How Do Children’s School Experiences Affect How They Are Parented? Evidence From the United States

Elizabeth Powers
Eunhye Kwak, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Child development experts consider parenting to be the major determinant of life success. There is a public interest in promoting quality parenting due to its positive externalities and its role in the intergenerational transmission of inequality. Using school-entry-age rules, we identify the effects of children’s school tenure on parenting. We find that beneficial aspects of parenting, affection and behavioral control, increase with tenure-for-age in a nationally representative sample. Effects are highly heterogeneous with respect to child, maternal, and household characteristics. Effects are most salutary for younger siblings. Affection increases for many, but not all groups, while children in all groups except those of single mothers experience an increase in positive behavioral controls. When behavioral control increases without a change in affection, more parenting stress is a common co-occurrence.

See paper

 Presented in Session 124. Flash Session: Causes and Consequences of Educational Inequalities