The Family-School Relation and the Child's

School Performance

David L. Stevenson
Stanford Umverstty

David P. Baker
The Catholtc University of America

STEVENSON, DAVID L., and BAKER, DAVID P Famdy-School Relatton and the Chtld's School Per-
formance CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1987, 58, 1348—1357 Using a nabonally representative sample of
Amencan households, we examine the relabon between parental involvement m schooling and die
child's school performance With a sample of 179 children, parents, and teachers, we invesbgate 3
hypotheses (1) the higher the educabonal status of die mother the greater die degree of parental
involvement in school acbvities, (2) the younger the age of the child die greater the degree of
parental involvement, and (3) children of parents who are more involved in school acbvibes do
better in school dian children widi parents who are less involved In an analysis of cross-secbonal
data, we discover supjiort for the 3 hypotheses The educabonal status of the mother is related to the
degree of parental involvement m schooling, so that parents with more education are more involved
Parental involvement is related to the child's school performance Also, parents are more involved
m school acbvibes if the child is younger The mother's educabonal level and the age of the child
are stronger predictors of parental involvement m schooling for boys than for girls We do not,
however, find a direct effect of matemal educabonal status on school performance independent of
parental involvement in school acbvibes We discuss these findings m light of the relabon between
&mihes and schools

The social development of children in creates an effecbve in-home leaming environ-

modem sociebes increasingly occurs within ment for the child The tendency of this line
an institutional context Day care, preschool, of research has been to examine fomilial char-
and regular school are an important part of a actensbcs that may influence the child's cog-
typical child's environment from infancy to nibve development and subsequent school
late adolescence Schools are environments performance (for a review, see Scott-Jones,
that establish a senes of developmental tasks 1984) Another literature ldenbfles how par-
for children The nature of these tasks vanes ents insbll mobvabon and posibve atbtudes
schools present children with a set of new in their children and tfie subsequent effects
interpersonal relabonships that they must m- such charactensbcs have on school perform-
corporate into their social world, schools de- ance (e g , Bloom, 1981) While these research
mand cognibve performances, and schools tradibons have focused on the development
demand the socializabon of the child to the of the child's cognibve skills and mobvabon,
student role (Piaget, 1932/1965, Sullivan, they have been less concemed with the study
1953, Youniss & SmoUar, 1985) In all of these of p>arental involvement m school acbvibes
developmental tasks, the fiimily is an impor- To effecbvely assist their child m his or her
tant resource for the child The social devel- efforts to meet the demands of school, p)arents
opment of the child can be viewed as a proj- need to have knowledge about their child's
ect of the child, the child's p>arents, and the schooling and access to resources te help
educabonal lnsbtubon (Litwak & Meyer, their child
IQfifi^
There have been some previous studies
Research on the relabon between of the relabon between parental acbons and
femilies and schools has tended te focus on children's schooling For example, Dave
how and te what degree the fomily acbvely (1963) and Wolf (1966) descnbe how a vanety

The first audior was supported by N I M H grant ST32MH1S149-10 l l i e second author was
supiported by a Nabonal Academy of Educabon fellowship funded by Spencer Foundabon Re-
quests for repnnts should be sent to die second author, I>eparbnent of Sociology, Center for the
Study of Youdi Development, The Cathohc Umversity of Amenca, Washington, DC 20064
[ChOd Development, 1987,58,134a-13!r7 O 1987 by the Society (ot Reseaich m Child Develt^Hnent, Inc
AU n^its reseived 0009-39a(V87/580S-0010$0100]
 Stevenson and Baker 1349
of specific "m-home" acbvibes of p>arents can invesbgate whether p>arental involvement in
influence the school-speciflc cognibve skills schooling IS one way by which parent's edu-
of their chddren Related to such studies are cabonal status influences the chdd's academic
large-scale studies m (he "family-press" tradi- achievement
bon that demonstrate the associabon between
familial environmental fectors and school In examining this quesbon, we will focus
