Literature Review

Maternal Parenting Styles, School Involvement, and Children’s School Achievement and Conduct in Singapore Anne Dopkins Stright Indiana University Kim Lian Yeo Hope PsyCare, Singapore This study examined the roles of children’s perceptions of maternal parenting styles (warmth, psycho- logical control, and behavioral control) and maternal involvement in school-focused parenting practices (home-based involvement, home-school conferencing, and school-based involvement) predicting chil- dren’s school achievement and conduct in Singapore. Students (N 712) in 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grades completed questionnaires on their mothers’ parenting styles and school-focused parenting practices.

Student achievement and conduct were assessed using achievement tests and conduct grades. Achieve- ment was predicted by parenting styles (warmth, behavioral control, and psychological control) after adjusting for gender, grade, ethnicity, and maternal education. School-focused parenting practices predicted achievement and conduct after adjusting for parenting styles. Parenting styles moderated the relationships among parenting practices and achievement and conduct. Maternal warmth increased the relationship between maternal school-based involvement and children’s achievement. In addition, be- havioral control increased the relationship between home-based involvement and appropriate school conduct. Gender and grade also moderated the relationships among parenting styles and school involve- ment and achievement. The relationship between warmth and achievement was stronger for girls than boys, whereas there was a stronger relationship between home-based school involvement and achieve- ment for boys than for girls. Warmth predicted achievement in 3rd grade but not in the older grades.

Overall, the findings provide support for the hypothesis that school-focused parenting practices predict achievement and conduct after adjusting for parenting styles and for the hypothesis that parenting styles moderate parenting practices.

Keywords:maternal parenting styles, school involvement, achievement, conduct, Asia In the present study, we explored effective parenting styles and school-focused parenting practices that principals and teachers should emphasize as they work to support mothers. There is a long theoretical and empirical tradition focusing on how parenting affects children’s academic achievement and school conduct (Ryan & Adams, 1995;Spera, 2005). However, most of the research has been done on Western families in the United States (Barber, Stolz, & Olsen, 2005). Because parenting is influenced by cultural values, it is important to explore whether theoretical models and empirical findings from the West are supported in other cultures (Darling & Steinberg, 1993). In this study, we examined relations among parenting styles, parent involvement in school-focused parenting practices, and children’s school achieve- ment and conduct in Singapore. An additional focus of the study was the exploration of interactions between parenting styles and school-focused parenting practices and interactions between chil- dren’s sex and grade and parenting predicting children’s school achievement and conduct.Singapore has three major ethnic groups: Chinese (76.8%), Malay (13.9%), and Indian (7.9%), and other ethnic groups (1.4%), and a literacy rate of 95.9% (Statistics Singapore, n.d.).

Although both East and West emphasize the development of collectivism and individualism, Eastern cultures such as Singapore place greater emphasis on the development of collectivism, or the importance of one’s interdependence with others, whereas Western cultures such as the United States place greater emphasis on the development of individualism, or the development of autonomy (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Parenting beliefs about children’s school achievement also differ between Western and Eastern cul- tures.Chao (1996)found that Asian mothers believe that chil- dren’s school achievement is the result of high parent expectations, so mothers require high levels of study and academic work from their children. Singapore mothers view children’s schooling as a major focus of daily family activities and invest much time, effort, and financial resources to support their children’s academic ad- justment.Chao (1994)proposed that Chinese parents foster school achievement and appropriate conduct in their children through “training,” which focuses on children’s respect for parents, hard work, self-discipline, and obedience. In contrast,Chao (1996) found that Western parents believe that achievement is supported by deemphasizing academics and supporting social development.

However, Singapore is heavily influenced by Western cultures and is affected by globalization. English is the main language of instruction in schools, and education is influenced by educational This article was published Online First August 19, 2013.

Anne Dopkins Stright, Department of Counseling and Educational Psy- chology, Indiana University; Kim Lian Yeo, Hope PsyCare, Singapore.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kim Lian Yeo, Hope PsyCare, Sengkang Central P.O. Box 978, Singapore 915411.

E-mail:[email protected] This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Journal of Educational Psychology© 2013 American Psychological Association 2014, Vol. 106, No. 1, 301–3140022-0663/14/$12.00 DOI:10.1037/a0033821 301 ideas and practices of the United States and the United Kingdom (Gopinathan, 2001). Western influences also may influence Sin- gapore mothers’ parenting; consequently, parenting in Singapore may be influenced by both Eastern and Western cultural traditions. Parenting Styles and Student Achievement and Conduct In the present study, we focused on a major aspect of parenting important in Western research predicting children’s school achievement and conduct. Parenting styles are general patterns of parent behavior that create an emotional climate; these patterns of behavior are the result of underlying attitudes and beliefs (Darling & Steinberg, 1993). Parenting styles have two important dimen- sions: warmth and control (Grolnick & Gurland, 2002). Warmth includes physical affection, praise, and other types of emotional support. Parenting styles theory and research have focused on two types of control: behavioral and psychological control (Grolnick & Pomerantz, 2009). Behavioral control focuses on controlling chil- dren’s behavior, whereas psychological control focuses on con- trolling children’s thoughts and emotions (Soenens & Vansteenk- iste, 2010). Parents using psychological control may control children’s thinking and emotions by using family relationships, such as reminding the child how much the parent has done for the child (Aunola & Nurmi, 2004). Parents high in behavioral control have age-appropriate, high expectations of behavior.

Parenting styles predict Western children’s achievement and conduct in school.Jeynes (2005,2007), in meta-analyses of urban, elementary- and secondary-school students in the United States (using predominantly European and African American samples), found an effect size of .17 between parenting styles and achieve- ment in studies controlling for demographics such as sex and ethnicity for elementary-school students and an effect size of .40 for secondary-school students (not controlling for sex/ethnicity). A meta-analysis of studies of African American students (K–12) found an effect size of .44 (Jeynes, 2003).

Western studies focusing specifically on parental warmth and behavioral control have revealed that warmth positively predicts children’s achievement and appropriate conduct and negatively predicts misconduct (Booth, Rose-Krasnor, McKinnon, & Rubin, 1994;Gray & Steinberg, 1999;NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2004). In an extensive cross-cultural study including Eastern samples, parent warmth negatively predicted adolescent misconduct in South Africa, China, India, Bosnia, Gaza in the Middle East, and the United States, but not in Germany, Bangla- desh, and Columbia (Barber et al., 2005). In studies focusing on Chinese families, warmth predicted adolescents’ school achieve- ment (Chen, Liu, & Li, 2000) and negatively predicted children’s misconduct (Chen, Wu, Chen, Wang, & Cen, 2001). Behavioral control positively predicts child and adolescent school achieve- ment and conduct in United States samples (Bean, Bush, McKenry, & Wilson, 2003;Wang, Pomerantz, & Chen, 2007) and Asian samples (Wang et al., 2007) (seeGrolnick and Pomerantz, 2009, for a review). Behavioral control negatively predicts mis- conduct in South Africa, Bangladesh, China, India, Bosnia, Ger- many, Gaza, Columbia, and the United States (Barber et al., 2005).

In summary, research in both the West and East has revealed positive relations between maternal warmth and behavioral control and children’s achievement and appropriate conduct in school.Although there are differences between cultures in the amount of warmth expressed and behavioral control used by mothers, par- enting theory proposes that regardless of these cultural differences, in all cultures children are affected positively by parental warmth and appropriate control (Pomerantz & Wang, 2009). Conse- quently, we hypothesized that children’s perceptions of their moth- ers’ warmth and behavioral control would positively predict Sin- gapore children’s achievement and appropriate conduct in school.

