Home-based parental involvement in single- and multiple-child Chinese families: the role of socio-demographic characteristics and parental expectations

Home-based parental involvement is widely considered to be associated with early learning outcomes. However, previous research has heavily focused on school-age children and has relied heavily on Western samples. After China relaxed its one-child policy in 2013, the impact on Chinese families became visible. This study analyzes the data of 3272 children from the 2018 China Family Panel Studies to investigate the relationship between socio-demographic characteristics, parental expectations and parental involvement. The results show that Chinese parents from one-child families were more involved in their child's education than their multiple-child counterparts. Structural equation modeling analysis shows that parental expectations mediated the association between socio-demographic characteristics and parental involvement. The exact nature of these links differed significantly when the two types of families were compared. These findings suggest that it is worthwhile to conduct further studies into family process, as this will make it possible to investigate the underlying mechanisms.