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Today, a sizable portion of children are left behind by their migrant parents and living with their grandparents in rural China. Studies on left-behind children have primarily focused on children’s negative wellbeing concerning their parental absence and malfunctioning parent-child interactions. However, resilience factors for the development of left-behind children, such as the role that their grandparents play in their lives, have been overlooked, and left-behind children’s perspectives and voices are lacking in this field of research. This study aims to (1) understand left-behind children’s perspectives of grandparental involvement in their lives through Photovoice and (2) to explore potential gender differences in their visual expressions.
Methods:
Thirty left-behind children (19 girls and 11 boys) in rural Chongqing (a major labor-sending area in China where parents migrated to cities for work) were recruited through a school-wide screening in September 2022 to select children with an above-average level of grandparental involvement using the Grandparental Involvement Scale. Three 5-session Photovoice groups were conducted, during which children were asked to take photos that best represented their lives with grandparents.
The children who participated in this study took a total of 438 photos within two weeks, out of which they selected 84 photos to share and discuss in groups. These photos were then coded based on the children's narratives, photo captions, verbal expressions during photo sharing sessions, and researchers' interpretations. Thematic analysis of visual data was conducted using Altas.ti software 23.0.1. Children’s gender differences in their shared photos were analyzed using non-parametric analysis with R programming.
Findings:
The theme of material support from grandparents emerged as the most prominent from the children's photos, reflecting their perception of companionship, love, and positive memories with their grandparents. Other notable themes that emerged from the children's photos included time spent together, reciprocity, living surroundings, and perceived cultural traditions from grandparents. According to the distribution ratio of codes in the photo, our Mann-Whitney test indicated that boys showed more material support from their grandparents than girls (U(Ngirls = 19, Nboys = 11) = 62, z = -2.11, p = 0.04) in their shared photos, while girls showed more cultural traditions perceived from their grandparents (U(Ngirls = 19, Nboys = 11) = 142.5, z = 1.64, p = 0.05) than boys. No significant gender differences were found in other themes (p > 0.05).
Conclusion and implication:
Photovoice provides informative knowledge on how left-behind children are experiencing their lives with grandparents during their parental absence. Gender differences in visual expression in Photovoice should be considered in future studies.