achievement (Majonbanks, 1979, Plowden, direcdy on the educabonal level of the
1976) These studies, however, have not con- mother for several reasons First, mothers are
sidered several important issues First, the involved in a majonty of the day-to-day
femily-press studies assume an image of the schooling acbvibes of two-parent femilies
family as p>assive in its transacbons with (Youniss & SmoUar, 1985), and this is cer-
the school, even while viewing the family as tainly true in single-p)arent homes About
acbvely creabng an effecbve in-home learn- 90% of children living with one piarent live
ing environment Researchers have not exam- with the mother, as do most children of never-
ined p>arental involvement in the day-to-day mamed women (U S Bureau of the Census,
workings of the school or consequences of pa- 1986)
rental involvement for the educabon of the Second, the educabonal level of the
child (see Epstein & Becker, 1982, for an in- mother indicates the mother's expenence and
vesbgabon of how schools can enhance pa- knowledge of how one can progress through
rental involvement) Second, these studies the educabonal system, and therefore in-
have usually focused on the child's cognibve volvement of a more educated mother m the
development, which is only one schooling school career of the child may be more effec-
outcome and only one prerequisite for further bve In an earlier study, we exammed
schooling Academic achievement and educa-
bonal attainment require not only an intelli- whether the educabonal level of mothers was
gent child but also a knowledgeable student related te the manner and degree of p)arental
who can skillfully move through the organiza- involvement in managing the school career of
bon of schooling (Meyer, 1980) the child (Baker & Stevenson, 1986) We
found that more educated modiers knew
To understand the role of p>arental ac- more about their child's school performance,
bons within the broader relabon between had more contact with teachers, and were
femilies and schools requires one to consider more hkely to have taken action, when neces-
die mfluence of key charactensbcs of the fam- sary, te manage their child's academic
ily For example, many studies have docu- achievement We also found that these
mented the relabon between femdy back- mothers tended to choose college preparatory
ground and die child's educabonal courses for their child independent of the
attainment These studies flnd that children child's academic performance This explor-
firom femilies of high socioeconomic status atery study was of adolescent children who
tend to go further m school and obtain more were beginning the transibon from middle
academic degrees than do children bom school te high school, so we were not able te
femilies of lower socioeconomic status address the relabon between mother's educa-
(Jencks, 1972, Sewell, Hauser, & Feather- bonal level and parental involvement in
man, 1976) Other studies flnd that the educa- school acbvibes for children of different ages,
bonal status of p>arents is related te the child's nor were we able te consider the mterrela-
leaming and mobvabon te perform in school bons among parental involvement, age of the
(Kohn, 1969, Majonbanks, 1979), as well as te child, and gender of the child
more general psychological states of the chdd Here, with a nabonally representabve
that could mfluence school performance (Selt- data set, we are able to examine these addi-
zer, 1982) We should also consider whether bonal issues The use of a nabonally repre-
parental involvement m the schooling process sentabve sample aflfords several important ad-
vanes by the charactensbcs of parents One vantages, although it has some hmitabons,
cnbcal charactensbc to study is the educa- too On the posibve side, there is a wide
bonal status of pMuents Comp>ared te other so- range in level of matemal educabon, ranging
cial charactensbcs of families, such as femily from less than eighth grade to complebon of
size, income, and occupation, the educabonal graduate degrees in the nabonal sample This
level of parents is a salient femily determinant IS pMirbcularly important since research on
ofa child's school achievement Generally the how the educaboiuJ background of p>arents
educabonal level of parents predicts more of influences their child's school achievement
tiie vanance m student achievement than do frequently has been limited te the study of
other femily background vanables, pwrbcu- relabvely high educabonal status subgroups,
larly for younger children (Heyns, 1978) We who cannot be seen as typical in theu m-
1350 Child Development
volvement m schoolmg Also, the increased age children were collected in four waves
