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Effects of Parent’s Gender, Child’s Gender, and Parental Involvement on the Academic Achievement of Adolescents in Single Parent Families

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Abstract

We used a national database (Educational Longitudinal Study) to investigate the effects of parent’s gender, child’s gender, and parental involvement in school on the academic achievement of adolescents in single-parent families. A three way 2 × 2 × 2 (parent’s gender × child’s gender × parental involvement) MANCOVA was conducted with four student academic achievement indicators as dependent variables and SES as a covariate. The results indicated that parent gender and child gender interact with parent involvement to affect adolescents’ academic achievement differentially. Specifically, daughters who lived with highly involved single-fathers performed better academically than the other groups did. These findings suggest that researchers who study single-parents’ involvement in their adolescents’ academic achievement need to pay more attention to gender-specific effects.

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Correspondence to Sang Min Lee.

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Lee, S.M., Kushner, J. & Cho, S.H. Effects of Parent’s Gender, Child’s Gender, and Parental Involvement on the Academic Achievement of Adolescents in Single Parent Families. Sex Roles 56, 149–157 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-006-9157-1

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