ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Human Developmental Psychology
This article is part of the Research TopicStress-induced Psychopathology: From Mechanisms to InterventionsView all 14 articles
Perceived Discrimination and Subjective Well-being of Left-behind Children: Social Support and Psychological Resilience as Mediators
Provisionally accepted
- 1Leshan Normal University, Leshan, China
- 2Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Chinese left-behind children (LBC) report perceiving significant discrimination, a chronic stressor linked to adverse mental health outcomes. However, the mechanisms underlying this association remain unclear. Guided by the stress process model, which suggests that exposure to stress can increase the risk of poorer mental health through the depletion of psychosocial resources, this study examined whether the association between perceived discrimination and subjective well-being was partially explained by social support and psychological resilience. A cross-sectional study was conducted in Sichuan Province, southwest China. Questionnaires on Perceived Discrimination, Social Support Rating Scale, Resilience Scale for Chinese Adolescents, and Subjective Happiness Scale were completed by 719 LBC (aged 10–15 years) from primary and junior high school. We found that higher perceived discrimination was significantly associated with lower subjective well-being. This association was partially explained by social support and psychological resilience directly, as well as by a path involving lower social support leading to reduced psychological resilience. These findings contribute to understanding the mechanism through which discrimination may influence LBC's subjective well-being. This highlights the need for multi-level interventions that aim to enhance individual resilience, strengthen social support networks, and address the broader issue of discrimination.
Keywords: Left-behind Children, perceived discrimination, psychological resilience, Socialsupport, Subjective well-being
Received: 08 Jul 2025; Accepted: 30 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Weifeng, Ma and Yin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yidan Ma
Xu Yin
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.