Parental Involvement and Subject-Specific Academic Achievement: Does Gender Matter?

• In Event: 207 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Gender and Education

Abstract

Education researchers have long been interested in the relationship between parental involvement and the gender gap in academic achievement, broadly defined (see for examples Coleman 1988; Lareau 1987; DiMaggio 1982; Dumais 2002). In expanding this research, I ask: how is parental involvement related to subject-specific achievement? And how are the effects of parental involvement on subject-specific achievement outcomes patterned by students’ gender? Finally, I ask, do father’s and mother’s involvement differentially affect a child’s educational outcomes? Using data from the first Wave of the Add Health survey I find significant variation in subject-specific achievement patterned by the gender of both parents and students. Specifically, the impact of maternal involvement is most effective in for their daughters in STEM fields, while involvement with sons has the most impact in the Humanities. Paternal involvement is most strongly impacts student achievement in the Humanities for male and female students.

Author

• Carly Ann Rush, Vanderbilt University