Marital Quality and Three-Generational Relationships Function: The Mediating Role of Child Influencing Behaviors

Background: A well-functioning three-generational relationship brings significant improvements to the well-beings of the numerous individuals and families for which grandparents are actively involved in the child-rearing process. While the intergenerational quality from each tie within a three-generational context is well established as a main indicator of three-generational relationships function, the crucial role of marital relationship in maintaining positive three-generational relationship function within a family system has not been well-researched. Moreover, little is known about the role of children in shaping the patterns and interactions of three-generational relationships, despite their central position as the object of intergenerational childcare.

Objectives: This study was designed to explore how to maintain a well-functioning three-generational relationship when the child was jointly raised by parents and grandparents in Chinese families. It attempts to formulate interactions across generations within a three-generational context and to examine the effect of the parents’ marital relationship on three-generational relationship function by taking the mediating effect of child familial influence into consideration.

Methods: The present study is a cross-sectional study. It involved the recruitment of 557 parents of children in Grade One to Grade Three (aged from 6 to 10 years old) in Hebei Province of China who completed a self-reported questionnaire by multi-cluster sampling. A total of four measurements were applied to investigate the parents’ marital relationship quality, three-generational relationship function, as well as frequency and effectiveness of child familial influence. All these scales were validated with a small-sample validation study (N=186) prior to the main study. Independent sample bivariate analysis, independent sample T-test and Kruskal-Wallis H test were adopted to examine the relationship between variables studied in this research. A series of regression analyses were applied to test the mediating effect of child familial influence.

Results: This study revealed the crucial effect of the marital relationship quality of parents on maintaining positive three-generational relationship function by presenting positive associations of these two variables with satisfactory effect size. The mediating effects model indicated that two types of child familial influencing behaviors (emotional tactics and incompliant tactics) mediated the effects of parent marital relationship quality on three-generational relationships function.

Conclusions: This study provides a new theoretical framework for conceptualizing three-generational interactions within the magnifying trend of grandparenting in contemporary China by integrating relational components across generations. It has contributed to the enrichment of the cumulative knowledge about contributing factors to three-generational relationships function by highlighting the mediating effects of children’s familial influence. The adopted measurements have shown satisfactory psychometric properties, which can serve as evaluation tools in clinical practices. Findings attained in the present research had many implications on recommendations and service directions on how to promote parental cooperation between parents and grandparents as well as to resolve stressful events and conflicts within intergenerational parenting.