Elsevier

Social Science Research

Volume 36, Issue 4, December 2007, Pages 1371-1390
Social Science Research

Parental investment in childhood and educational qualifications: Can greater parental involvement mediate the effects of socioeconomic disadvantage?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2007.01.005Get rights and content

Abstract

Parental involvement is important for later well-being since it conveys to children that parents are interested in their development. In socioeconomically disadvantaged homes this involvement becomes even more important. This paper asks: Can the social capital produced by greater parental involvement mediate some of the harmful effects of less financial capital? Data are from the National Child Development Study; a longitudinal study of children born in Britain in 1958. Results suggest that parental involvement does matter, but it depends on when involvement and economic hardship are measured, as well as type of involvement and parent gender. Father interest in education reduces the impact of economic hardship on education the most, especially at age 11. Both father and mother interest in school at age 16 have the largest direct impact on education. The frequency of outings with mother at age 11 also has a larger direct impact on education than outings with father, however, neither compare with the reduction in the effect of economic hardship as a result of father interest in school.

Introduction

Parental involvement in their children’s lives can have a lasting impact on well-being. More involved parents convey to their children that they are interested in their development and well being. This in turn signals to the child, both directly and indirectly, that their future is valued. Thus, the relationships between parents and children, coupled with the influence from other resources, go a long way to ensuring future success. Later outcomes in adulthood such as education (Flouri and Buchanan, 2004, Hobcraft, 1998), benefit receipt, and social housing (Hobcraft, 1998, Sigle-Rushton, 2004) are influenced by parental investment in childhood. Positive effects are also noted for more immediate outcomes in adolescence, such as less police contact (Flouri and Buchanan, 2002a), relationships with parents (Flouri and Buchanan, 2002b), educational test scores (Ho Sui-Chu and Willms, 1996, McNeal, 1999, McNeal, 2001) and behavior (Sacker et al., 2002).

The long term connection between parental involvement and later adult outcomes is especially important for children experiencing economic hardship. This link between childhood disadvantage and later adult disadvantage is well-established (Duncan et al., 1998, Harper et al., 2003). The lack of resources does not afford these children as many options for educational opportunities, and also for increased exposure to higher educated adult role models, thus the experience of economic disadvantage regularly carries over into the next generation. Unfortunately these economically deficient families are the very ones that need extra support not contingent upon monetary factors; however, they all too often lack the various other forms of capital as well.

Section snippets

Past research on socioeconomic status, parental involvement and later outcomes

Past research suggests that a positive relationship exists between socioeconomic status and parental involvement (Astone and McLanahan, 1991, Ho Sui-Chu and Willms, 1996, Lareau, 1987, McNeal, 1999, McNeal, 2001) and between parental education level and time spent with children (Sayer et al., 2004). Parents of high socioeconomic status are more involved in their children’s education, which is likely due to a greater comfort and familiarity with the educational system (Ho Sui-Chu and Willms, 1996

International context

Throughout the world education reduces the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage (Harper et al., 1995). The focus of this paper is on the formation of credentials in the British educational system for a cohort born in the late 1950s. Two questions arise however: How does the British system compare with other countries? Is the relationship between poverty, family interaction and later education similar in nature to other countries? A useful contrast is between Great Britain and the

Theoretical framework: Parental involvement as social capital

The social capital framework has been used to further the notion that children’s human capital can be increased through parental investment embedded within important relationships (Coleman, 1988). Coleman (1988, S100) identified social capital to be crucial for educational success. He proposed that social capital “comes about through changes in the relations among persons that facilitate action.” It exists in relationships and therefore is less tangible than either financial or human capital,

Further thoughts on the link between childhood disadvantage and parental involvement

Financial hardship early in the life course has consequences not only during childhood but also extending later in life. Growing up disadvantaged impairs early socioemotional adjustment, as well as cognitive and behavioral development (Chase-Lansdale and Brooks-Gunn, 1995). However, given a lack of economic resources parents may use other tools at their disposal to further the development of their children. By stressing the importance of education, parents of lower socioeconomic status may be

Data and research methods

This study uses data from the National Child Development Study (NCDS), a longitudinal study of children born throughout Britain in one week of March 1958. Over 17,000 mothers were originally interviewed, representing 98% of all births that occurred in that week. Follow-up interviews were conducted when the cohort members were aged 7, 11, 16, 23, 33, and 42. The strength of using these data for examining parental interest in childhood is that relatively good measures of parental interest and

Financial disadvantage at age 7, parental involvement at age 11, and qualifications

Table 2, Table 3 present the logistic regression estimates (across seven different specifications) for age 7 financial disadvantage, parental involvement at age 11, and all controls on the likelihood of no having qualifications. As seen in Table 2 the effect of disadvantage at age 7 on the likelihood of having no qualifications is very high in the bivariate case with an odds ratio greater than 6 (Equation 1). The fact that the effect is strong even at the bivariate level shows how salient an

Discussion

In this paper parental involvement was conceptualized as an indicator of social capital, and the goal was to address the question ‘Can parental involvement act as a mediator between childhood financial disadvantage and education?’ The current results add to the literature on the transmission of intergenerational disadvantage by suggesting that parental involvement can act as a valuable source of familial social capital that operates to reduce the harmful effect of economic disadvantage in

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    The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) provided funding for this project, and the data were supplied by the ESRC Data Archive at the University of Essex. This research was carried out while the author was a Research Officer at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, London School of Economics. The opinions expressed here do not represent the views of Statistics Canada. I would especially like to thank John Hobcraft, Kathleen Kiernan, Wendy Sigle-Rushton, John Rigg, Simon Burgess, Paula Arriagada and Rosalind King for comments and suggestions.

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