“proactivity.”That is, children autonomously and spontaneously engage in behaviors that care for their parents and family members. In contrast, dimensions such as“parental role vis-à-vis parent,”“spousal role vis-à-vis parent”highlight children’s parentification in response to problematic parental situations, whereas“proactively entertain parents”emphasizes children’s voluntary efforts to improve family dynamics and care for parental emotions.
Regarding parentification feelings, this study’s findings reaffirm the importance of the“perception of unfairness”emphasized in Western parentification research while also validating the unique dimension of“perception of guilt”within Chinese cultural contexts. However, correlation analyses revealed that the“perception of unfairness”and“perception of guilt”had opposite relationships with“Reciprocal Filial Piety Beliefs.”This suggests that adolescents with stronger reciprocal filial piety beliefs may experience“high guilt”and“low unfairness,”whereas those with weaker reciprocal filial piety beliefs may experience“low guilt”and“high unfairness.”The issue is that these two different patterns of parentification feelings may yield the same total score on the subscale. Therefore, relying solely on the total score for analysis may overlook important nuances in adolescents’parentification feelings. Consequently, future research using the“Parentification Feelings”subscale should exercise caution and consider the scores of both dimensions separately, maintaining a differentiated understanding of“guilt”and“unfairness.”Additionally, future studies could explore different patterns of adolescent parentification by combining“Parentification Behaviors,”which would provide more practical guidance than relying solely on total scores.
As parentification research continues to accumulate, researchers have come to recognize that while parentification may negatively impact mental health, it may also bring numerous positive effects to adolescent psychological development (Masiran et al., 2023). The findings of this study, along with other Chinese parentification research, repeatedly remind us that parentification should not be unconditionally pathologized. The concept of parentification merely offers a perspective for understanding adolescents’behaviors within their families and should not be used to judge the psychological or relational health of adolescents. Instead, researchers should focus more on the impact of parentification feelings on adolescent psychological development, exploring risk and protective factors to provide necessary evidence for psychological counseling practices aimed at adolescents or adults with a history of parentification in childhood. |
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