Relations of Perceived Maternal Parenting Style, Practices, and Learning Motivation to Academic Competence in Chinese Children

Abstract

A measure of academic parenting practices was developed through parent and teacher interviews and subsequently administered to 91 Hong Kong Chinese fifth graders, who also rated their mothers' restrictiveness and concern, school motivation, and self-perceived academic competence. Children's actual school grades were obtained from school records. The new measure of parenting practices exhibited satisfactory factorial validity and reliability. Perceived parenting styles of concern and restrictiveness, although theoretically independent, were highly associated. Perceived maternal practices of support and encouragement explained unique variance in children's learning motivation. Achievement demands, together with restrictive parenting style, explained children's actual academic performances. Children's mastery motivation, but not maternal socialization practices and style, explained children's perceived competence. Findings are in line with existing models of family interaction (e.g., Kagitcibasi, 2005) and underscore the importance of specific parenting practices as well as general parenting styles in explaining different socialization outcomes in children (Darling & Steinberg, 1993).