Families As Educational Settings Research Paper

2. Early Research

Much of the early research in family influences on children’s educational progress examined ways in which academic outcomes were related to demo- graphic characteristics such as parent marital status and education, ethnicity, birth order, and socioeconomic status. This early work revealed consistent, moderate relationships between most of these factors and children’s cognitive development. In particular, more positive educational outcomes were found in families where the parents’ marriage remained intact, where parents were better educated and had higher income, and for children who were firstrather than later-born. Psychologists and educators have noted that such group comparisons, which have been labeled ‘social address’ (Bronfenbrenner 1979), are less informative than research which identifies the processes underlying these group differences. Four categories of process variables are summarized here: parental beliefs, instruction from parents and siblings, structuring of the home environment and family life, and parents’ behaviors outside the home.

3. Parental Beliefs

Parents’ beliefs affect children’s educational outcomes both through their influences on parental behaviors and on children’s developing beliefs. For instance, a parent will speak to her 6-month-old daughter more often if she believes the infant can benefit from ‘conversations’ with an adult partner. Parents’ beliefs also shape the developing beliefs of their children, many of which serve a motivational role for the child. For instance, a child whose father conveys that a failure was due to lack of effort rather than lack of ability will be more likely to persevere on a future task. Three types of parental beliefs are described here: parents’ educational aspirations for their children, attributional beliefs about the reasons underlying academic outcomes, and beliefs about child rearing.

3.1 Parents’ Educational Aspirations

Most parents have expectations for their children’s performance in school and eventual educational attainment. Both aspirations regarding the child’s future education level and projections of what specific grades a child will obtain are frequently highly optimistic. Thus, for instance, many parents who themselves have failed to complete high school expect that their own children will be college graduates.

It is clear that children’s competencies inspire parents’ aspirations (i.e., parents have higher expectations of more competent children). In general, the research literature also indicates an independent effect of parent expectations on children’s achievement: Parents with more ambitious aspirations have, on average, children who excel academically and who are more likely than other children to pursue higher education (e.g., Okagaki and Frensch 1998). Parents who value education and who have high aspirations for their children are likely to foster achievement striving in their children and to provide a supportive learning environment in the home. Another way in which high parental expectations foster children’s educational development is through the degree of challenge parents provide in learning situations.

3.2 Parents’ Attributional Beliefs

The classic work of Rotter (1966) and Weiner (1979) demonstrated that individuals vary in their beliefs about the reasons underlying success and failure, and that future performance is related to these beliefs. When failure is attributed to an internal controllable factor such as effort, the individual is more likely to persist than if the failure is attributed to lack of ability or an external factor such as teacher preference or luck. Conversely, a belief that success is due to the internal factors of high ability and hard work is likely to foster persistence. Attributional beliefs are thus posited to influence children’s outcomes largely through their motivational effect on children’s persistence in the face of failure and/or challenging tasks. Much of the research in parents’ attributions has entailed cross-cultural investigations of ethnic or national differences in children’s academic achievement. This work shows that Asian parents are more likely to attribute their children’s academic outcomes to effort than are parents of European cultural heritage; these beliefs are then presumed to lead to academic superiority of Asian students over European American students, particularly in math. Although considerable evidence has supported the notion that children’s beliefs influence their achievement striving, particularly in the face of failure, it is unclear that beliefs explain cross-national differences in achievement. European parents are more likely than European Americans to espouse ability attributions, yet children’s math achievement in a number of European countries is higher than in the USA. Cultural variations in beliefs are undoubtedly confounded with other cultural and national differences such as schooling characteristics.

3.3 Parents’ Beliefs About Child-Rearing

Parents’ beliefs about child-rearing also contribute to the educational qualities of the home environment. These beliefs include parents’ views of optimal ways to socialize children (e.g., discipline practices, how and to what extent autonomy is fostered) and age-related expectations of children’s abilities. A substantial body of literature indicates more positive cognitive and social outcomes for children whose parents show warmth while exhibiting firm yet flexible control, a style called democratic parenting by Baldwin (1955), and later described by Baumrind (1973) as authoritative parenting. Authoritative parents rely primarily on reasoning as a discipline tool rather than punishment and view their children’s good behavior as the primary goal of their parenting rather than obedience. Thus, parents who value their children’s autonomy, and whose knowledge and beliefs are consistent with an authoritative parenting style are more likely to foster educational progress in their children, as marked by school grades, low incidence of discipline problems, and healthy self-esteem. However, some recent research indicates cultural variation in the relationship between parenting style and children’s outcomes, both in the importance of autonomy encouragement and the possible detrimental effects of harsh discipline.

