Family Contributions to School Performance of Adolescents: The Role of Fathers’ Perceived Involvement

Abstract

Parental involvement is a valuable contribution to early adolescent behavior, particularly in educational contexts. This study analyzes the role of father’s socioeconomic status (SES) and perceived involvement (PI) when understanding school performance (SP) of adolescents, considering that involvement could be expressed as home-based and school-based. In a cross-sectional design, a sample from Colombia (South America) composed of 419 fathers (mean age = 42.2 years; SD = 7.37) and their adolescents (mean age = 12.63 years; SD = 0.86) completed self-administered questionnaires to measure SES, PI, and SP, and structural equation modeling was used to evaluate relations. Results indicate that the contribution of fathers to adolescent SP implies PI, considering that the direct effect of SES on SP is significant but small in comparison to the mediated path through PI. This article addresses the relevance of father’s contribution through involvement to understand the SP of adolescents, suggesting issues for studying the role of fathers in the adolescent’s outcomes.

The intergenerational transmission of educational attainment: A closer look at the (interrelated) roles of paternal involvement and genetic inheritance

“…Different dimensions of fathers' involvement might uniquely influence children's educational performances. First of all, and most directly, fathers can influence their children's educational outcomes through their involvement in teaching-related activities such as coaching, helping with homework, communication with school personnel, and active participation in classroom or school activities (21,29,30). The involvement of fathers may benefit children's school achievement, amongst others because the help fathers provide and the time that fathers practice with their children can improve their children's skills (31).…”

“…The rationale behind these findings is that greater involvement of parents is indicative of the value they attach to educational achievements, and children internalize these values (31). Previous research found that children who have fathers that are more involved in their schoolwork obtained higher grades in high school (21,29,30). These positive associations remain when controlling for the involvement of the mothers (21, 30).…”

“…Our first hypothesis therefore reads: Fathers’ involvement (school-specific involvement and leisure involvement) is an underlying mechanism for the impact of fathers’ educational attainment on children’s educational attainment (H1). A small number of studies have shown that fathers’ involvement indeed serves as a mediator between educational attainment and child outcomes (29,37–39) A clear limitation is that they did not control for children’s genetic characteristics, and therefore might not have been able to obtain a reliable understanding of the role father involvement plays in the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment.…”

The intergenerational transmission of educational attainment: A closer look at the (interrelated) roles of paternal involvement and genetic inheritance

“…Different dimensions of fathers’ involvement might uniquely influence children’s educational performances. First of all, and most directly, fathers may influence their children’s educational outcomes through their involvement in teaching-related activities such as coaching, helping with homework, communication with school personnel, and active participation in classroom or school activities [ 21 , 29 , 30 ]. The involvement of fathers may benefit children’s school achievement, amongst others because the help fathers provide and the time that fathers practice with their children can improve their children’s skills [ 31 ].…”

“…The rationale behind these findings is that greater involvement of parents is indicative of the value they attach to educational achievements, and children internalize these values [ 31 ]. Previous research found that children who have fathers that are more involved in their schoolwork obtained higher grades in high school [ 21 , 29 , 30 ] (correlation of 0.113 between father involvement and academic achievement [ 29 ] These positive associations remain after accounting for the involvement of mothers [ 21 , 30 ]. Besides fathers’ involvement in school (work), the frequency of joint activities undertaken by father and child is also associated with children’s educational attainment [ 33 , 34 ].…”