Religiosity as a Factor Supporting Parenting and Its Perceived Effectiveness in Hungarian School Children’s Families

Abstract

The impact of a family’s socio-economic status on parenting activities has been a thoroughly researched topic. Parental involvement, which refers to parenting that supports school achievement, may be home-based and school-based, as typified by Epstein and Sanders. Earlier findings suggest that a more favorable socioeconomic status results in more active and effective parental involvement. Only a few studies show low-status parents can be more effective, whereby some factor compensates for the negative impact of low status. Our hypothesis is that parents’ self-identified religiosity can reduce the disadvantages arising from the family’s unfavorable socio-economic status. We use data from a survey conducted in 2020 among the parents of fourth-grade Hungarian primary school children, which is geographically and socially representative with a sample size of 1156. Our results show that religiosity has a significant positive influence on parenting activities and their perceived effectiveness, even after controlling for other variables. In addition, our indicator of home-based parental attention in itself is also strongly supportive of parents’ perceived effectiveness in parenting. Our findings suggest that parental religiosity and home-based parental attention are important factors that can make parenting effective despite social and cultural disadvantages.