Parental marital Relationship and depressive symptoms in adolescent boys and girls: The role of self-compassion and school connectedness

The present study explored the association between adolescents' perceived parental relationship and their depressive symptoms, as well as the mediating effect of self-compassion and the moderating effect of school connectedness. The present cross-sectional study draws upon data procured from a sample of 6,801 adolescents in junior high schools located in Shenzhen, China. The data were collected in December 2021, marking a year since the outbreak of the pandemic. The parents' marital relationship, adolescents' depressive symptoms, self-compassion and school connectedness were measured by adolescents' self-reported questionnaires. The mediating and moderated mediating models were computed using Mplus 8.0 with bootstrapping method. The results revealed that, after controlling age and gender, (1) marital relationship negatively predicted adolescents' depressive symptoms; (2) adolescents' self-compassion partially mediated the association between parental relationship and depressive symptoms; (3) school connectedness moderated the link between marital relationship and self-compassion as well as the link between the marital relationship and depressive symptoms; and (4) parents' marital relationship has a stronger affect on self-compassion for girls than boys, and girls' self-compassion exerts a slightly stronger influence on depressive symptoms than boys. The findings illuminated that it is of great importance to cultivate adolescent self-compassion and school connectedness, which may block or buffer the effect of poor martial relationship on adolescent depressive symptoms. Moreover, a good sense of school connection may be particularly important in protecting mental health of adolescents whose parents have poor marital relationships.