In addition, based on developmental theory and empirical research (Lamb, Hwang, Ketterlinus, & Fracasso, 1999), we expected that as children move toward adolescence and become more indepen- dent, relations between maternal warmth and behavioral control and children’s achievement and conduct would be reduced.

In contrast, Western theory in development proposes that psy- chological control negatively affects the development of children’s autonomy (the development of the child’s ability to make his or her own choices) by closely tying the child emotionally to the parent and family and reducing intrinsic motivation (Deci, Driver, Hotchkiss, Robbins, & Wilson, 1993), and consequently nega- tively affects child academic achievement and conduct (Barber, 1996;Steinberg, 1990). Empirical support for this model comes from Western cultures, such as the United States and Finland, where psychological control negatively predicts school achieve- ment (Aunola & Nurmi, 2004;Barber & Harmon, 2002;Bean et al., 2003) and positively predicts misconduct in Germany and the United States (Barber & Harmon, 2002;Barber et al., 2005).

However, in Singapore, psychological control is frequently used; for example, parents may remind the child that poor grades or conduct shame the entire family. In addition, Asian cultures do not place as much importance on the development of children’s autonomy, but rather emphasize the interdependence of family members; consequently, psychological control may not predict negatively children’s school achievement and conduct in Singa- pore. However, the dominant theory underlying the hypothesis predicting negative effects for psychological control on child and adolescent development, self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000), proposes that individuals across cultures have a need for greater autonomy as they develop toward adulthood.Deci and Ryan (2000)also emphasized that, in addition to this need for autonomy, humans also have a need for relatedness and compe- tence. These needs are orthogonal, so that in both Western and Eastern cultures, an adolescent may become increasingly autono- mous while still continuing to function interdependently within the family. On the basis of this theory, in Singapore, psychological control would be expected to negatively predict school achieve- ment and conduct. Studies in collectivist cultures have revealed mixed support for this hypothesis. In two very different collectivist cultures, Palestinian and Chinese, psychological control negatively predicted school achievement in Palestinian adolescents (Barber, 1999), whereas for Chinese adolescents, there was no relation (Wang et al., 2007). However, psychological control has consis- tently predicted adolescent misconduct and aggression in collec- tivist cultures such as South Africa, Gaza, Columbia, Bangladesh, China, and India (Barber, 1999;Barber et al., 2005).

Because gender roles differ in the development of autonomy for adolescent boys and girls in some collectivist cultures, with boys being expected more than girls to make their own choices (Hel- geson, 2005), child’s sex may moderate the relations between psychological control and children’s academic achievement and This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. 302 STRIGHT AND YEO conduct. Psychological control may affect boys more negatively than girls. One study supports this hypothesis. Psychological con- trol negatively predicted adolescent boys’ but not girls’ achieve- ment in Bangladesh and Palestine (Stolz et al., 2004).

Pomerantz and Wang (2009)proposed that psychological con- trol also may have different effects as the child moves from middle childhood to early adolescence, with a stronger negative effect of psychological control on achievement and conduct as the child becomes an adolescent and strives to become increasingly auton- omous. However, most studies focusing on psychological control have focused on adolescent samples (Soenens & Vansteenkiste, 2010). Two studies examining related constructs, autonomy sup- port and parental democratic decision making, revealed that lower levels of autonomy support or democratic decision making pre- dicted worse adjustment across the transition from elementary school to junior high (Grolnick, Kurowski, Dunlap, & Hevery, 2000;Lord, Eccles, & McCarthy, 1994). In this study, we hypoth- esized that psychological control will negatively predict achieve- ment and appropriate conduct more strongly in early adolescence rather than in middle childhood. Parent School Involvement and Children’s Achievement and Conduct Another major area of study in Western research relating par- enting to children’s achievement and conduct in school is parent school involvement.Parent school involvementtypically is de- fined as the parenting practices that parents use to support chil- dren’s school adjustment (Fan & Chen, 2001).Jeynes (2007) emphasized that both parenting styles and parenting practices should be considered when studying parent school involvement.

Parenting practices are the specific techniques that parents use to accomplish specific parenting goals. There are three major do- mains of parenting practices related to school involvement (Fan- tuzzo, Tighe, & Childs, 2000), based on the work ofEpstein (1995). First, home-based school involvement practices include making sure that children read regularly, helping with homework or with studying for tests, providing a quiet place to study, and talking with children about their school day and about expectations for achievement. Second, home-school conferencing is parent communications that bridge the gap between home and school, including communicating with teachers via telephone, e-mail, or attending parent–teacher conferences. Third, school-based in- volvement includes parents helping in the classroom or attending field trips, special events at school, parent-support group meetings, and workshops. School-focused parenting practices may affect children’s motivation by affecting perceived control, providing a sense of security, and helping children value education (Gonzalez- DeHass, Willems, & Holbein, 2005). In addition, parenting prac- tices focusing on home-school conferencing and school-based involvement provide parents with information about subject con- tent, homework, and school conduct that helps parents better support children’s achievement and conduct in school (Hill & Taylor, 2004).

In a review of the literature,Pomerantz, Moorman, and Litwack (2007)concluded that the evidence for home-based school in- volvement and achievement is mixed. A meta-analysis of the relations between home-based school involvement parenting prac-tices predicting K–12 students’ achievement in the United States revealed a low effect size of .09 (Fan & Chen, 2001).

In contrast, the effect sizes forschool-based involvement(de- fined in the meta-analyses as parental participation in school activities) and achievement were .31 for K–12 students (Fan & Chen, 2001) and .21 for elementary-school students in the United States (Jeynes, 2005); however, sex and ethnicity were not con- trolled for. When child’s sex and ethnicity were controlled, the effect size for school-based involvement and secondary-school American students’ achievement was .03 (Jeynes, 2007). In the only study to use parent school-based involvement to predict change in achievement, after family socioeconomic status (SES) was controlled for, parent school-based involvement predicted decreases in American high school students’ achievement scores (Fan, 2001). Results for Asian American samples are mixed. In contrast to the small but positive effect sizes found in the meta- analyses of predominantly European American and African Amer- ican samples, school-based school involvement negatively pre- dicted Asian Americans’ achievement (Mau, 1997). In contrast,Sy and Schulenberg (2005)found that parent school-based involve- ment positively predicted both European and Asian American children’s achievement. In theFan (2001)study described, the negative relations between home-school conferencing were found only for Asian American and European American students, but not for African American and Hispanic students.

Home-based involvement predicts better school conduct for both children and adolescents in the United States (Fantuzzo, McWayne, Perry, & Childs, 2004;Hill & Craft, 2003). School- based involvement predicts better (Domina, 2005) or worst school conduct (Grolnick et al., 2000). Possibly, the conflicting findings are because the effects of school-based involvement may depend on the quality, not just the quantity, of parents’ school-based involvement. For example, school-based involvement may have positive effects on children’s conduct if the parent’s involvement takes place in the context of warm parent– child relationship and negative effects in the context of a rejecting parent– child relation- ship. Or the conflicting findings may be the result of bidirectional effects between parent and child; children’s conduct problems in school may cause parent school-based involvement.