Parents vary tremendously in their beliefs about children at different ages. For instance, some parents expect that 18-month-olds can be potty-trained, whereas other parents are nonplussed when the three-year-old continues to have ‘accidents.’ By the same token, some parents expect their three-year-olds to master rudimentary concepts of number and quantity that other parents would not expect before the age of seven. Although parents may not be conscious of many of these beliefs, they nevertheless shape everyday activities in the household, family rules, and the messages children are given—both blatant and subtle—regarding their abilities. For example, parents who believe that an eight-year-old is capable of planning are more likely than other parents to expect their child to pack his her school lunch, select weather appropriate clothes, and budget time to include homework, soccer practice, and leisure in a given evening.

Research in this area has indicated that a U-shaped function operates; expectations that are either too low or too high are not optimal for the child. According to Vygotsky’s concept of scaffolding (1978), parents foster children’s cognitive progress when they provide graduated cues that enable the child to function at a level slightly beyond what the child could perform independently. A parent who persistently has low expectations is unlikely to challenge the child to progress further. On the other hand, expectations that are too high (e.g., attempting to teach algebra to an average kindergartner) are equally unlikely to enhance the child’s development.

4. Instruction By Parents And Siblings

Parent beliefs affect child outcomes primarily through their impact on parent behaviors. One type of parent behavior that shapes the educational quality of the home is parent instruction. In addition, siblings are an important source of information for young children. Instruction from parents and siblings are discussed here together. From birth onward, parents and siblings are a very important source of children’s knowledge. The parent’s early language use guides the development of the infant’s ability to distinguish among phonemes. The toddler observes an older sibling’s interactions with friends and imitates that behavior later in other social situations. A young adolescent acquires concepts of social stereotypes through his parents’ conversation at the dinner table.

Family influences are readily evident in a child’s acquisition of specific skills and knowledge about the world. Thus, for example, a child whose parents are swimmers will probably learn to swim, and the child of musicians is likely to know more about music than peers from nonmusical families. Family also provides the primary context for children’s cognitive development in less obvious ways. Through everyday conversations and activities with family members, children acquire concepts of schemas (e.g., what a visit to the doctor’s office entails), grammar, and mathematical concepts (e.g., the early distinction between ‘one’ and ‘more;’ how to fairly divide the last piece of cake). Children learn memory strategies (e.g., where can I put my show-and-tell item so I won’t forget it tomorrow morning), meta-cognitive knowledge (I can’t concentrate on my homework while big brother is listening to that music), and problem solving (How should I clean up this spilled sugar?).

Some instruction from family members is verbal; other ‘instruction’ is nonverbal, communicated through body language and mood, or is modeled through behavior that the child later imitates. Instruction that takes place in the home is markedly different from that found in the school setting, in that it is largely unplanned, informal, and context grounded, rather than the planned, formal, and context-independent instruction that occurs in school. Most instruction in the home occurs spontaneously based on the specific events, feelings, and needs of a given moment in the family life. Because it is so highly context-dependent, this instruction from siblings and parents provides the basis for most of the child’s knowledge and skills of how to survive in the day-today world.

5. Structuring Of The Home Environment

In addition to their beliefs and instruction, parents shape the educational qualities of the home environment in important ways through their choices regarding the physical qualities of the home and the child’s activities. The well-established relationship between socioeconomic status and children’s academic success has been attributed in part to substantial material differences in the home environments of children. Space, availability of developmentally appropriate games and toys, warm and responsive caregivers, and exposure to cognitively stimulating adults and new experiences have all been found to be related to later IQ or school achievement. A child’s needs change with age. For instance, a supportive home environment for infants includes a responsive mother and appropriate play materials, whereas in mid-childhood emotional climate of the home and child’s participation in the family are associated with higher school achievement (Bradley et al. 1988).

