Parenting behavior frequency related to children's math and English language achievement

Academic performance is a complex process that depends not only on student ability, but also on the provisions that the home environment affords our children. Over recent decades growing consensus asserts that parents play a vital role in the academic success of our children, with research showing a positive association between certain parenting styles or behaviors and academic achievement. Although the current parenting research is rich in scope, there is relatively little study relating children's achievement in elementary school to specific parenting behaviors. Therefore, the overall purpose of this study was to explore the frequency of 63 self-reported parenting behaviors and children's academic achievement in math and reading. This study also investigated whether associations exist among parenting behaviors, family demographic characteristics, student special education classifications, and child achievement outcomes.

The current study is based on the parent development theory (PDT), a current parenting theory that provides a method for discussing and examining how parenting shifts and changes over time in response to the changing developmental needs of children. PDT looks at parenting in terms of major characteristics (i.e., bonding, discipline, education, general welfare and protection, responsivity, sensitivity) and behaviors, rather than styles or dimensions (i.e., authoritative, authoritarian, permissive). The main instrument used in this study was the Parent Behavior Frequency Questionnaire-Revised (PBFQ-R) which is a self-report measure based on the PDT. The PBFQ-R asks parents to rate the frequency with which they engage in various parenting behaviors with their children. Academic achievement was measured using the New York State math and English Language Arts (ELA) assessments. The research study utilized a sample of participants of parents and their children from a public elementary school in a middle class, suburban community in New York State.

In general, the results show that parenting behaviors, using the measure employed in the study, appear mostly unrelated to academic outcomes. However, there were some modest relationships between age of parent and student achievement as well as between ethnicity and parent role behavior or characteristic frequency. With regard to parent role behavior frequency, parents who indicated a high level of bonding behaviors tended to report low levels of discipline. Overall, this research examined the frequencies of parent behavior and their relationship to elementary school aged children's academic performance. These results are discussed further in terms of limitations, implications for research and practice with parents and children, mental health and school psychological service practice, as well as directions for further research.