On the basis of theory and past research, we hypothesized that all three types of school-focused parenting practices would predict school achievement and appropriate conduct. We also predicted that school-based school involvement would have the highest effect size, followed by home-based school involvement, followed by home-school conferencing.

In addition, we hypothesized that child’s sex may moderate the relations between school-focused parenting practices and aca- demic achievement and conduct. Because boys are more active, more likely to have reading problems, and more likely to misbe- have (Lippa, 2005), boys may be more likely than girls to need parent support for homework, studying for tests, independent reading, and the like. Consequently, the relations between maternal school-focused parenting practices and children’s academic achievement and conduct may be greater for boys than for girls. A meta-analysis of studies focusing on predominantly European American, elementary-school students found a larger positive ef- fect size for boys than girls between general parent school involve- ment and achievement (Jeynes, 2005). There were a limited num- ber of studies focusing on relations between the three major areas This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. 303 MOTHER INFLUENCE ON CHILD ACHIEVEMENT AND CONDUCT of school involvement and achievement for boys versus girls, so a detailed analysis of the role of child’s sex was not possible (Jeynes, 2005). In this study, we examine whether child’s sex moderates the relations between parenting styles, school-focused parenting prac- tices, and children’s achievement and conduct.

In addition, child’s grade may moderate the relations between school-focused parenting practices and children’s academic achievement and conduct. Parent school involvement decreases as children transition from middle childhood to adolescence (Green, Walker, Hoover-Dempsey, & Sandler, 2007). Possibly, parents decrease school-focused parenting practices as they begin to en- courage the development of their children’s autonomy. As children become more autonomous, they may need less parent support to achieve and regulate their conduct in school. We hypothesize that parent school involvement will predict children’s school achieve- ment and conduct more in middle childhood than early adoles- cence. Interactions Between Parenting Styles and School-Focused Parenting Practices In addition to considering whether children’s sex and grade may moderate the relations between parenting and school achievement and conduct, it also may be important to control forhowparents are involved, not just focus onwhetherthey are involved (Pomer- antz et al., 2007).Darling and Steinberg (1993)proposed a model of how parenting styles and practices interact to affect child outcomes. They proposed that parenting styles provide an emo- tional context in which school-focused parenting practices are experienced by the child. Consequently, parenting styles may change the effectiveness of parenting practices for children’s school achievement and conduct (Darling & Steinberg, 1993; Spera, 2005). For example, help from a parent with homework may be experienced in a different way by a child depending on whether this home-based school-focused parenting practice occurs in the context of a parenting style with high warmth and behavioral control versus a parenting style with little warmth and high psy- chological control.Cooper, Lindsay, and Nye (2000)found that parent help with homework had different relations with elementary and secondary students’ achievement depending on parenting styles. Parents’ help with homework in the context of appropriate control that provided support for the student’s autonomy predicted better achievement.Steinberg, Lamborn, Dornbusch, and Darling (1992)found that school-focused parenting practices were related more strongly to adolescent achievement when parents used ap- propriate behavior control and were warm, whereas when parents were overcontrolling and less warm, there was a weaker relation.

In the present study, we explored whether parenting styles mod- erated the relations between school-focused parenting practices and children’s school achievement and conduct. On the basis of parenting theory and the empirical findings described above, we hypothesize that home-based involvement, home-school confer- encing, and school-based involvement will positively predict chil- dren’s achievement and appropriate conduct when parenting styles are high warmth and behavioral control, and low psychological control. In contrast, we hypothesize that there will be no relation or a negative relation between these school-focused parenting prac- tices and achievement and conduct when parenting styles are low warmth and behavioral control, and high psychological control.In summary, we hypothesized that children’s perceptions of their mothers’ parenting styles would predict children’s school achievement and conduct, controlling for children’s sex, ethnicity, grade, and maternal education. In addition, we hypothesized that children’s perceptions of their mothers’ school-focused parenting practices would predict children’s achievement and conduct in school even after controlling for child’s sex, ethnicity, grade, maternal education, and parenting styles. Finally, we predicted that parenting styles would moderate the relationships between mater- nal school-focused parenting practices and children’s achievement and conduct and that children’s sex and grade would moderate relations between parenting styles and school-focused parenting practices and children’s achievement and conduct. Method Participants A total of 712 out of 1,442 students (49%) in nine Singapore public elementary schools in 36 classrooms (10 third grade, eight fourth grade, 10 fifth grade, and eight sixth grade) participated in the study. Three schools were from the north, three from the south, two from the east, and one from the west zones of the country. The schools were selected to be similar in the makeup and achievement of the student body and to be representative of the racial and socioeconomic diversity of Singapore public schools. There were 341 boys, 371 girls, 171 third graders, 136 fourth graders, 216 fifth graders, and 189 sixth graders, ranging in age from 9 to 12 years.

Most students were of Chinese ethnic background (74.0% Chinese, 16.4% Malays, 7.3% Indians, and 2.2% of other ethnic back- grounds) (seeTable 1for a summary of the sample for children’s sex, grade, and ethnicity). Most of the students’ mothers (86%) were married, employed (41.6% employed full time, 9.1% em- ployed part time, 31.9% homemakers, 5.8% other situation, and 11.7% missing), and had a high school education (13.5% finished eighth grade or less, 41.7% finished high school, 17.4% technical school, 12.8% bachelor’s degree, 3.4% master’s degree, .3% doc- torate, and 11% did not report their education). Most families were middle class (11.6% lower income, 59.7% middle class, 18.4% higher income, 10.4% did not respond). Despite the high number of children who did not participate, the distribution of SES for families in the sample was similar to the distribution of families in Singapore: 17.3% lower income, 67.4% middle class, and 15.0% higher income (Statistics Singapore, n.d.).

Procedure and Measures Students completed questionnaires assessing their perceptions of their mothers’ parenting styles and school-focused parenting practices during school in July or August. Questionnaires were read aloud to third-grade students; fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade students completed the questionnaires on their own while the researcher was present to answer questions. Questionnaires were in English, one of the languages of instruction in Singapore.

Parenting styles.Children’s perceptions of their mothers’ parenting styles were assessed using items from several existing parent report measures with good validity and reliability (Aunola & Nurmi, 2004;Fan, 2001;Fantuzzo et al., 2000) that were adapted for this study for children’s self-report. Warmth was This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. 304 STRIGHT AND YEO assessed using five items fromAunola and Nurmi’s (2004)Par- enting Styles questionnaire (“My mother hugs and holds me”; “She and I have a good relationship”; “She talks it over and reasons with me when I misbehave”; “She praises me”; “She shows me that she loves me”). Psychological control was assessed using four items from Aunola and Nurmi (“She tells me how much she has given up for me”; “She expects me to be thankful for all the things she has given me”; “She tells me how much she has done for me”; “She lets me see how disappointed she is if I misbehave”) and two items created for the study (“She tells me that my misbehavior shames the whole family”; “She tells me that it is my duty to do well in school”). Behavioral control was assessed using two items from Aunola and Nurmi (“She teaches me to behave properly toward her”; “If I misbehave, she usually scolds or punishes me”), two items fromFantuzzo et al., 2000 (“She keeps regular morning and bedtime hours for me”; “She keeps clear rules at home that I should obey”), and two items used in the National Education Longitudinal Study identified byFan (2001)as loading on this construct (“She limits my going out withfriends”; “She limits my time watching TV and video”). The rating scale was 1 not like my mom,2 a little like my mom,3 sometimes like my mom,4 very much like my mom.

