The Relation Between Parents' Involvement in Children's Schooling and Children's Adjustment: A Meta-Analysis

This quantitative synthesis of 448 independent studies including 480,830 families revealed small positive associations (rs = .13 to .23) between parents' naturally occurring involvement in children's schooling and children's academic adjustment (i.e., achievement, engagement, and motivation) that were maintained over time. Parents' involvement was also positively related to children's social (r = .12) and emotional adjustment (r = .17) and negatively related to their delinquency (r = −.15), concurrently. Analyses focusing on children's academic adjustment revealed that different types of involvement (e.g., parents' participation in school events and discussion of school with children) were similarly positively associated with such adjustment. The only exception was that parents' homework assistance was negatively associated with children's achievement (r = −.15), but not engagement (r = .07) or motivation (r = .05). There was little variation due to age, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status in the links between different types of involvement and children's academic adjustment. Public Significance Statement The findings underscore the utility of parents' involvement in children's schooling, other than in the homework context, to support not only children's academic adjustment, but also other dimensions of their adjustment, regardless of children's developmental phase.