extemal validity that a nabonal sample yields dunng 1981, and teacher rabngs were col-
IS important in tesbng some specific hypoth- lected in the spnng of 1982 Teacher rabngs
eses about pKuental involvement that we gen- were collected for 202 students, and of these,
erated bom a small, detailed, but much less 179 had complete mformabon on the van-
extensive sample On the negabve side, the ables used m these analyses We compwired
measure of p>arental involvement we use is the subsample of 179 students te the total
not a detailed one, and was collected from sample of children on background character-
teachers, but it closely resembles some of the lsbcs such as age and gender and found no
most salient aspects of a more inclusive mea- significant differences Thus, whde the data
sure that our exploratory work developed, and analyzed are a fracbon (179 out of 202) of the
m some important ways teachers may be bet- total sample of students, these data contain
ter informants than pjarents about parents' key vanables that have overall distnbubons
contact with schools that are not significantly different from those
m the larger sample While a large ptart of the
Because of the "conbnual contest model" data set was longitudinal, the p>arental in-
of Amencan schools (Tumer, 1960), one volvement and school performance measures
would predict that early p>arental involvement were collected only once
IS important for developing a successful stu-
dent The current data set permits us to assess The charactensbcs of the current study
whether the age of the child is associated with sample are displayed m Table 1 Mothers in
different levels of parental involvement m the sample have a range of educabonal back-
schools Early school setbngs also may offer grounds Almost 35% of the mothers had only
more opportunibes for p)arents to become in- a high school educabon or less, and almost
volved than later school setbngs Further- 23% of the mothers had a college educabon or
more, the child's entry into school demands an advanced degree The school-aged chil-
an exp)anded pjarental role that may include dren ranged bom 5 to 17 years old and were
incorporabng the school schedule into the well distnbuted throughout this range
family schedule, prepwuing the child for
school, and helping the child to meet the so- Measures
cial and academic demands of school For all The educabonal status of mothers is
of these reasons, we predict that p)arents with transformed into a 7-point scale, with the low-
young children wiU be more involved m est value mdicabng an educabon level of
schooling acbvibes than pjarents of older chil- eighth grade or less and the highest value ln-
dren We would also expect that more in- dicabng attainment of a graduate degree
volved parents would have children who
were performing better at school compared to
children of less involved p)arents TABLE 1
We will examine the following specific CHARACTERISTICS OF SAMPLE (N = 179
hypotheses (1) the higher the educabonal Children)
status of the mother, the greater the degree of
parental involvement in school acbvibes, (2) Percentage
of Total
the younger the age of the child, the greater
the degree of parental involvement, and (3) Educabon of mother
children of p)arents who are more involved in Eighth grade or less 28
school acbvibes do better m school than chil- Ninth grade-llth grade 84
dren with parents who are less involved High school only 235
High school and vocabonal
school 14 0
Sample, Measures, and Procedure Some college 285
The TIME USE Longitudinal Panel Study College degree 19 0
IS an omnibus data set addressing many dif°- Advanced degree 39
ferent quesbons of how femilies use their Age of child (years) '
5-8 212
bme and how their schedules affect their 9-11 258
lives It IS a random sample of households in 12-14 262
the mainland United States The current 15-17 268
study examines a subset of these data. Sex of child
Male 419
Our study sample of 179 children and Female 581
their teachers is drawn from the onginal 620
households Data for households with school- • Mean = 11 28 years, SD -= 3 42
 Stevenson and Baker 1351
Motfier's educabon level is highly correfeted mulbple regression equabons First we re-
with her spouse's educabon level (r = 73) gress p>arental involvement m school on the
mother's educabon level, the child's age, and
Our measure of p>arental involvement m the child's gender This equabon tests the
schooling acbvibes and the child's school per- first two hypotheses about the relabve associ-
formance are indicators drawn from the abon between p>arental involvement and the
teacher quesbonnaire Teachers were asked mother's educabon and the child's age Next