Because the Parenting Style questionnaire was created for the study, previous construct validity data were not available. Conse- quently, an exploratory factor analysis using promax rotation (cor- related factors were hypothesized) was conducted to explore the structure of the 17 items. The eigenvalues greater than 1 (4.66, 2.04, and 1.14) and scree plots supported the hypothesized three factors. Each item loaded only on the factor for which it was designed (seeTable 2for means and ranges for the factor load- ings). One exception was the item, “She tells me it is my duty to do well in school”; this item loaded on behavioral control rather than on the psychological control dimension for which it had been created, so it was dropped from the subscale. The three factors explained 49% of the variance, similar to 54.5% of variance explained byBarber, Oslen, and Shagle’s (1994)Parenting Style questionnaire. Subscale scores were calculated by averaging the items. The scores were moderately positively correlated with each Table 1 Child’s Sex, Grade, and Ethnicity Child’s ethnicityChild’s grade Total Grade 3 Grade 4 Grade 5 Grade 6 Chinese Child’s sex Girl 70 49 82 75 276 Boy 67 47 79 58 251 Total 137 96 161 133 527 Malay Child’s sex Girl 11 12 15 25 63 Boy 10 9 18 17 54 Total 21 21 33 42 117 Indian Child’s sex Girl 3 6 11 5 25 Boy 578727 Total 8 13 19 12 52 Other Child’s sex Girl 1 4 2 0 7 Boy 4 2 1 2 9 Total 5 6 3 2 16 Total712 Missing values0 Table 2 Means, Standard Deviations (SD), Skew, Kurtosis, Cronbach’s Alpha, and Factor Loading Means and Ranges for All Variables VariableMSDSkew Kurtosis Factor loading means (ranges) Maternal education 12.3 3.2 .66 .24 Warmth 3.29 .64 1.1 .69 .76 .63 (.44–.79) Psychological control 2.71 .80 .14 .57 .74 .61 (.51–.78) Behavioral control 2.94 .66 .39 .92 .67 .51 (.39–.65) Home-based involvement 3.01 .70 .61 .31 .70 .53 (.40–.80) Home-school conferencing 1.71 .50 .44 .45 .56 .58 (.35–.73) School-based involvement 1.44 .38 1.04 .87 .70 .54 (.47–.60) Academic achievement 68.59 18.90 .55 .78 Appropriate school conduct 3.07 .81 .24 1.1 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. 305 MOTHER INFLUENCE ON CHILD ACHIEVEMENT AND CONDUCT other, not skewed or kurtotic, and had acceptable internal consis- tency (seeTables 2and3). Correlations and internal consistency were similar across the grades. There were no missing data.

Maternal school-focused parenting practices.Children’s perceptions of their mothers’ school-focused parenting practices were assessed using items from several existing parent report measures adapted for this study for child report and items created for the study. Home-based involvement was assessed using four items fromHoover-Dempsey and Sandler, 2005(“She makes sure that I read”; “She or my tutor helps me with my homework or practice spelling, math, or other skills”; “She or my tutor helps me study for tests”; “She talks with me about the school day”), one item fromFan, 2001(“She tells me how far in school she wants me to go”), and one item created for the study (“She makes sure I have a quiet place to study”). Ratings were 1 1 to 5 times this year,2 once a month,3 once a week,4 daily. Home-school conferencing was assessed using three items fromFantuzzo et al.

(2000): “She talks to or emails my teacher if there are questions about my homework”; “She attends parent-teacher meetings”; “She talks to or emails my teacher if I have difficulties at school.” School-based involvement was assessed using three items from Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler, 2005(“She goes on class trips or school excursions with me”; “She helps out at my school”; “She attends special events at my school”), and three items created for the study (“She attends parent support group meetings”; “She attends talks or workshops for parents held at my school”; “She joins me when I help out in community projects”). Ratings for both home-school conferencing and school-based involvement were 1 never,2 Sometimes,3 Usually/Always/Often/All the Time/All Events(depending on the question). A 1–3 rating scale was used for these subscales because children may be less accurate reporters of these aspects of maternal involvement and, conse- quently, would be less able to reliably use a 4-point rating scale.

Because the questionnaire was created for the study, an explor- atory factor analysis using promax rotation was conducted on the 15 items. The eigenvalues greater than 1 (3.75, 1.74, and 1.22) and scree plots supported the hypothesized three factors. In addition, the items loaded only on the target factor. The three factors accounted for 45% of the variance. Subscale scores were calcu- lated by averaging the items. The scores were low to moderately, positively correlated with each other, not skewed or kurtotic, andhad acceptable internal consistency, except for home-school con- ferencing ( .56; seeTable 2). Correlations and alphas for the subscales were similar across the grades. Of the 712 students, six did not complete this questionnaire.

Achievement.Achievement was assessed using exams given at the end of the semester in October in all schools in English, math, and science. Scores could range from 1 to 100. The scores on the exams were comparable across schools because the schools were selected to be comparable in ability and achievement of the student body. In addition, all of the schools had comparable grading schemes in order to prepare their students for the national streaming examination at the end of fourth grade and the national primary school leaving examination at the end of sixth grade.

Students’ scores were highly correlated between the different subjects: English and math,r .80; English and science,r .83; math and science,r .86; consequently, an overall score of achievement for each student was created by averaging the subject scores. Of the 712 students, one student did not complete the exams.

Conduct.Conduct grades focusing on overall student behav- ior toward authority and peers were assigned by teachers using a 1- to 4-point scale as part of regular school grades at five of the nine participating schools, for a total of 413 students at the five schools.

In this subsample, there were 37 boys and 44 girls in third grade, 40 boys and 49 girls in fourth grade, 54 boys and 56 girls in fifth grade, and 58 boys and 75 girls in sixth grade. The test scores and conduct grades were collected from school records in November. Analyses and Results Do Maternal Parenting Styles Predict School Achievement and Appropriate Conduct? Mothers’ warmth was positively related to both their use of behavioral (r .37) and psychological control (r .36), and the use of behavioral and psychological was positively related (r .

