Is Daily Parental Help with Homework Helpful? Reanalyzing National Data Using a Propensity Score–Based Approach

Li, Angran; Hamlin, Daniel

doi:10.1177/0038040719867598

“…Evidence also suggests, however, that higher-SES White students (especially those with "helicopter" parents) have advantages in both completing homework and avoiding homework-related punishments (Daw 2012;Rønning 2011;Xu 2011).5 Many higher-SES White parents (especially mothers) provide high levels of support with homework (Baker and Stevenson 1986;Epstein 1988;Forsberg 2007;Hoover-Dempsey et al 2001;Lau, Li, and Rao 2011;Patall, Cooper, and Robinson 2008;Robinson and Harris 2014;Schieman, Ruppanner, and Milkie 2018). Such support is beneficial for students (Li and Hamlin 2019;Patall et al 2008) because problems with homework can lead to negative evaluations (Farkas et al 1990;McMillan, Myran, and Workman 2002) and disciplinary sanctions (Golann 2015). Beyond just providing support with homework, however, there is reason to suspect that higher-SES White "helicopter" parents will also intervene to prevent or manage problems with homework (Lareau 2000;Milkie and Warner 2014;Nelson 2010).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Avoiding Us versus Them: How Schools’ Dependence on Privileged “Helicopter” Parents Influences Enforcement of Rules

Calarco

¹

2020

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As privilege-dependent organizations, U.S. public schools have an interest in catering to higher-SES White families. But, what happens when privileged families’ interests conflict with schools’ stated goals? Focusing on the case of homework, and drawing insights from organizational theory, cultural capital theory, and research on parent involvement in schools, I examine how schools’ dependence on higher-SES White families influences their enforcement of rules. Using a longitudinal, ethnographic study of one socioeconomically diverse public elementary school, I find that teachers wanted to enforce homework rules, but they worried doing so would lead to conflict with the higher-SES White “helicopter” parents, on whom they relied most for support. Thus, teachers selectively enforced rules, using evidence of “helicopter” parenting to determine which students “deserved” leeway and lenience. Those decisions, in turn, contributed to inequalities in teachers’ punishment and evaluation of students. Broadly, these findings suggest privilege-dependence leads schools to appease privileged families, even when those actions contradict the school’s stated goals. These findings also challenge standard policy assumptions about parent involvement and homework, and they suggest policies aimed at reducing the power of privilege are necessary for lessening inequalities in school.

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“…Evidence also suggests, however, that higher-SES White students (especially those with "helicopter" parents) have advantages in both completing homework and avoiding homework-related punishments (Daw 2012; Rønning 2011; Xu 2011).5 Many higher-SES White parents (especially mothers) provide high levels of support with homework (Baker and Stevenson 1986;Epstein 1988;Forsberg 2007;Hoover-Dempsey et al 2001;Lau, Li, and Rao 2011;Patall, Cooper, and Robinson 2008;Robinson and Harris 2014;Schieman, Ruppanner, and Milkie 2018). Such support is beneficial for students (Li and Hamlin 2019;Patall et al 2008) because problems with homework can lead to negative evaluations (Farkas et al 1990;McMillan, Myran, and Workman 2002) and disciplinary sanctions (Golann 2015). Beyond just providing support with homework, however, there is reason to suspect that higher-SES White "helicopter" parents will also intervene to prevent or manage problems with homework (Lareau 2000;Milkie and Warner 2014;Nelson 2010).…”

Section: The Case Of Homeworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Avoiding Us versus Them: How Schools’ Dependence on Privileged “Helicopter” Parents Influences Enforcement of Rules