to answer the quesbon, "To what extent did we regress the two measures of school per-
his/her p»arents get involved in the acbvibes formance on mother's educabon, the child's
of the school such as PTO and p)arent-teacher age, and the child's gender We then add te
conferences?" This measure has the advan- this basic equabon the level of parent's in-
tage of tapping specific p>arental acbon about volvement in school This procedure assesses
the child's schooling We use two indicators the relabve contnbubon of p)arental involve-
of school performance tfiat were drawn from ment to the predicbon of school performance
teacher rabngs of tfie student Teachers were controlling for the other three independent
asked to rate how the chdd performed in vanables
school and whether the child was performing
te the child's abdity Such teacher rabngs of Resulte
school performance are relabvely good pre-
dictors of grades for a sample of children The first issue that we examine is
drawn from different grade levels at different whether the educabon of the mother, the sex
schools, which often use different grading cn- of the child, or the age of the child were re-
tena, and for this reason are perhaps better lated to the degree of parental involvement in
predictors of relabve performance than are school acbvibes Table 2 displays the zero-
grades for a nabonal sample of children (En- order correlabons for these relabons In Panel
twisle & Hayduk, 1982) The measures of pa- A, the correlabons of tfie total sample indicate
rental involvement, performing in school, and that there is a significant pwsibve correlabon
performing to ability were rated on a scale between the motfier's educabon and the de-
from 1 to 5, with 5 being highest Parental gree of p>arental involvement in school acbvi-
involvement in school acbvibes occurs from bes Parents with more educabon are more
the beginning of the school year and con- involved m the acbvibes of school, such as
bnues throughout the year With the present attending PTO and p)arent-teacher confer-
data set we do not have a way te examine the ences We also find that the age of the child is
bming of such acbvibes But m the spnng of significantly related te the degree of piarentaj
1982, teachers rated parental involvement involvement in school acbvibes age 5-11, X
throughout the school year and the end-of- = 42 vs. age 12-17, X = 364, f(l,177) =
year school performance of the child To ex- 3 81, p = 000 Parents of younger children
amine the relabve salience te school involve- are more likely to be involved m school acbv-
ment of mother's educabon compared to ibes than are p)arents of older children ITie
several other femily charactensbcs, we also relabons confirm our two inibal hypotheses
constructed a measure of the amount of bme We examine these relabons sepwirately for
the mother spent on paid labor per week, as boys and girls in Panel B of Table 2 Parental
well as the number of children m the femily involvement, school performance, and ability
under 18 years old to perform are not significandy different for
boys and girls, although girls had slighdy
Procedure more involved parents and tended te perform
better m school involvement t(l,177) = 1 88,
Smce only one wave of the data con- p = 06, school performance t(l,177) = 1 83,
tained lnformabon about p>arental involve- p = 07 The determinants of pwirental in-
ment in school and the children's school per- volvement vary by the sex of the chdd, even
formance, we are limited to a cross-secbonal though mean levels of parental involvement
analysis This analysis is done in two steps are not very different For sons, the associa-
First, we invesbgate each hypothesis sepa- bon between pwuental involvement and
rately in a zero-order correlabonal framework mother's educabon is strong and posibve, but
We calculate the associabon between paren- for girls the relabon is nonexistent (534 vs
tal involvement m school acbvibes and the 095, respecbvely)
educabon of the mother, the age of the child,
the sex of the child, and the school perform- We flnd a similar pattem m the relabon
ance of the child The second step is to exam- between the age of the chdd and pwirental m-
ine the mulbple correlabons among these fec- volvement Age of boys has a significant asso-
ters We do this by esbmabng a senes of ciabon with p>arental mvolvement while the
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 Stevenson and Baker 1353
age of girls has little associabon (— 610 vs Though this vanable was negabvely and
— 056, respecbvely) Parents of boys are more modestly associated with parental involve-
likely te become involved in school acbvibes ment (r = - 14, p = 03), It was not a sig-
