The influence of the absence of fathers and thetiming of separation on anxiety and self-esteem ofadolescents: a cross-sectional surveycch_1304 723..731J. Luo,*† L-G. Wang* and W-B. Gao**Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and†Chinese Postdoctoral Entrepreneurship Center, Zhongguancun Haidian Institute, Beijing, ChinaAccepted for publication 9 July 2011Keywordsabsence of fathers,anxiety, self-esteem,timing of separationCorrespondence:Wen-Bin Gao, Centerof Mental Health ofPromotion, Institute ofPsychology, ChineseAcademy of Science,Datun Road 4, ChaoyangDistrict, Beijing 100101,ChinaE-mail:[email protected] Many rural children in China have been experiencing life without fathers since the1990s, when their fathers left the rural areas for the urban areas to find a job that would allow themto continue to support their family. However, to date, knowledge and understanding of the effec tsof the absence of fathers and timing of separation on the mental health of adolescents are limited.Methods A total of 2233 students, ranging in age from 11 to 23 years, from five provinces of China,including 1024 adolescents who experienced the absence of their fathers, were recruited for thisstudy. The data were collected using State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale,which were self-report questionnaires.Results Findings from a structured questionnaire showed that the subjects who experienced lifewithout fathers have increased state-anxiety (t =-5.80, P < 0.001) and lower self-esteem (t = 39.54,P < 0.001) when compared with other subjects, and the above results could be influenced bygender and grade. A limited effect of the timing of separation was found on the mental health ofstudents whose fathers were absent. A significant timing group effect existed for state-anxietyscores [F(3,992) = 2.26, P = 0.05], and post test also revealed that the self-esteem of female scores inthe 0–2 timing group was higher than other timing group’s [F(3,992) = 4.58, P = 0.004].Conclusion The influence of the absence of fathers on the anxiety and self-esteem of adolescentsseems to be more serious than our expectation, and the influence will be different according to thetiming of father absence.IntroductionPatterns of family dynamics have changed dramatically in therural areas of China over the past two decades. Since the 1990s,with the development of economy, a greater number of peasantsmigrated from the countryside to urban areas looking for jobsthat were better paid. However, because of the hukou system(Household Registration System), migrant workers and theirfamilies who are not registered as official residents in the citiesare not entitled to subsidized housing, education, social securityor medical benefits (Wang & Murie 2000; Feng et al. 2002;Aughinbaugh et al. 2005); therefore, most peasants have to leavetheir children in their hometown when immigrating to metro-politan areas. Children of migrant workers, known as the ‘ruralleft-behind children’, are often taken care of by the paternal ormaternal elderly, first kin, or someone else from the extendedfamily. In most of these families, the father or both parents leavetheir hometown to work because physically demanding jobs,such as manual labour, factory work and service work are themost prevalent types of work available. As a result, only 10.5%bs_bs_bannerChild:care, health and developmentOriginal Article doi:10.1111/j.1365-2214.2011.01304.x© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 723of Chinese rural left-behind children live with their fathers now(Ye et al. 2008), and impressively, their fathers were usuallyabsent when they were very young, possibly even before theywere born.In recent years, a lot of attention has been paid to the influ-ence that absence of fathers has on the mental health of chil-dren. Previous studies showed that children, who lived in afamily with only a mother, could fare poorly across a widerange of adolescent and adult outcomes, including poorcognitive achievement (Amato & Keith 1991; Lang & Zagorsky2001), behaviour problems (Cynthia & Sara 2004; Aughin-baugh et al. 2005) and sexual identity difficulty (Fitzgeraldet al. 2003). Some studies agreed that the boys suffered fromfather absence more (Lee 1995; Ge et al. 2006). Some conclu-sions about the anxiety of children who experienced fatherabsence were obtrusive. Research indicated that the relation-ship between fathers and their kids can predict the anxiety ofchildren more than the relationship between mothers andtheir kids (Barrera & Jones 1992), and those children withfather absence had a higher probability of having an anxietydisorder (Scarr & McCartney 1988). It was reported that theanxiety level of children with father absence in the USA hasincreased dramatically over the last 40 years (from 6% in 1960to 24% in 2000) (Nock & Einolf 2008).Moreover, anxiety is closely related to self-esteem for thosechildren who have experienced separation from a parent (Pot-tinger 2005; Xue & Li 2007). Research has focused, to a largeextent, on trait-anxiety as a possible factor involved in harmingself-esteem (Sedikides et al. 2004), and low self-esteem has beenproposed as a reason for the association between insecureattachment and anxiety (Lee & Hankin 2009). Others reportthat adults who come from single-mother families have lowerself-esteem than adults who come from two-parent families(McCormick & Kennedy 2000; Ge et al. 2006). However, therewas agreement that the influence of fathers on the self-esteem ofchildren could be negligible when compared with the mother’sinfluence (Amato & Keith 1991).Indeed, many published studies have been conducted in dif-ferent regions of China on emotion, behaviour, and personalityof the left-behind children and it is commonly thought thatthese children have both higher anxiety (Liu et al. 2007) andlower self-esteem levels (Hao & Cui 2007) than those childrenwho were kept with their nuclear family. Increasing numbers ofadolescents who have experienced parent absence are reachingcollege age, and they have also shown higher anxiety and lowerself-esteem levels than their classmates in the university whohad both parents present (Li et al. 2009). However, none ofthese studies made an explicit distinction between the familieswhere only the father left, only the mother left (even seldom) orboth parents left (Felner et al. 1975), nor did they differentiatefrom the influence of separation timing on the mental health