Involvement of modern parents in practices related to children

Abstract

Using data from the 30th wave of the “The Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey - Higher School of Economics (RLMS-HSE)”, the involvement of modern parents in raising children is analysed. Involvement practices are presented in the form of a construct that includes: preparing lessons, attending parent-teacher meetings, reading, playing sports, visiting a doctor, spending vacations, creative activities, additional classes in school subjects, and studying information about care and education. The analysis is carried out taking into account three groups of indicators: family (number of children and the presence of other relatives in the family), individual indicators of parents (education, length of time spent at work) and individual indicators of children (gender, age). A fairly high level of parental involvement and significant differences in the indicators of mothers and fathers are shown - the involvement of fathers is rather complementary in nature. Physical activity with children is the only type of practice in which fathers participate almost equally with mothers. The nature of the transformation of practices as the child grows up is analysed. It is noted that if the child’s younger age requires the involvement of at least two adults, then starting from school age, most practices are assigned to only one of them, while vacation is a practice in which parents most often participate jointly. The contribution of other relatives is assessed. It has been shown that the presence of grandparents in the household significantly reduces the workload of mothers. An increase in the number of children in a family has virtually no effect on the level of involvement in general, but it changes the structure of its practices, while the level of involvement of other relatives decreases. The greatest influence on involvement is exerted by the individual indicators of parents, especially education - a mother’s higher education increases the number of hours devoted to children; Most of parental time is spent preparing lessons with children, which in turn affects academic performance. It is noteworthy that the number of hours parents work is positively related to the level of involvement. The conclusion is made about the stability of maternal and vulnerability of paternal involvement.