Association of the previous experience of maternal migration absence with non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) in their children: A cross-sectional study in Anhui, China

Abstract

Abstract Background Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) emerged as an escalating health concern in youths worldwide, particularly in the vulnerable. In China, a burgeoning internal migration in human history has been tearing families apart, generating a surging number of left-behind children (LBC) with a lack of parental supervision. Despite the empirical acknowledgment of parental migration as a risk predictor of the NSSI among LBC, there remains a lack of understanding of the specific role of the maternal migration experience. Objective This study sought to determine the association of maternal migration experience and its characteristics in terms of age at initiation and length with 12-month NSSI among children. Participants & setting: Data were collected by a self-administrated questionnaire survey conducted among a school-based sample of students in the Anhui province, China. Methods A total of 2476 participants were analyzed, and the Chi-squared tests and binary logistic regression analysis were employed. Results Compared with children whose father is currently migrating and the mother never migrated for work (FM-MN), children whose father never migrated but the mother previously migrated for work (FN-MP, OR = 2.21, 95% CI [1.27–3.84], p < 0.01) and children whose father is currently migrating and the mother previously migrated for work (FM-MP, OR = 1.46, 95% CI [1.00-2.13], p < 0.05) evidenced greater odds of the prevalence of 12-month NSSI. And also, a significantly higher risk for 12-month NSSI was found among FN-MP and FM-MP compared with children whose parents lived in the household and neither had ever migrated for work (FN-MN). For those children with maternal migration experience, while controlling for the paternal migration characteristics, there was no difference between before and after school age at initiation of migration in the risk of NSSI, nor were there any differences across 1–3, 4–6, and more than 6 years of maternal migration length. Conclusions Findings suggested the potential long-term effect of the experience of maternal migration on children and provided implications for the early identification and prevention of children at risk for NSSI, particularly within the maternal migrant family context.