when Aeir sons are young and tend te be less nificant determinant of involvement after
involved with older boys Parental mvolve- controlling for mother's educabon, and also,
ment m schooling does not vary for girls of tiiese two vanables did not sigmficantly pre-
different ages ' These two findings indicate dict either school perfonnance or performing
interesbng differences across relabons be- te ability net of ptarental involvement
tween charactensbcs of the chdd and p>arental
involvement m school acbvibes Panels B and C of this Table present an
analysis of the relabve influences of the
We now tum te the relabon between pa- mother's educabon, child's background char-
rental involvement and our two measures of actensbcs, and piarental involvement on the
school performance Parents who are more in- child's school performance Thefirstequabon
volved m school acbvibes are more likely to in each panel reports the influence of moth-
have children who are performing well in er's educabon and child's background van-
school Parental involvement in school acbvi- ables on the mdicater of school performance,
bes IS also highly related te ateacher'sassess- and the second equabon adds te the onginal
ment of whedier the child was performing te equabon the level of p>arental involvement
his or her ability These relabons are essen- For both indicators of school performance, pja-
bally the same for boys and girls rental involvement is a significant predictor
We have shown that several background p>arents who are more involved m school have
charactensbcs are strongly related to p>arental children performing better in school, net of
involvement in schooling, and that p>arental the other fectors in the model Furdier, the
involvement is related te two measures of addibon of p>arental involvement te the equa-
school performance We now examine bon increases the overall predicbve power of
whedier p>arental involvement is important to the onginal equabon In predicbng the teach-
school performance independent of these er's rabng of the child's overall school perfor-
background charactensbcs mance (Panel B), the addibon of the level of
parental involvement causes an almost three-
Table 3 presents an analysis that exam- fold increase in the R^ The addibon of this
ines the relabve influence of the mother's vanable also causes the pnor significant effect
educabon and the child's background van- of mother's educabon to drop to near zero
ables on p>arental involvement m school In Last both of the background vanables in this
Panel A, we see diat net of the child's age and equabon are significant girls tend to perform
gender, the mother's level of educabon is better than boys, and older children perform
strongly related te involvement m school better than younger ones The results for the
Mothers with more educabon are more in- teacher's rabng of the chdd's school perfor-
volved in the school career of their chdd This mance in relabon to his or her ability (Panel
equabon also indicates that p)arents of youn- C) are slighdy different Though again the ad-
ger children are more mvolved than are par- dibon of the level of p>arental involvement
ents of older childen, and that the mean level adds te the overall predicbve power of the
of parental involvement in school is not differ- equabon and is a strong predictor of perform-
ent by the gender of the child, net of the other ance, mother's educabon is not significant in
influences m the model In analyses not pre- either equabon, nor is there a gender differ-
sented in Table 3, we found that while die ence on average Younger children, however,
amount of tune a mother worked for paid tend to perform closer to their ability than do
labor was negabvely associated with parental older children
involvement (r = - 15, p = 03), this van-
able was not a sigmficant determinant of p>a- Because the bivanate correlabons indi-
rental mvolvement after controlling for cate a different pwttem of associabons be-
mother's educabon A regression model in- tween key vanables for boys as comp)ared te
cluding die number of siblings under 18 years girls, we esbmate tiie equabons sep)arately for
old in the femily yielded similar results each gender Table 4 reports this estunabon

' In this sample, the mean level of mother's educabon was similar for boys andforgirls (4 28 vs
4 30) But, among mothers widi more educabon, there were more young sons Aan there were young
dau^ters Sincefliemoflier's educational level is a moderate predictor of parental involvement, this
restncbon of range of giris' ages across levels of mofliers' education levels may be a partial explana-
bonforthe lack of an association between the age of girls and parental involvement in diese data.
