Parent–Child Dynamic Linkages: Bidirectional Relations Between Maternal Life Satisfaction and Children’s Learning Behaviors
1. Institute of Applied Psychology, College of Education, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310023, China;
2. Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310028, China
Abstract:In the context of promoting a family-friendly society in China, increasing attention has been paid to how maternal well-being and children's learning behaviors dynamically influence one another in everyday life. This study recruited 370 mothers of Grade 1–3 children and asked them to complete daily diaries across five consecutive weekdays during the early COVID-19 stay-at-home period, when both mothers and children were immersed in home-based work and learning. Each day, mothers reported their own life satisfaction and their child’s learning concentration, learning autonomy, extracurricular activity participation, and study duration. Dynamic structural equation modeling (DSEM) was used to disentangle within-family (intraindividual) and between-family (interindividual) associations. At the within-family level, significant bidirectional lagged effects were found: children’s learning behaviors on one day positively predicted maternal life satisfaction the next day, and maternal life satisfaction similarly predicted children’s next-day learning behaviors. Notably, children's learning concentration had the strongest predictive effect on mothers’ subsequent life satisfaction, exceeding the reverse effect from mothers to children. At the between-family level, only children’s average learning autonomy was positively associated with mothers’ overall life satisfaction across families; no significant cross-family associations were observed for the other learning indicators. These findings reveal a reciprocal, dynamic link between children’s learning behaviors and maternal well-being in daily life. They underscore the active role of children in shaping parenting experiences and provide valuable implications for designing supportive family interventions that simultaneously promote children's learning development and mothers’ psychological well-being.