Intergenerational Coparenting Across Physical Distance: Grandparenting Styles, Parental Remote Parenting, and Mental...

The family care of left-behind children often combines in-person grandparental caregiving with parental remote parenting; yet, how these two forms of care jointly relate to children's mental health remains underexplored. Drawing on family systems theory, this study used data from 6317 rural left-behind children cared for by grandparents in the 2023 Hubei Province Survey of Vulnerable Children. Latent class analysis (LCA) and regression models were applied to identify grandparenting styles, parental remote parenting, and their interaction. Grandparenting styles were identified as warmly controlling, indifferent punitive, and mildly interventional. Compared with the mildly interventional style, the warmly controlling style was associated with higher resilience and lower psychological distress, whereas the indifferent punitive style showed the opposite pattern. Parental remote parenting was associated with higher resilience and lower psychological distress, but its strength varied across grandparenting contexts. In the indifferent punitive style, its positive association with resilience was weaker; in the warmly controlling style, its negative association with psychological distress was weaker. These findings suggest that parental remote parenting serves as a conditional family resource embedded in grandparental care environments, contributing to the mental health of left-behind children. The study shows the asymmetric role of intergenerational coparenting in psychological resilience and distress.