56) (seeTable 3). To test the hypothesis that children’s perceptions of maternal parenting styles would predict children’s later school achievement and appropriate conduct after controlling for more distal variables such as child’s sex, grade, ethnicity, and maternal Table 3 Bivariate Correlations for All Variables Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1. Child’s sex — 2. Child’s grade .04 — 3. Child’s ethnicity .01 .07 — 4. Maternal education .04 .18 .15 — 5. Warmth .00 .20 .12 .10 — 6. Psychological control .04 .09 .25 .00 .36 — 7. Behavioral control .10 .09 .10 .09 .37 .56 — 8. Home-based involvement .01 .19 .10 .14 .52 .32 .47 — 9. Home-school conferencing .03 .08 .07 .20 .19 .04 .20 .28 — 10. School-based involvement .02 .22 .07 .13 .26 .11 .19 .32 .42 — 11. School achievement .05 .30 .52 .43 .06 .13 .07 .14 .27 .08 — 12. Appropriate conduct .25 .10 .22 .17 .00 .07 .03 .07 .20 .01 .40 — Note. Child’s sex was coded 1 boy, 2 girl; ethnicity was coded 1 Chinese, 0 minority. p .05. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. 306 STRIGHT AND YEO education, two hierarchical regression models were calculated predicting achievement and conduct (seeTable 4). In the first step of the models, child’s sex’s (1 boy, 0 girl), grade, and ethnicity (1 Chinese, 0 minority ethnic groups) were included as controls. In the second step, maternal education was entered. In the third step, parenting styles were entered (warmth, psycholog- ical control, and behavioral control).The effect size for child variables, maternal education, and parent- ing styles predicting children’s achievement wasR 2 .471 (p .001). Being female ( .06), younger ( .20), Chinese ( .47), and having a more educated mother ( .32) predicted higher achievement scores. Parenting styles were effective predictors of children’s achievement even after controlling for child variables and maternal education (the change inR 2was significant). As hypothe- Table 4 Hierarchical Regression Analyses Predicting Children’s Achievement and Appropriate Conduct Academic achievement Appropriate conduct VariableBSEB BSEB Step 1 R 2 .354 R 2 .104 Child’s sex 1.5 [ 3.9, .8] 1.2 .04 .30 [ .45, .14] .08 .19 Child’s grade 4.3 [ 5.4, 3.3] .5 .26 .07 [ .14, .0] .04 .10 Child’s ethnicity 22.3 [19.6, 25] 1.4 .53 .43 [.24, .62] .10 .22 Step 2 R 2 .103 R 2 .015 Child’s sex 2.0 [ 4.1, .2] 1.1 .05 .30 [ .45, .14] .08 .19 Child’s grade 3.4 [ 4.4, 2.4] .5 .21 .06 [ .13, .01] .04 .08 Child’s ethnicity 20.3 [17.8, 22.8] 1.3 .48 .40 [.21, .59] .10 .21 Parent education 1.9 [1.6, 2.3] .2 .33 .03 [.01, .06] .01 .12 Step 3 R 2 .014 R 2 .007 Child’s sex 2.2 [ 4.3, .0] 1.1 .06 .30 [ .46, .14] .08 .19 Child’s grade 3.2 [ 4.2, 2.2] .5 .20 .07 [ .14, .00] .04 .10 Child’s ethnicity 20.0 [17.5, 23] 1.3 .47 .38 [.18, .58] .10 .20 Parent education 1.9 [1.5, 2.2] .2 .32 .03 [.01, .06] .01 .12 Warmth 1.4 [ .50, 3.2] 1.0 .05 .06 [ .19, .07] .07 .05 Psychological control 2.6 [ 4.3, .9] .9 .11 .07 [ .19, .05] .06 .07 Behavioral control 3.3 [1.4, 5.3] 1.0 .12 .10 [ .05, .24] .07 .08 Step 4 R 2 .025 R 2 .044 Child’s sex 2.2 [ 4.3, .1] 1.1 .06 .30 [ .46, .15] .08 .19 Child’s grade 3.3 [ 4.3, 2.4] .5 .20 .08 [ .15, .01] .04 .11 Child’s ethnicity 19.5 [17, 22.1] 1.3 .46 .36 [.17, .55] .10 .19 Parent education 1.7 [1.4, 2.1] .2 .29 .02 [.00, .05] .01 .10 Warmth .31 [ 1.7, 2.3] 1.0 .01 .10 [ .24, .04] .07 .09 Psychological control 2.3 [ 4.0, .7] .9 .10 .05 [ .18, .07] .06 .05 Behavioral control 2.1 [0, 4.1] 1.1 .08 .04 [ .11, .20] .08 .04 Home-based involvement 2.1 [.2, 4.1] 1.0 .08 .09 [ .05, .24] .07 .08 Home-school conferencing 5.7 [3.3, 8.1] 1.2 .16 .33 [.15, .51] .09 .20 School-based involvement 4.0 [ 7.1, .8] 1.6 .08 .32 [ .58, .07] .13 .14 Step 5 R 2 .014 R 2 .022 Child’s sex 2.0 [ 4.1, .1] 1.1 .05 .31 [ .47, .16] .08 .20 Child’s grade 3.4 [ 4.4, 2.4] .5 .21 .08 [ .16, .01] .04 .12 Child’s ethnicity 20. [17.0, 22.0] 1.3 .46 .38 [.18, .57] .10 .20 Parent education 1.7 [1.4, 2.1] .2 .30 .02 [.00, .05] .01 .09 Warmth 2.1 [ 10.0, 5.8] 4.0 .07 .24 [ .32, .80] .28 .20 Psychological control 2.4 [ 4.0, .7] .9 .10 .07 [ .19, .05] .06 .07 Behavioral control 2.1 [.0, 4.1] 1.1 .07 .06 [ .09, .24] .08 .05 Home-based involvement 1.7 [ .3, 3.7] 1.0 .06 .14 [ .01, .29] .08 .12 Home-school conferencing 5.9 [3.5, 8.3] 1.2 .16 .33 [.15, .52] .09 .21 School-based involvement 5.2 [ 8.4, 1.9] 1.7 .11 .33 [ .60, .06] .14 .14 Warmth Home-Based Invol. 2.1 [ 4.9, .6] 1.4 .05 .03 [ .17, .22] .10 .02 Warmth Home-Sch. Conf. 1.8 [ 2.7, 6.1] 2.2 .10 .21 [ .52, .10] .16 .31 Warmth Sch.-Based Invol. 10.2 [3.0, 14.7] 3.0 .11 .05 [ .54, .45] .25 .01 Psych. Cont. Home-Based Invol. 1.1 [ 1.3, 3.7] 1.3 .04 .04 [ .24, .15] .10 .03 Psych. Cont. Home-Sch. Conf. .80 [ 4.8, 2.7] 1.9 .02 .00 [ .28, .28] .14 .00 Psych. Cont. Sch.-Based Invol. 5.0 [ 9.4, .4] 2.5 .07 .02 [ .38, .41] .20 .01 Beh. Cont. Home-Based Invol. .85 [ 2.5, 3.8] 1.6 .02 .24 [.01, .48] .12 .15 Beh. Cont. Home-Sch. Conf. .62 [ 5.0, 4.2] 2.3 .01 .07 [ .25, .39] .16 .03 Beh. Cont. Sch.-Based Invol. .14 [ 6.5, 4.6] 2.8 .01 .21 [ .62, .20] .21 .06 TotalR 2 .509 Total adjustedR 2 .145 Note.n 627 and 357 for the achievement and conduct regressions, respectively. Child’s sex is coded 1 boy, 0 girl; ethnicity is coded 1 Chinese, 0 ethnic minority. The lower and upper bounds of 95% confidence intervals forBare in brackets. Invol. Involvement; Home-Sch. Conf. Home-School Conferencing; Psych. Cont. Psychological Control; Beh. Cont. Behavioral Control.

p .05. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. 307 MOTHER INFLUENCE ON CHILD ACHIEVEMENT AND CONDUCT sized, psychological control negatively ( .11) and behavioral control positively ( .12) predicted children’s achievement. How- ever, warmth did not predict achievement.

The effect size for child variables, maternal education, and parenting styles predicting children’s conduct wasR 2 .125 (p .001). Being female ( .19), Chinese ( .20), and having a more educated mother ( .12) predicted higher conduct ratings.

Parenting styles did not predict conduct after controlling for child variables and maternal education. Do Children’s Perceptions of Maternal School-Focused Parenting Practices Predict School Achievement and Appropriate Conduct After Controlling for Parenting Styles?

