Parental Warmth, Control, and Involvement in Schooling

Abstract

This study explored the relationship between Baumrind’s parenting prototypes and the academic achievement, judged by grade point average (GPA), of Korean American adolescents. It also examined the relative contribution to youth’s academic achievement of perceived maternal and paternal warmth and control and involvement in schooling. Approximately 74% of the sample youth did not fit any of Baumrind’s types, raising questions about their usefulness for ethnic research. Analysis of the remaining 26% showed that youth raised by authoritative and permissive fathers (but not mothers) performed better than youth raised by authoritarian fathers. Youth raised by authoritative fathers, however, did not perform significantly better than youth raised by permissive fathers. An analysis of perceived parental warmth and control exposed a positive correlation between perceived maternal and paternal warmth (but not control) and adolescents’ GPA as well as a moderator effect of perceived maternal control. Moreover, perceived paternal (but not maternal) involvement in schooling partially mediated the relationship between fathers’ reported warmth and adolescents’ GPA.