The association between family relationship patterns and preschoolers’ social and behavioral competence in Chinese urban families

Guided by family systems theory, this study examined how distinct patterns of family relationships were related to child social and behavioral competence among 314 intact Chinese urban families with preschool-aged children. Four distinct patterns of family relationships were identified using latent profile analysis: unbalanced, compensatory, moderately cohesive, and highly cohesive families. In unbalanced families, mothers perceived their marital, coparenting, and parent-child relationships as low in quality, yet fathers perceived them to have moderate quality. Compensatory families exhibited poor marital and coparenting relationships but high mother-child closeness. Highly cohesive families displayed high quality across all dyadic relationships, while moderately cohesive families showed moderate relationship quality. Children from highly cohesive families had the highest social and behavioral competence. Children from moderately cohesive families exhibited better social skills and fewer problem behaviors compared to unbalanced families, but were on par with those from compensatory families. No difference in social skills was found between children from unbalanced and compensatory families, but children in the former group displayed more problem behaviors. The findings shed light on the unique family relationship configurations among Chinese urban families with preschool-aged children. They highlight the value of using individual-centered approaches to understand holistic family relationship patterns from a family systems perspective. The findings also underscore the need to develop interventions tailored to families according to their unique family relationship profiles.