The Emotion Regulation Strategies and the Psychological Well-Being among Migrant Children in China: The Roles of Self-Esteem and Resilience

An enormous amount of research attention has been devoted to investigating migrant children’s depression, loneliness, discrimination, and risk behaviors from the perspective of typical deficit model of adolescence, while relatively little attention has been paid to the positive developmental outcomes. Psychological well-being refers to cognitive and affective evaluations of our lives. It is a significant indicator of positive youth development(PYD). Previous research showed that emotional problems were among the most important factors that affected the migrant children’s life quality. So emotion regulation may be a linchpin for the psychological well-being of the migrant children. Furthermore, high self-esteem and resilience are also the key protective factors for the children’s development. Accordingly, from the perspective of PYD, the purpose of this study was to get better insights into the associations between emotion regulation strategies(i.e., reappraisal and suppression) and the psychological well-being of the migrant children, and to test the possible mediating roles of self-esteem and resilience.639 migrant children aged 9–14 years old from three primary schools in Beijing were recruited for participation. They were asked to complete a battery of self-report questionnaires, including the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire(short form), the Emotion Regulation Scale in Adolescents, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and the Resilience Scale for Chinese Adolescents. Firstly, descriptive statistics were utilized to describe the basic features of the variables. Then the multiple regressions were conducted to acquire an understanding of the overall relationships depicted in the hypothesized model. The sequential mediation effects were estimated by the PROCESS macro for SPSS.A correlation analysis showed that reappraisal was positively associated with suppression, self-esteem, resilience and psychological well-being among the migrant children. Suppression was negatively correlated with resilience, but had no relationship with self-esteem and psychological wellbeing. Self-esteem, resilience and psychological well-being were positively correlated with each other. Regression results indicated that cognitive reappraisal directly predicted the migrant children’ psychological well-being, while suppression did not. Besides, cognitive reappraisal and suppression indirectly contributed to psychological well-being through both the separate mediation path and the chained mediation path of self-esteem and resilience. These findings demonstrated that it was meaningful to involve emotion regulation strategies, self-esteem and resilience when explaining the migrant children’s psychological well-being.The important implication of this study is that cognitive reappraisal is an effective factor in promoting the self-esteem, resilience and psychological well-being of the migrant children by intervention. We have a cautious attitude toward the value of suppression. Although some research showed that it had positive effects on interpersonal relationships in the collective culture, it might not be beneficial to the migrant children under some circumstances. Thus, we should consider the specific events migrant children may encounter when we make an intervention plan. Another implication of this study is that we should also promote the psychological well-being of the migrant children by developing their self-esteem and resilience, instead of just reducing or eliminating their problematic behaviors..