To test the hypothesis that children’s perceptions of maternal school-focused parenting practices would predict children’s school achievement and conduct after controlling for parenting styles, the fourth step of the two hierarchical regression models added home- based involvement, home-school conferencing, and school-based involvement to the regression equations (seeTable 4). The effect size for child variables, maternal education, parenting styles, and school-focused parenting practices predicting children’s achieve- ment wasR 2 .496 (p .001). School-focused parenting prac- tices were significant predictors of children’s achievement even after controlling for child variables, maternal education, and par- enting styles. Children’s perceptions of maternal home-based in- volvement ( .08) and home-school conferencing ( .16) positively and school-based involvement negatively ( .08) predicted achievement.

The effect size for the child variables, education, parenting styles, and school-focused parenting practices predicting chil- dren’s appropriate conduct wasR 2 .169 (p .001). Maternal school-focused parenting practices significantly predicted chil- dren’s conduct after controlling for child variables, education, and parenting styles. Home-school conferencing positively ( .20) and school-based involvement negatively ( .14) predicted appropriate conduct. Education was no longer significant when school-focused parenting practices were added to the model. Interactions Between Parenting Styles and School-Focused Parenting Practices Because parenting styles may moderate the effects of school- focused parenting practices on children’s achievement and con- duct, in Step 5 of the two regressions, interactions between par- enting styles and school-focused parenting practices predicting children’s achievement and conduct were tested (seeTable 4). The parenting styles and school-focused parenting practices variables were zero centered and then used to create the interaction terms.

When the interactions were added to the model, the main effect of home-based involvement predicting achievement was no longer significant, suggesting that home-based involvement may be mod- erated by the context of parenting styles; however, none of the interactions including home-based involvement predicting achievement was significant. Children’s report of maternal warmth moderated the relationship between school-based involvement and school achievement ( .11). To interpret the meaning of the interaction, conditional regression lines for school-based involve-ment by achievement were plotted for children at the mean, one standard deviation above and one standard deviationbelow for children’s reports of maternal warmth (Aiken & West, 1991) (see Figure 1). As hypothesized, there was a positive relationship between maternal school-based involvement and children’s achievement for children whose mothers were one standard devi- ation above the mean for warmth (B 5.24,p .04), and no relation between school-based involvement and achievement for children whose mothers were average (B 2.01,p .17), or one standard deviation below the mean for warmth (B .23,p .95).

As predicted, behavioral control moderated the relationship between home-based involvement and appropriate conduct in school ( .15) (seeFigure 2). There was a positive relationship between maternal home-based involvement and children’s appro- priate conduct for children whose mothers were one standard deviation above the mean for behavioral control ( .21,p .03), and no relation between home-based involvement and con- duct for children whose mothers were average (B .10,p .12), or one standard deviation below the mean for behavioral control (B .01,p .94). Does Child’s Sex or Grade Moderate the Relationships Among Parenting Styles, School-Focused Parenting Practices, and Children’s Achievement and Conduct Theory and previous research suggest that child’s sex and grade may interact with parenting to affect child outcomes. Conse- quently, two regression models were calculated, examining whether children’s sex or grade moderated the relationships among parenting styles, school-focused parenting practices, and chil- dren’s achievement and conduct (seeTable 5). Each regression included child’s sex and grade, warmth, psychological control, behavioral control, home-based involvement, home-school confer- encing, school-based involvement, and interaction terms for child’s sex and the centered parenting variables and for child’s grade and the parenting variables. There were three interactions.

Figure 1.Linear relation between children’s report of maternal school- based involvement and children’s school achievement as a function of maternal warmth that is average, one standard deviation (Std Dev) above and one standard deviation below the mean. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. 308 STRIGHT AND YEO Unexpectedly, the relationship between warmth and children’s achievement was stronger for girls than boys ( .15). As hypothesized, there was a stronger positive relation between home- based involvement and achievement for boys than for girls ( .14). Warmth predicted achievement in third grade but not in the later grades ( .38). There were no interactions with sex or grade and the parenting variables predicting conduct. Discussion The study is one of the first to explore the roles of children’s perceptions of maternal parenting styles and school-focused par- enting practices for predicting children’s school achievement and appropriate conduct, using a relatively understudied culture, chil- dren in Singapore. A major strength of the study is that relations found among parenting styles, school-focused parenting practices, and children’s achievement and conduct were not due to shared method variance. Maternal parenting styles and school-focused parenting practices were reported by the children, and achievement and conduct data were collected from school records. In addition, the size of the sample provided sufficient power to test for inter- actions.

Parenting Styles and Children’s Academic Achievement and Conduct in Singapore Children in Singapore typically perceived their mothers’ parent- ing styles very positively, reporting that their mothers were warm, and used moderate amounts of behavioral control, and less psy- chological control. Children’s perceptions of their mothers’ use of psychological control were positively moderately related to behav- ioral control. In another Asian sample from China, there also was a moderate, positive relation (Wang et al., 2007). However, in samples from the United States and Palestine, there were either negative (Barber et al., 2005) or no relationships between the two types of control (Barber, 1999;Wang et al., 2007). In the present study, there also was an unexpected positive relationship between children’s perceptions of their mothers’ warmth and use of psy- Table 5 Simultaneous Regression Analyses for Interactions Among Child’s Sex, Grade, Parenting Styles, and Parenting Practices Predicting Children’s Achievement and Appropriate Conduct Academic achievement Appropriate conduct VariableBSEB BSEB Child’s sex 1 boy, 0 girl 1.5 [ 13, 10] 5.9 .04 .84 [ 1.6, .07] .39 .52 Child’s grade 5.1 [ 6.3, 4.0] .58 .30 .07 [ .15, .00] .04 .10 Warmth 13.5 [3.1, 23.8] 5.3 .46 .08 [ .73, .56] .27 .07 Psychological control .19 [ 8.5, 8.8] 4.4 .01 .19 [ .34, .71] .34 .18 Behavioral control 3.5 [ 7.6, 14.5] 5.6 .12 .27 [ .4, .93] .31 .22 Home-based involvement 7.8 [ 2.6, 18.2] 5.3 .29 .16 [ .77, .46] .39 .14 Home-school conferencing 3.1 [ 9.0, 15.2] 6.2 .08 .56 [ .20, 1.32] .53 .34 School-based involvement 20.9 [ 36, 5] 8.0 .42 1.2 [ 2.2, .1] .53 .48 Child’s Sex Warmth 6.2 [ 10, 1.6] 2.4 .15 .17 [ .11, .44] .14 .09 Ch. Sex Psych. Control .59 [ 3.3, 4.4] 2.0 .02 .10 [ .33, .14] .12 .06 Ch. Sex Behavioral Control .06 [ 4.9, 5.0] 2.5 .00 .01 [ .29, .31] .15 .01 Ch. Sex Home-Based Invol. 5.64 [1.1, 10.2] 2.3 .14 .19 [ .46, .09] .14 .11 Ch. Sex Home-School Conf. 4.82 [ 10, .79] 2.9 .24 .18 [ .17, .52] .18 .20 Ch. Sex Sch.-Based Invol. 5.23 [ 2.2, 13] 3.8 .21 .10 [ .41, .62] .26 .09 Ch. Grade Warmth 2.3 [ 4.3, .30] 1.0 .38 .01 [ .14, .11] .06 .06 Grade Psych. Control 1.4 [ 3.2, .32] .89 .28 .05 [ .16, .05] .05 .24 Grade Behavioral Control .03 [ 2.3, 2.2] 1.1 .01 .04 [ .18, .09] .07 .16 Grade Home-Based Invol. 1.8 [ 3.9, .29] 1.1 .32 .07 [ .06, .19] .06 .28 Grade Home-School Conf. 1.9 [ .63, 4.4] 1.28 .23 .06 [ .21, .10] .08 .16 Grade School-Based Invol. 3.1 [ .29, 6.5] 1.73 .28 .17 [ .06, .39] .12 .31 TotalR 2 .258 .15 Note.n 705 and 409 for the achievement and conduct regressions, respectively. Ch. Child; Psych. Psychological; Invol. Involvement; Conf. Conferencing. 95% confidence intervals forBare in brackets.

p .05.

