Parental Monitoring, Parental Warmth, and Minority Youths’ Academic Outcomes: Exploring the Integrative Model of Parenting

Abstract

Guided by the integrative model of parenting, the present study investigated the relationship between parental monitoring and racial/ethnic minority adolescents' school engagement and academic motivation as a function of parental warmth, and explored whether these associations varied for boys and girls. Participants (60 % female) were 208 sixth through eighth grade students (63 % African American, 19 % Latino, 18 % Multiracial) from an urban middle school in the Midwestern United States. Youth completed an in-school survey with items on parenting (parental monitoring, mothers'/fathers' warmth), cognitive engagement (school self-esteem), behavioral engagement (school trouble), and academic motivation (intrinsic motivation). As hypothesized, mothers' warmth enhanced the association between parental monitoring and youths' engagement and motivation. No gender differences in these associations emerged. Fathers' warmth strengthened the negative association between parental monitoring and school trouble, and this association was stronger for boys. Implications regarding the importance of sustaining a high level of monitoring within the context of warm parent-adolescent relationships to best support academic outcomes among minority youth are discussed.

Factors Influencing Academic Motivation of Ethnic Minority Students: A Review

“…Individual Oriented Achievement Motivation scale: "the extent to which the achievement goals, achievement behavior, outcome evaluation, and final consequences are regulated by the individual." Lowe and Dotterer (2013) Intrinsic motivation Intrinsic motivation measured in a survey: 17-item scale (e.g., "I ask questions in class because I want to learn new things") Marjoribanks (1985) Educational aspiration: level of education Educational aspirations: Students were asked to indicate what educational level they would eventually like to receive. McInerney (1990) Intention to complete the higher school Intention to complete the higher school certificate (Year 12) and intention to leave school as soon as possible McInerney (2008) Intention for further education Intention for further education measured with five items (e.g., "I intend to go on to college or university") (Continued) Sentell (2012) College aspiration College aspiration was measured as self-reported plans to attend college/university compared with other plans Shin (2011) Academic self-efficacy: "an individual's beliefs about his or her ability to generate and maintain the effort needed to achieve a goal"…”

“…Here 14 factors were found to be positively related with motivation: parental support (Plunkett & Bámaca-Gómez, 2003;Van Houtte & Stevens, 2010), family (guidance, material support, etc. ; Kenny et al, 2007), negative parental influence (McInerney, 2008), parental monitoring (Hill & Wang, 2015;Lowe & Dotterer, 2013;Plunkett & Bámaca-Gómez, 2003), mothers' warmth (Lowe & Dotterer, 2013), fathers' warmth (Lowe & Dotterer, 2013), parental warmth (Hill & Wang, 2015), language spoken at home (Plunkett & Bámaca-Gómez, 2003), help given by parents (Choi et al, 1994), control of parents (Choi et al, 1994), parents' help with academic tasks (Plunkett & Bámaca-Gómez, 2003), communication with caregivers (Basáñez et al, 2013), parental autonomy support (Hill & Wang, 2015), and parent-child relationship (including parental affection, parental emotional support, and parental independence encouragement; Yuan et al, 2016). However, there were two barriers in this subcategory: negative parental influence (McInerney, 2008) and family (misfortune, lack of care, etc.…”

Depressive symptoms, anxiety and academic motivation in youth: Do schools and families make a difference?

“…More recently, Lowe & Dotterer (2013) found that parental warmth may moderate the relationships between parental monitoring and school engagement and academic motivation.…”

Maternal Psychological Control, Use of Supportive Parenting, and Childhood Depressive Symptoms

“…In other words, parents that would not otherwise be considered physically abusive may still practice corporal punishment, but psychologically controlling behaviors are often encountered within parent-child relationships in which themes such as manipulation and guilt induction are common, thereby decreasing the apparent inconsistencies that these behaviors might display. Thus, with this particular form of stress, models such as the integrative model of parenting (Darling & Steinberg, 1993;Lowe & Dotterer, 2013), which stress interpretation of individual parenting practices in the context of the overall parent-child relationship, might offer additional aid in understanding its effect on child outcomes.…”

“…In most cases, however, families, and especially parents, are experienced subjectively as both sources of support and stress. In these cases, the impact of positive and negative parent behavior is not additive, but rather is interactive and integrative, such that individual parenting behaviors are appraised in the context of the overall parent-child relationship (Darling & Steinberg, 1993;Lowe & Dotterer, 2013). Indeed, several studies have examined the interactive effect of both positive and negative parenting practices (e.g., Dallaire et al, 2006;Eisenberg, Gershoff, Fabes, Shepard, Cumberland, Losoya, … & Murphy, 2001;Harper, Brown, Arias, & Brody, 2006), suggesting that negative parenting behaviors (e.g., harsh discipline and negative emotional expression) may have the upper-hand when it comes to predicting future depressive symptoms.…”