Emotional well-being and discrepancies between child and parent educational expectations and aspirations in middle and high school

Abstract

Using data from a sample nationally representative of the United States (N ¼ 1,115), this study investigates the association between emotional well-being and discrepant educational possible selves. Discrepancy is characterized as a mismatch between child educational expectations and parent educational aspirations for child or child educational aspirations for self. Age-related hypotheses are tested. Results suggest that middle school children who have expectations that don't match their parents' aspirations for them have lower well-being, and that among high school students, mismatch between a child's own aspirations and expectations is linked with lower wellbeing. Antecedents of discrepancies are explored: reading and math self-efficacy emerge as having small, but significant positive associations with well-being, partially mediated in middle school students by aspiration/expectation matches between parent and child.

The Development of Educational Aspirations and Expectations From Adolescence to Young Adulthood: A Longitudinal Study of Mexican-Origin Youth

“…For all analyses, these responses were collapsed into three categories -(0) Less than Bachelor's (response options "a" to "e"); (1) Bachelor's degree (response option "f"); and (2) Graduate degree (response options "g" and "h"). These ordered categories are consistent with past research (e.g., NCES, 2005;Rutherford, 2015) (M=9.3, SD=3.3). Sixty-three percent of mothers and 65% of fathers had less than a high school education (median=9 th grade).…”

Academic Expectations and Mental Health in Adolescence: A Longitudinal Study Involving Parents' and Their Children's Perspectives

“…The focus of these studies was on internalizing problems, most were qualitative or cross-sectional, and all used child-reported measures of parental expectations, which may reflect other aspects of the parentechild relationship. The few studies investigating parent and child discordance of aspirations found this to be related to worse child well-being [26], depression [24], or suicidality [25]. Of these studies, one was longitudinal but relied on child-reported parental disappointment in relation to college nonattendance [24], a construct that may represent perceived pressure rather than parental aspirations.…”

The Discrepancies Between Individual-Set and Parent-Set Career Goals Scale: Development and Initial Validation

“…Y. Wang and Benner (2014) derived difference scores based on the young person’s educational expectations and those of their parents and found that higher discrepancies were related to lower academic achievement, and Rutherford (2015) found that higher child–parent educational discrepancies of this type were related to poorer well-being in children.…”