Figure 2.Linear relation between children’s report of maternal home- based involvement and children’s appropriate school conduct as a function of behavioral control that is average, one standard deviation (Std Dev) above and one standard deviation below the mean. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. 309 MOTHER INFLUENCE ON CHILD ACHIEVEMENT AND CONDUCT chological control. A similar positive relation was reported by adolescent boys but not girls in Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a collectivist culture (Barber, 1999). In contrast, in Western samples, warmth and psychological control are negatively related (Aunola & Nurmi, 2004;Barber et al., 2005). These differences in the relationships between these differ- ent aspects of children’s perceptions of parenting styles suggest that children in Asian cultures may think differently about warmth and behavioral and psychological control than children in Western cultures or that Asian mothers may combine the use of behavioral and psychological control and warmth in different ways than Western parents.

Behavioral control had low-positive correlations with maternal education; the same relationship was found in European American samples (Bean et al., 2003). However, psychological control was not related to education. Previous research has found no relation- ship between psychological control and education or income in Finnish and African American samples (Aunola & Nurmi, 2004; Bean et al., 2003); however, in predominantly European American samples, more education or income predicts less psychological control (Barber, 1996;Bean et al., 2003;Stone, Buehler, & Barber, 2002). The relations between education and psychological control may be mediated by parenting beliefs. Future research might explore relationships between Asian mothers’ education and their beliefs about behavioral and psychological control.

The regression model examined the relative roles of warmth, behavioral control, and psychological control for predicting achievement. Children’s perceptions of their mothers’ use of be- havioral control positively and psychological control negatively predicted achievement, whereas warmth did not. These results for behavioral and psychological control in this Asian sample are consistent with previous studies using Western and Eastern sam- ples (Grolnick & Pomerantz, 2009;Wang et al., 2007), supporting the hypothesis that behavioral control supports and psychological control undermines children’s achievement across cultures. The failure to find a relationship between maternal warmth and chil- dren’s achievement is surprising, because warmth predicts achievement in Western and Eastern cultures (Booth et al., 1994; Chen et al., 2000;Gray & Steinberg, 1999;NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2004). The mean score for warmth was 3.29, with a standard deviation of .64, and possible ceiling of 4, so possibly a ceiling effect restricted the variance of the score and made it less likely that a relationship would be found with achieve- ment.

A contribution of the study to the literature is that the analyses controlled for important factors that may affect children’s achieve- ment such as child’s sex, ethnicity, grade, and maternal education.

Future research could explore the processes that mediate between parents’ warmth, behavioral and psychological control, and chil- dren’s achievement, such as the development of children’s intrin- sic motivation and feelings of competence (Grolnick & Pomerantz, 2009).

Children’s perceptions of their mothers’ warmth, behavioral, and psychological control did not predict children’s appropriate conduct in school. Previous research, using both Western and Eastern samples, revealed that warmth and behavioral control negatively and psychological control positively predicts chil- dren’s misconduct (Barber, 1999;Barber & Harmon, 2002; Barber et al., 2005;Chen et al., 2001). A possible problem forthis study was the failure to adequately measure children’s conduct. First, only five of the nine schools had conduct grades in their records, which greatly reduced the sample size for the analyses focusing on conduct. In addition, a large percentage of mothers (11%) did not report their education, an important control variable in the analyses, which further reduced the sample size. Finally, there was a ceiling effect for conduct. The mean was 3.07 (SD .81, possible range 1– 4); conse- quently, the ceiling almost was reached after only one standard deviation. Rating conduct on a 1–9 scale may have avoided this ceiling effect.

In addition, the measures of warmth, behavioral, and psycho- logical control were created for the study by adapting items for child self-report from existing parent report measures. Factor anal- ysis supported the construct validity of the subscales except that the internal consistency of the behavioral control scale was some- what low; alpha was .67. However, despite the lower internal consistency, behavioral control positively predicted children’s achievement. Maternal School-Focused Parenting Practices and Children’s Achievement and Conduct Children reported that their mothers typically used home-based school-focused parenting practices, and never or sometimes used home-school conferencing or were involved in school-based ac- tivities. Because parenting styles create an emotional climate or context for parent– child school-focused interactions, in order to understand the relations between school-focused parenting prac- tices and children’s achievement and conduct, it is important to control for parenting styles. The present study is the first to examine the relative contributions of each of the three dimensions of school-focused parenting practices while controlling for parent- ing styles.

School-focused parenting practices and achievement.After controlling for parenting styles and other variables that may affect children’s academic achievement, such as child’s sex, ethnicity, grade, and maternal education, children’s perceptions of their mothers’ school-focused parenting practices predicted children’s achievement. The most robust effect was that children’s report of maternal home-school conferencing positively predicted achieve- ment. Smaller effects were that home-based involvement posi- tively predicted and school-based involvement negatively pre- dicted achievement.

The negative relationship between school-based involvement and achievement supports previous research that revealed a nega- tive relation between Asian American parents’ school-based in- volvement and adolescents’ achievement (Mau, 1997). In contrast, studies with predominantly European American samples have re- vealed positive relationships between school-based involvement and achievement (Fan & Chen, 2001;Jeynes, 2005). On average, Asian American parents are less involved in school activities than European American parents (Mau, 1997). Possibly because parent school-based involvement does not have a long tradition in Sin- gapore, mothers in Singapore who are involved in school activities may be more likely than European American parents to become involved because their children are having difficulty in school.

Previous academic achievement scores were not available in this study or in theMau (1997)study to control for previous achieve- This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. 310 STRIGHT AND YEO ment; however, in predominantly European American samples, when previous achievement was controlled for, there was no relation between school-based involvement and achievement (Do- mina, 2005;Shumow & Miller, 2001).

School-focused parenting practices and appropriate conduct.After controlling for parenting styles and other vari- ables, the addition of the three school-focused parenting practices significantly improved the model predicting appropriate conduct.

Interestingly, maternal education was no longer significant when school-focused parenting practices were added to the model, sug- gesting that the relationship between education and conduct may be mediated by school-focused parenting practices. Like the model predicting achievement, the largest effect size predicting children’s appropriate conduct was children’s perceptions of maternal home- school conferencing. The strength of the relationships between home-school conferencing and achievement and conduct is sur- prising because this subscale consisted of only three items, and had a low alpha of .56. Future studies could explore possible mediators between conferencing and children’s achievement and conduct such as increases in mothers’ knowledge of subject content, home- work, teacher expectations, and children’s problems, which may then lead to improvements in children’s achievement and conduct.