In addition to the physical and social characteristics of the home environment, the lifestyle choices that parents make for their children determine on a day-today basis the educational experiences of the children. These lifestyle choices include how children spend their time outside of school; parental supervision of homework; the amount of television the child is permitted to watch; the extent to which play with peers is monitored; and so forth. All of these factors are related to children’s school achievement. Differences in the educational outcomes of children of divorce versus intact marriages is now attributed in part to reliable differences in the home environments and daily activities of these groups of children. Single parents, who on average must survive on a lower income than couples, have fewer material and emotional resources to devote to their children. Thus children in single parent households are more likely than peers in two-parent households to have little adult supervision during after-school hours, to interact with parents who are stressed, and to shoulder heavy domestic responsibilities at an early age. These qualities of the home environment rather than parental marital status have the strongest influence on children’s cognitive and emotional outcomes.

6. Parents Outside The Home

The child’s development occurs within a multilevel ecological framework (Bronfenbrenner 1979). In addition to the microsystem level, where the child is involved in all interactions (e.g., family, school, church), other settings influence the child’s development. At the mesosystem level, microsystem interactions occur without the child’s presence (e.g., a parent attending a school open house). The exosystem, in turn, is comprised of those settings which never include the child, but which nonetheless influence the child. Two of these broader settings are discussed here: parents’ employment (an exosystem influence) and parents’ involvement in the child’s school (a mesosystem influence).

6.1 Parental Employment And Children’s Development

Early investigations in parent employment and children’s outcomes were mostly group comparisons aimed at determining whether or not maternal employment had a detrimental effect on children. These investigations indicated no differences in quantity or quality of parenting systematically related to maternal employment status. More recent research has identified process variables related to parent employment that have both positive and negative influences on children.

According to scarcity or stress theory, parents have a limited amount of time and energy, and parental employment is deleterious to children’s developmental outcomes to the extent to which it decreases parents’ time, energy, and patience. Stress theory reflects a strong trend in the USA and many other industrialized nations: Namely, in spite of the impressive technological advances of the past century, most parents work harder than ever (Schor 1991). Particularly as maternal employment rates have increased, the everyday lives of children have become harried. Thus one consequence of parental employment for children is the resulting stress associated with parental employment-related absence, whether that absence is actual or psychological, as stressed parents are preoccupied, tired, and impatient. A second consequence of demographic changes in employment patterns is that children spend a greater amount of time with other caretakers. Therefore, parents’ selection of day care for infants and preschoolers, and their choices of afterschool activities for school age children have real impact on children’s developmental outcomes.

Parental employment can also benefit children’s educational progress. On the one hand, parents gain in self-esteem, competency, and social support (as well as income) through their employment; these benefits for parents may translate into benefits for children. Mothers who are employed in professional positions serve as positive role models for daughters. In addition, parents’ work characteristics are related to the quality of their parenting. Parents who enjoy their work, who are socially rewarded for it, and who are intellectually challenged in the work setting are more likely to show warmth and greater flexible but firm control with their children than parents who have less satisfying employment (Greenberger et al. 1994).

6.2 Parents’ Involvement In Schooling

Formal education is an important part of the everyday lives of children and—along with family—is the most important source of children’s educational progress in most countries. Therefore, parents’ attitudes toward school and involvement in school activities have long been studied as an important factor related to children’s educational progress. Parent involvement in children’s formal education is positively related to their children’s achievement: Parents of higher achieving children tend to have more positive attitudes toward school, attend school functions, volunteer at their children’s schools, and know teachers better than parents of lower-achieving children. Some theorists have pointed out that families of higher socioeconomic status are more comfortable with the cultural milieu of schools, and thus find it easier to approach teachers and school administrators than families of lower socioeconomic status. These barriers to parent involvement are even greater when parents represent an underprivileged minority group and have had previous contacts with school officials that were negative (Clark 1983).

7. Current Research Directions

The home is one setting embedded within broader societal, cultural, and generation settings. Much current research examines how the family is changing due to changes in demographic factors such as parent employment, poverty, divorce and remarriage, and migration. Current research also emphasizes cultural variations in family life, both in terms of similarities and differences across groups, and in understanding what is optimal for children’s healthy development (e.g., Okagaki and Frensch 1998). Finally, current research seeks to better understand family as an educational setting within a developmental framework, studying both the ways in which family influences change across childhood and the long term effects of early enhancement or insult.

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