Parental Support in College and its Implications for Student Adjustment

• In Event: Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Topic - Education, Schooling

Abstract

College enrollment is a time of transition during which many students also navigate the psychosocial challenges of emerging adulthood. Within the United States (US), approximately 44% of high school students enroll in 4-year institutions directly upon high school graduation, but only 60% of these students obtain a degree within six years (NCES, 2019, 2020). During college, students need to adjust to new academic environments, relationships, and responsibilities, often while living away from home for the first time. This developmental period offers a unique opportunity to study the role of parental support as young adults become more autonomous and navigate the world of higher education. In this study, we sought to understand: (a) students’ perceptions of parental support during the college years, (b) the strategies parents use to provide support, and (c) the impact of parental support (or lack of support) as it relates to student adjustment.

Participants were 53 college students (89% female) ages 18 to 23 years of age (M = 19.76) who named their mothers and/or fathers as their primary caregivers and lived outside of the family home. Participants completed in-depth qualitative interviews focused on parent-college student relationships and their perceptions of parental support. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and a cross-case, variable-oriented analytic strategy (Miles, Huberman, & Saldana, 2014) was used during first and second cycle coding to create a model that represented the nature of parental support and its impact on college students’ adjustment.

Findings indicated that most parents provide emotional, academic, and financial support during the college years; however, parents differed in the extent to which they were perceived as supportive, ambivalent, or unsupportive and the strategies they used to provide support (Figure 1). Students who had supportive or ambivalent parents felt like they had a “safety net” and a cheerleading team supporting their decisions. This support motivated and reassured students to work hard and finish their degrees. For example, Cynthia (Multi-ethnic, sophomore, single-mother home) emphasized, “I think that my mom is a huge support system and that if I hadn’t had that support system, I think I would have dropped out by now.” In contrast, students who perceived their parents as unsupportive, developed negative feelings about themselves and experienced frustration and lack of motivation, “Uh, not good. It makes me feel like a failure sometimes, like it kinda puts a drop on my self-esteem at that moment” (Angela, Latina, junior, two-parent home).

Findings from this study highlight that parental support remains important in the college years and the extent to which students feel supported have implications for their adjustment. Specifically, parental support might be particularly important in terms of maximizing retention rates and reducing the amount of years that college students take to graduate. These findings underscore the importance of promoting collaborative relationships between parents and institutions in an effort to promote student adjustment. Specifically, parental support could be integrated into models of student support and academic success during college.

Authors

• Marta Benito-Gomez, MDRC (Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation) - New York City
  Presenting Author

• Grace Y Lee, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amy McCurdy, University of Texas at Austin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Anne C Fletcher, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Non-Presenting Author