Like the prediction of achievement, children’s perceptions of their mothers’ school-based involvement negatively predicted con- duct. The more involved mothers were in school activities, the lower their children’s appropriate conduct scores were. A negative relation also was found between school-based involvement and appropriate school conduct in a predominantly European Ameri- can sample (Grolnick et al., 2000). Possibly, the negative relation- ship between maternal school-based involvement and children’s conduct might be because parents are involved in school activities because their children are having problems with conduct.

Children’s perceptions of maternal home-based school involve- ment did not predict children’s conduct. Previous studies using samples in the United States revealed a positive relation between home-based involvement and appropriate school conduct (Do- mina, 2005;Fantuzzo et al., 2004;Hill & Craft, 2003). As dis- cussed earlier, problems with adequately measuring children’s school conduct may have reduced the likelihood of finding rela- tions.

Interactions Between Parenting Styles and School-Focused Parenting Practices Because parenting theory proposes that parenting styles are an emotional context that affects the effectiveness of school-focused parenting practices (Darling & Steinberg, 1993;Grolnick & Po- merantz, 2009), we explored in this study whether parenting styles moderated the relationships between school-focused parenting practices and children’s achievement and conduct. The results provide limited support forDarling and Steinberg’s (1993)model.

First, home-based involvement was no longer a significant predic- tor of children’s achievement when the interactions were added to the model, suggesting that parenting styles may moderate the effects of home-based involvement on achievement. However, none of the interactions between home-based involvement and the parenting styles variables were significant. Second, only one of the interactions was significant predicting achievement.Although analyses of main effects of school-based involvement showed a negative relationship between children’s reports of ma- ternal school-based involvement and children’s achievement, the interaction indicated the opposite. When children perceived their mothers as warm, there was a positive relationship between ma- ternal school-based involvement and children’s achievement, whereas when children perceived their mothers as less warm, there was no relation between school-based involvement and achieve- ment. Possibly, in the context of high maternal warmth, children perceived mothers’ school-based involvement as an expression of maternal love and emotional support and, consequently, were more motivated to achieve in school. In contrast, in the context of low warmth, children may have perceived their mothers’ school-based involvement as an intrusion into their lives and were less moti- vated to achieve. Future research might examine children’s and mothers’ attitudes about maternal involvement in school activities and explore whether parenting styles are related to these attitudes.

Only one of the interactions between parenting styles and school-focused parenting practices predicting children’s appropri- ate conduct in school was significant. The main effect for home- based involvement did not significantly predict children’s appro- priate conduct in school, whereas the interaction indicated that for children who perceived their mothers as using high behavioral control, there was a positive relationship between home-based involvement and children’s appropriate control in school. For children who perceived their mothers as average or low in behav- ioral control, there was no relationship between home-based in- volvement and children’s conduct in school. Possibly, home-based involvement has an effect of reinforcing appropriate conduct in school in the context of appropriate behavioral control. Research on children’s feelings about maternal home-based involvement and about behavioral control might make it possible to explore why home-based involvement might have different effects, de- pending on the broader context of behavioral control.

Because only two interactions were significant out of the many that were tested, these results should be considered preliminary.

The sample size for the achievement regression analysis was adequate. However, the sample size for the conduct regression analysis was quite small for the number of predictors in the equation. In addition, it is difficult to find interactions in nonex- perimental studies, partially because the main effects explain most of the variance (seeMcClelland & Judd, 1993, for a discussion of power issues when testing for interactions). Moderators of Relationships Among Parenting and Children’s Achievement and Conduct This study was the first that we are aware of to examine interactions between child’s sex, grade, parenting styles, and school involvement predicting children’s achievement and con- duct. Because relatively few of the interactions were significant out of the large number tested, the following results should be considered preliminary. Girls’ perceptions of their mothers’ warmth predicted girls’ achievement; however, there was no rela- tion between maternal warmth and boys’ achievement. The devel- opment of feelings of competence may be more affected by ma- ternal warmth for girls than boys, and feeling competent may then affect achievement. In contrast, there was a stronger relation between boys’ perceptions of maternal home-based school in- This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. 311 MOTHER INFLUENCE ON CHILD ACHIEVEMENT AND CONDUCT volvement predicting later achievement than for girls. Possibly boys may be more likely than girls to benefit from home-based involvement because boys’ increased activity levels and less com- pliant behavior may require more parent help with school work, studying, structure to support reading, and the like than girls in order to achieve academically.

Grade also moderated the relations between maternal warmth and achievement. Children’s perceptions of maternal warmth pre- dicted achievement in third grade but not in the older grades (fourth, fifth, and sixth). This result fits with developmental the- ory, which emphasizes children’s increasing autonomy as they move from middle childhood to early adolescence (Steinberg & Silk, 2002). Possibly as children become more autonomous in managing their homework, studying, and other aspects of their learning, parental warmth becomes less important for children’s achievement.

Methodological Issues The low response rate for study participation makes it likely that the sample included more involved families; consequently, the results of the study should be generalized to relatively well- functioning Asian families. Also, the study focuses only on moth- ers and should not be generalized to fathers. Chen and colleagues found different roles for fathers’ and mothers’ parenting styles predicting Chinese children’s adjustment (Chen et al., 2000). In addition, the quality of each of the nine schools participating in the study was not directly assessed. Because there were only nine schools, it was not possible to use multilevel modeling to consider school effects on children’s achievement and conduct. Another possible confound, which was not controlled for, was shared genetics between parents and children. Relations between parent- ing and children’s school achievement and conduct may not mean that parenting causes children’s achievement and conduct, but instead may be a relationship caused by shared genetics. Parent characteristics may cause better parenting, and children may in- herit these parent characteristics, which in turn may cause child achievement and conduct. Controlling for education is a rough proxy for this genetic confound, although maternal intelligence scores would be a better control.

A larger sample would have increased the power to find rela- tionships between parenting styles and school-focused parenting practices and children’s conduct. Future studies with larger sam- ples could also include both dependent variables, achievement and conduct, in the same model, making it possible to control for shared variance.

Implications for Education The study provides evidence for educators for the importance of parenting styles and school-focused parenting practices as supports for students’ achievement and conduct in school. This study’s correlational design does not provide evidence for causal connec- tions between maternal parenting styles, school-focused parenting practices, and children’s achievement and appropriate conduct in school. However, the study controlled for many factors that may confound the relationships among parenting styles, school involve- ment, and children’s academic achievement and conduct. It is striking that after controlling for major predictors of children’sachievement and conduct, such as parent education and parenting styles, school-focused parenting practices still predicted later achievement. An important next step would be to use experimental methods to test the effectiveness of parent school involvement support programs. Programs might focus on providing mothers with ways they can support their children’s learning at home, emphasize the importance of mothers communicating with teach- ers, and involvement in school activities while also emphasizing warmth and behavioral control.

One way of reducing differences in young children’s school readiness as they enter kindergarten is to provide access to pro- grams so that all parents may develop parenting knowledge, skills, and resources. Examples of programs with evidence for effective- ness are the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program or Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (Thomas & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2007). These programs focus on both parenting styles and practices, and the results of the current study reinforce the importance of focusing programs on parenting practices in the context of parenting styles.

These types of programs can be an important resource for parents, especially for parents with fewer resources such as education.

Domina (2005)found stronger relationships between parent school involvement and children’s achievement and conduct for parents with lower levels of education than for more highly educated parents. Schools with large numbers of students from less educated families may benefit from programs supporting parenting and school involvement especially as children begin school (Jeynes, 2005).

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