The Relationship Between Mother's Level of Education and Parent Involvement

Abstract

Despite an extensive body of literature on the relationship between the parents’ education and the child’s academic outcomes, there is considerably less research into the factors that influence parent involvement. The purpose of this study is to examine the correlates associated with parent involvement with their child inside and outside of school. I use Pierre Bourdieu's theory of the Forms of Capital and Habitus, specifically focusing on cultural capital, to frame my analysis. I use data from the 2007 National Household Education Survey of Parent and Family Involvement (n=10,628), a nationally representative sample, to examine if mother’s level of education is associated with different dimensions of parent involvement. I examined six dimensions of parent involvement: parent involvement at school, parent volunteering, cultural activities, cultural outings, group activities, and homework help. Mother’s level of education was significantly associated with all types of involvement except homework help. Introduction Education has long been the subject of sociological inquiry, from Emile Durkheim (1922) to Pierre Bourdieu (1986). Coleman’s (1966) landmark report, “Equality of Educational Opportunity,” drew attention to the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and academic outcomes for children. Parent involvement mediates this relationship (GonzalezDehass, 2005). Studies show that parental involvement has a positive effect on academic outcomes (Lareau, 1987; Bowen & Lee, 2006). Parent involvement in research is often explored as a multidimensional concept (Kohl et al., 2000), which means there are different ways parents can become involved in their child’s education. For example, parents can help their children with schoolwork at home, attend parent-teacher meetings, or take their child to a museum or library, and all of these activities would be considered different types of involvement. While types of involvement are often associated with one another, involvement in specific activities is dependent on the parents’ available resources (Grolnick and Slowiaczek, 1994). However, the extent to which parents become involved in their child’s education is more than a matter of desire. Parents with more resources are better able to become involved (Grolnick and Slowiaczek, 1994), and parent resources can extend beyond economic capital. This paper uses the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu’s Forms of Capital and habitus to explore if parental resources and mother’s level of education are associated with parent involvement. The theory of different forms of capital suggests that parents transfer their status to their children