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 Stevenson and Baker 1355
TABLE 4
REGRESSION FOR SAMPLE STRATIFIED BY THE CHILD'S CENDER AND T TEST OF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
COEFFICIENTS (Unstandardized Coefficient)

INDEPENDENT VARIABLES
EQUATION NO AND
DEPENDENT Mother's Chtld's Parental
VARIABLE CONSTANT Educafaon Age Involvement
Panel A parental involvement
1 Males 45 25( 07)'' - 17(03)'' 47
2 Females 39 06(07) - 02( 03) 01
t value 2 04* 3 57*
Panel B school perfonnance
1 Males 23 003(12) 02(06) 34( 17)" 07
2 Females -613 35(29) 13( 12) 1 76( 40)'' 18
t value 3 50* 82 3 30*
Panel C performing to ability
1 Males 46 - 12( 11) - 12( 05)'' 32( 16)' 23
2 Females 46 - 08( 07) - 05(03) 15( 10) 06
t value 31 121 94
NOTE —Standard errors are in parentheses, males N : 75, females N = 104
* CoeEBcient is twice its standard error
*' Coefficient is more than twice its standard error
* p < 05

for the ptarental involvement and the two Parental involvement is important to tiie
school perfonnance equataons Also, "t" school performance of both boys and girls, but
values are reported for the difference be- there are some differences in the strength of
tween Ae slope for boys and the slope for this infiuence across gender An involved p>ar-
girls ent has a much stronger impact on the overall
school performance of girls than boys There
The determinants of parental involve-
are no significant differences between the
ment m schooling are clearer for sons than for slopes for boys and girls in the equations pre-
dau^ters Motiier's education and the son's dicting if the child E>erforms up to his or her
age account for almost one-half of the van- ability
ance in parent's involvement m school, but
neither of these fectors predict the parents'
involvement mtihiedaughter's schooling ^ For
boys, the more educated the mother and the
younger tiie child, the more involved are the Discussion
parents in school activities In analyses not Three major issues were explored in this
reported here, we included the amount of research the relation between mother's edu-
time a mother worked for paid labor and the cation and p)arental involvement in school ac-
number of siblings under 18 years old in the bvibes, the relabon between parental in-
&mily in each gender equation These van- volvement in school acbvibes and the child's
ables were not significant and did not sub- school perfonnance, and the strength of these
stantially change the otiier influences in the relabons for children of different ages and
equations for each gender gender

*It has been noted that average parental involvement for girls is sh^tly, diou^ not
significandy, higher thanforhoys Also, there is less vanance in the measure of piuental involve-
mentforgirls thanforhoys While severely restncted vanance could reduce die mulbple correlabon
between mdependent vanables and a dependent vanable, the vanance of girls' parental mvolve-
ment IS not so reduced, compared to the variance of the boys' sample (I^ vs 95), diat it would fully
accountforthe lack of determinant lufiuences of age, mother's education, and school performance
The fiulure of models thatfitdata from male samples to be of valueforfemalesamples has been
previously noted (see Baker & Entwisle, 1987) Why parents may be slighdy more involved in die
schooling of giris than m the schoolmg of boys is not obvious It may be that the nature of parental
involvement in all spheres of children's lives is dififerent across the genders Parents may choose
how diey are involved in the child's life given anbcipated gender rolesfordieir children Our data
cannot address this issue, but it is one diat needs more attenbon in order to unravel these types of
gender di£Eerences
1356 Child Developimnt
In an earlier study (Baker & Stevenson, success Structural determinants of the
1986), we descnbed how parents, through tiie schooling process for children of different
day-to-day management of the child's school genders are an important yet relabvely unex-
career, infiuence the educabon of the child plored issue
We found differences m how and to what de-
gree parents manage theu child's school ca- A few words of caubon are in order TTie
reer Educated mothers tended to have more TIME USE data were not collected to address
lnformabon about the school and were more primarily quesbons about parents' involve-
likely to take acbon to address their child's ment m school acbvibes and the child's
school problems than less educated mothers school performance, so the mformabon on
Also, educated mothers selected more coUege these topics is more limited than we would
preparatory courses for their child's h i j ^ prefer The measure of parental involvement
school cumculum than did less educated m schooling included only a few types of par-
motiiers, regardless of the academic perfor- ent-school acbvibes, and many other parental
mance of the child From the earlier data, we acbons, such as arranging for a tutor or dis-
were able to ldenbfy tiie number of strategies cussing a problem with the school pnncipal,
that mothers used to foster the educabon of were not included But attendmg parent-
their child The most cnbcal difference be- teacher conferences or bemg acbve in the
