The Effects of Parental Involvement, Structure, and Autonomy Support on Children's Help-Seeking and Problem-Solving Coping in School

Abstract

The effect of parenting on children's coping in school was investigated. Sixhundred and twelve children in grades three to five provided self-reports on four ways of coping, including help-seeking, concealment, strategizing and confusion, and the parenting dimensions of involvement, structure, and autonomy support. Psychometric analyses conducted on each dimension of parenting, resulted in reducing the number of parenting variables to two: involvement and structure/autonomy support. Correlational analyses found the predicted relations between children's experiences of parenting and their ways of coping in school. Multiple regressions indicated that only unique (positive) predictor of the two positive ways of coping (help-seeking and problem-solving) was parental involvement. The two negative ways of coping ( confusion and concealment) were uniquely and negatively predicted by both parental involvement and structure/autonomy support. Analyses of "optimal profiles" of coping showed that optimal profiles (high positive ways of coping and low negative ways) required both parental involvement and structure/autonomy support. Sex differences were found in the relations between the strategizing coping mechanism and both parenting dimensions, such that parental involvement was more important to strategizing for boys and, in addition, parental autonomy structure/autonomy support showed a small (unpredicted) negative unique relationship with strategizing for boys. The overall findings showed that there are relationships between children's experiences of parental involvement and structure/autonomy support in the home and their self-reported coping in school.