Calarco¹

2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As privilege-dependent organizations, U.S. public schools have an interest in catering to higher-SES White families. But, what happens when privileged families’ interests conflict with schools’ stated goals? Focusing on the case of homework, and drawing insights from organizational theory, cultural capital theory, and research on parent involvement in schools, I examine how schools’ dependence on higher-SES White families influences their enforcement of rules. Using a longitudinal, ethnographic study of one socioeconomically diverse public elementary school, I find that teachers wanted to enforce homework rules, but they worried doing so would lead to conflict with the higher-SES White “helicopter” parents, on whom they relied most for support. Thus, teachers selectively enforced rules, using evidence of “helicopter” parenting to determine which students “deserved” leeway and lenience. Those decisions, in turn, contributed to inequalities in teachers’ punishment and evaluation of students. Broadly, these findings suggest privilege-dependence leads schools to appease privileged families, even when those actions contradict the school’s stated goals. These findings also challenge standard policy assumptions about parent involvement and homework, and they suggest policies aimed at reducing the power of privilege are necessary for lessening inequalities in school.

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“…We focus on parental developmental childcare time-including time spent in play and in educational activities such as reading and homework help-for children aged 0-7. By focusing on parental developmental childcare for younger children, we focus on the type of care that studies taking both panel (Fiorini and Keane 2014, Del Bono et al 2016, Cano et al 2019, Gialamas et al 2019Li and Hamlin 2019) and quasi-experimental approaches (Villena-Roldán and Ríos-Aguilar Hsin and Felfe 2014; Price and Kalil 2018) have shown is most beneficial for child outcomes, performed at an age where these investments are most consequential (Heckman 2006).…”

Section: Our Contributionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because children are most receptive to environmental influences during early childhood, investments in children during this period play a crucial role in child development. In particular, for young children, parental childcare time in developmentally enriching activities such as playing or talking with children, reading with children, or helping children with homework is positively associated with cognitive outcomes (Fiorini and Keane 2014;Hsin and Felfe 2014;Del Bono et al 2016;Cano et al 2019;Li and Hamlin 2019), child behavior (Hsin and Felfe 2014;Gialamas et al 2019), and academic performance (Villena-Roldán and Ríos-Aguilar 2011; Price and Kalil 2018). However, this developmental childcare time is sharply stratified by parental socioeconomic class (e.g., Kalil et al 2012;Hsin and Felfe 2014;Altintas 2016;Vinopal and Gershenson 2017).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Class Inequality in Parental Childcare Time: Evidence from Synthetic Couples in the ATUS

LaBriola¹,

Schneider²

2019

Preprint

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The time that parents spend teaching and playing with their young children has important consequences for later life achievement and attainment. Previous research suggests that there are significant class inequalities in how much time parents devote to this kind of developmental childcare in the United States. Yet, due in part to data limitations, prior research has not accounted for how class inequalities in family structure, assortative mating, and specialization between partners may exacerbate or ameliorate these gaps. We match parental respondents within the American Time Use Survey to generate synthetic parental dyads, which we use to estimate, in turn, the contributions of family structure, assortative mating, and specialization to class gaps in parental time spent in developmental care of children aged 0-6. We find some evidence that accounting for class differences in family structure widens income gaps in total parental time in developmental childcare of young children. Further, we show that assortative mating of parents further contributes to educational gaps in developmental childcare, while specialization between partners does not offset these wider class divides. While the net effect of these three processes on income-based gaps in childcare time is more modest, accounting for these three processes more than doubles education-based gaps in total parental developmental childcare as compared to maternal time alone. Our findings from this novel empirical approach provide a more holistic view of the extent and sources of inequality in parental time investments in young children’s cognitive and social development.

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Is Daily Parental Help with Homework Helpful? Reanalyzing National Data Using a Propensity Score–Based Approach

Cited by 20 publications

References 90 publications

Avoiding Us versus Them: How Schools’ Dependence on Privileged “Helicopter” Parents Influences Enforcement of Rules

Avoiding Us versus Them: How Schools’ Dependence on Privileged “Helicopter” Parents Influences Enforcement of Rules

Avoiding Us versus Them: How Schools’ Dependence on Privileged “Helicopter” Parents Influences Enforcement of Rules

Class Inequality in Parental Childcare Time: Evidence from Synthetic Couples in the ATUS

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