Maternal education and children’s school achievement: the roles of values, parenting, and behavior regulation

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine psychological factors that may contribute to explain the link between maternal education and children’s school achievement. As explanatory factors, mothers’ self-transcendence values (i.e., altruism, tolerance, and social responsibility), maternal restrictive control, and children’s behavior regulation were studied as part of an integrative framework. The sample consisted of 167 Chilean fourth graders (age: M= 10.16; SD = 0.42), their mothers, and their teachers. Mediation analyses using a bootstrapping method confirmed the proposed integrative model, revealing a triple indirect effect, indicating that mothers’ self-transcendence values, maternal restrictive control, and children’s behavior regulation mediated the positive relation between maternal education and children’s school achievement, even after controlling for intelligence, age, and gender. Mothers with lower levels of education reported lower self-transcendence values and used more restrictive control. Further, children of mothers who often used maternal restrictive control showed lower behavior regulation and poorer school achievement. Thus, the results of this intracultural study contribute to a better understanding of the relation between maternal education and children’s school achievement. Implications of these findings for further research are addressed.