ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Human Developmental Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1669639
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Power of Relationships in Human Development: From Prenatal Bonding to Attachment Across the LifespanView all 8 articles
The Relationship between Parent-child Attachment and Fertility Intention: The Mediation Role of Family Resilience and The Mediating Role of Gender
Provisionally accepted
- 1河南职业技术学院, 河南郑州, China
- 2Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China
- 3Anyang Normal University, Anyang, China
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To investigate the relationship and mechanisms between parent-child attachment, family resilience, and future fertility intentions, this study conducted a questionnaire survey with 2,186 college students. The findings reveal: (1) Parent-child attachment (including its sub-dimensions: father attachment and mother attachment), family resilience (including its sub-dimensions: family beliefs and family strength), and fertility intention show significant positive correlations; (2) Total scores of parent-child attachment and family resilience positively predict fertility intention—— Specifically, father attachment (rather than mother attachment) and family beliefs (rather than family strength) positively predict fertility intention; (3) After controlling for variables such as family economic status, family beliefs partially mediate the relationship between father attachment and future fertility intention; (4) Both segments of the mediating pathway are significantly moderated by gender—— Male's father attachment has a stronger promoting effect on family beliefs than females's, while male's family beliefs directly drive fertility intention. Female's family beliefs do not directly influence fertility intention but require practical fertility cost mitigation to increase it. These results not only provide new evidence for the theoretical mechanism of "parent-child attachment influencing fertility intention" but also offer practical basis for developing gender-specific and dimension-specific strategies to enhance fertility intentions.
Keywords: Parent-child attachment, family resilience, fertility intention, Father attachment, motherattachment, Family beliefs, Family strength, gender
Received: 20 Jul 2025; Accepted: 17 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, You and Yang. 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: Gui-Ying Li, 846292438@qq.com
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