A Study of Parental Involvement in Chinese Pre-school Children During COVID-19 Pandemic

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Jun Chen, Genjian Zhang, Atsushi Nanakida

Abstract

This study aims to examine Chinese parental involvement in childcare and preschool children education(0-6 years old) during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the impact of COVID-19 on the differentiation of parents' involvement in practice in China. A random sampling method was used to collect a quantitative data from 2,617 parents across China through an online survey. The findings indicated that: (1) Chinese preschool parents showed minimal involvement in their children's education during the crisis of Covid-19.Parental involvement in parenting such as children's daily routines was highest in China during the Covid-19 pandemic. (2) Place of residence, public kindergarten, parental education level and occupation, parental unemployment due to the Covid-19 pandemic, difficulty level in instructing children in online courses and time spent with children all had significant predictive power on Chinese parental involvement ( F(9,439) = 6.319,P = .000.<.001 ). (3) The amount of time spent with the child was a significant and partial mediator between parental unemployment and parental involvement; unemployment caused by Covid-19 can only have a positive impact on parental involvement if parents spend adequate time with their children.

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