Childhood Left-Behind Life Experience: A Painful Memory

Parental love and affection play a crucial role for a child’s growth. Yet, left-behind children, a special group in China, have to live in separation with their parents in childhood, deprived of parental care. The issue of left-behind children is a consequence of the disparities in economic development between rural and urban China and between western and eastern China. A large population of rural young laborers have left native places to seek better employment opportunities in developed regions. Constrained by factors related to China’s registered residence system (Hukou), these migrant workers can hardly have their families live with them in cities, and their young kids become left-behind children in rural homeplaces (Zhang & Li, 2016).