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How Parents Still Help Emerging Adults Get Their Homework Done: The Role of Self-Regulation as a Mediator in the Relation Between Parent–Child Relationship Quality and School Engagement

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Abstract

Although parents are increasingly involved in their college students’ academic lives, scholars have yet to investigate parents’ role in their college students’ school engagement. We hypothesized that college students’ self-regulation would mediate the relation between parent–child relationship quality and school engagement. For the 790 undergraduates who completed questionnaires online, self-regulation mediated the relation between mother–child relationship quality and school engagement for men, and an indirect effect was found for the relation between father–child relationship quality and school engagement by way of self-regulation. Therefore, parents continue to matter in promoting their college students’ academic success.

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Acknowledgments

This research was conducted with support from Project READY: Researching Emerging Adults’ Developmental Years collaborators Larry Nelson, Jason Carroll, Brian Willoughby, and Stephanie Madsen and grant support from the Family Studies Center at Brigham Young University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Matthew Shannon, Carolyn McNamara Barry, Alyssa DeGrace & Theresa DiDonato

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  1. Matthew Shannon
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Correspondence to Carolyn McNamara Barry.

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Shannon, M., Barry, C.M., DeGrace, A. et al. How Parents Still Help Emerging Adults Get Their Homework Done: The Role of Self-Regulation as a Mediator in the Relation Between Parent–Child Relationship Quality and School Engagement. J Adult Dev 23, 36–44 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10804-015-9219-0

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