FATHERS’ IMPORTANCE IN ADOLESCENTS’ ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT
Abstract
Many studies have investigated mothers’ impact on students’ achievement, yet little is known about how various father types impact students’ school performance. This study examines 6 mutually exclusive categories of father type: resident biological fathers, resident stepfathers, resident adoptive fathers, nonresident biological fathers, unknown biological fathers, and deceased fathers. Adolescents’ school performance from seventh through twelfth grade is examined using data from 3 waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a nationally representative United States secondary data source. Findings indicate different types of fathers have distinct and independent positive associations with adolescents’ school achievement, after controlling for mother involvement. Adolescents with resident biological fathers had higher school performance than adolescents with nonresident fathers. Adolescents with stepfathers had higher rates of school failure than their peers living with their biological parents. The lowest achievement and the highest risk of school failure and course failure were experienced by those adolescents who did not have a resident father figure and didn’t know the identity of their fathers. Implications include the need to model for the unique influence of father involvement and father type on academic achievement, and the inclusion of unique family contexts in efforts to increase adolescents’ school involvement and integration.Downloads
Metrics
Copyright (c) 2018 Stephen D. Whitney, Sara Prewett, Ze Wang, Haiqin Chen
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors contributing to the International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies agree to release their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 Unported license. This licence allows anyone to share their work (copy, distribute, transmit) and to adapt it for non-commercial purposes provided that appropriate attribution is given, and that in the event of reuse or distribution, the terms of this license are made clear.
Authors retain copyright of their work and grant the journal right of first publication.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Rights Granted After Publication
After publication, authors may reuse portions or the full article without obtaining formal permission for inclusion within their thesis or dissertation.
Permission for these reuses is granted on the following conditions:
- that full acknowledgement is made of the original publication stating the specific material reused [pages, figure numbers, etc.], [Title] by/edited by [Author/editor], [year of publication], reproduced by permission of International Journal of Child, Youth & Family Studies [link to IJCYFS website];
- In the case of joint-authored works, it is the responsibility of the author to obtain permission from co-authors for the work to be reuse/republished;
- that reuse on personal websites and institutional or subject-based repositories includes a link to the work as published in the International Journal of Child, Youth & Family Studies; and that the material is not distributed under any kind of Open Access style licences (e.g. Creative Commons) which may affect the Licence between the author and IJCYFS.
