The influence of children's perception of parental attitudes on the school achievement

The results of the analysis of parental attitudes' influence on children's school achievement during the period of primary and secondary education are presented. The study examines both positive (acceptance, positive involvement) and negative (rejection, hostile detachment) aspects of mothers' and fathers' attitude as perceived through the prism of children's perception. The study involved 375 primary schoolchildren (grades 1-4) aged 7.8 to 11.6 years (49.9% of boys) and 428 adolescences (grades 5-9) aged 10.9 to 16.6 years (47.3% of boys). "Children's Report of Parental Behavior Inventory" questionnaire was used to determine the perception of the attitude of each of the parents (Tikhomirova, Malykh, Gaysina, 2013). Index of academic achievement was based on teachers' assessments in Russian, mathematics and biology. It was shown that to greater extent children perceive the attitude of both parents as emotionally accepting and to a lesser extent as rejecting during the whole period of compulsory general education. Correlation analysis did not reveal statistically significant relationships between the positive aspects of paternal attitudes and academic performance in school subjects at the primary level of general education, in contrast to the basic level. The results of structural modeling showed that relationship between parental attitudes towards a child and his/her academic achievement is determined by a single model during the whole period of schooling, according to which mothers' and fathers' acceptance, positive involvement, rejection and hostile detachment affect the academic achievement of the schoolchildren, accounting for 11-14% of the variance in primary school age and 4% during adolescence. However, differences in the relationships within this universal structure that are typical for different periods of school education were revealed. The results are interpreted in the context of the age-related specificity of the perception of parental attitudes during the whole schooling period.