tween parents was tiie degree of formal and PTO are types of acbvibes that we predict
informal contact with the school Motiiers would indicate genercU parental mvolvement
who contacted the school more often also Also, in the current study, the parental in-
tended to generate broader and more complex volvement measure was taken firom the re-
school strategies ports of teachers rather than firom the reports
of parents While m other instances direct re-
The current study extends this work by ports m i ^ t be preferred, here teacher rabngs
mdicabng that parental involvement mediates of parental involvement have some advan-
almost all the infiuence of mother's educabon tages, since teachers are also the ones who
on the child's school performance Further, can directiy affect the child's school perfor-
tiie relabons among parental involvement, mance (Kellam, Rubin, & Stevenson, 1982)
mother's educabon, and the child's perfor-
mance are not infiuenced by mother's labor It should be noted that smce the data
force parbcipabon or the number of children come from a representabve sample of house-
in the £armly (See Heyns & Catsambis, 1986, holds in the United States, our findings
and Milne, Myers, Rosenthal, & Gmsburg, should have extemal validity, an advantage
1986, for an extensive analysis of the in- rarely present in studies of parental involve-
fiuences of matemal employment on educa- ment in child development Furthermore, our
bonal achievement) Another important mvesbgabon of the nature of censonng m the
finding IS tiiat the age and the gender of tiie data suggests that this representabveness is
child infiuence the degree of parental m- not compromised
volvement and its relabon to the school per- Without longitudinal data, conclusions
formance measures Parents of young chil- about the causal ordenng of the vanables are
dren tend to be more mvolved in school necessarily guarded We assume that parental
acbvibes than do parents of older children involvement does affect school performance,
We speculate that parents understand the im- but an altemabve and tenable explanabon is
portance of early schooling and value their tiiat parents who have better-performing chil-
mvolvement at this point in the child's school dren become more mvolved m school acbvi-
career Parents might also disengage from bes If this were correct, however, the relabon
school acbvibes once the child is on tiie between parental involvement and child's
" n ^ t track " Or, it may be that parents feel performance m i ^ t mcrease with die age of
more competent to help younger children the child, but we find no evidence to support
tiian older ones this view
The connections hnkmg the background In general, our research here comple-
of the £amily, tiie age of the child, and tiie ments tiie expanding literature on parental ef-
involvement of parents are stronger for boys fects on tiie schooling and socializabon of
than for girls Educated parents witii younger children. Heyns (1978) has shown that one
sons are more involved m the schoolmg of efifecbve aspect of parenbng is an acbve "in-
their duld than parents with older sons. This vestment" m tlie diild's schooling, and that
IS not surpnsing, given the usual "slow start" educated parents often do this m specific
of young boys m sdiool and the general con* ways, such as parental tutonng, managmg
cem of mtddle-class parents witii early school tnps to hbranes, and so on Here we find tliat
 Stevenson and Baker 1357
educated mothers "invest" in their child's of the effect of famtly and schooling tn
schooling acbvibes by being directiy in- America New York Basic
volved in school acbvibes and by having fre- Kellam, S G , Rubm, R, & Stevenson, D L (1982)
quent contact with the child's teacher And Psychopathology and teacher ratings Devel-
lmportantiy this "mvestment" results in bet- opmental epidemtological studies Paper pre-
ter school performance of children starbng at sented at die meeting of the World Psychiatric
an early age Addibonally, gender seems to Association, Baltimore
be important in determining parental acbons Kohn, M L (1969) Class and conformity A study
m relabon to schoolmg lliis finding coin- of values Homewood, IL Dorsey
cides witii those of other studies on the differ- Latwak, E , & Meyer, H (1966) A balanced dieory
ences m parental styles, atbtudes, and acbons of coordmabon between bureaucrabc organiza-
for sons versus daughters (Baker & Entwisle, tions and community pnmary groups Admin-
1987, Baumnnd, 1972, Entwisle & Baker, tstrative Sctence Quarterly, 11, 31-58
1983)
Majonbanks, K. (1979) Famtltes and thetr leamtng
A relabvely new perspecbve in the study envtronments London Roudedge & Kegan
of child development is to consider how par- Paul
ents "invest m" and manage the school career Meyer, J (1980) Levels of the educabonal system
of their child Our findings and conclusions and schooling effects In C Bidwell & D
underscore the importance of examining Windham (Eds ), The analysts of educattonal
these links between &milies and schools producttvtty Cambndge, MA Ballmger
Mdne, A, Myers, D , Rosendial, A, & Gmsburg,
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