Effects of Family Environment and Parent-Child Relationships on School Adjustment during the Transition to Early Adolescence.

Few social issues have received as much attention and concern in this country as the education of children and youth. Nonetheless, the number of youth who experience or are at high-risk for academic failure continues to represent a problem of epidemic proportions. Nationally, the high school completion rate for 18-and 19-year-olds is only about 75% (U.S. Department of Education, 1989). Moreover, substantial percentages of those youth who do remain in school have levels of academic achievement that are far below acceptable levels (National Assessment of Educational Progress, 1985). The long-term negative consequences that school failure and academic underachievement carry with them for occupational and economic outcomes in adulthood are well-documented (William T. Grant Foundation, 1988), as are the strong patterns of association that exist between academic difficulties and other types of problems during childhood and adolescence, including delinquency and conduct disorder (Offord, 1989), substance abuse (Hawkins, Lishner, & Catalano, 1985), and emotional difficulties such as depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem (Feshbach & Feshbach, 1987; Hightower et al., 1986). Various aspects of the family and home environment have occupied a central place in the search for factors that may influence the educational outcomes of youth. This research has revealed important differences in achievement levels according to socioeconomic characteristics, such as the employment status and educational backgrounds of the youngster's primary caregivers, as well as the composition of the family, such as whether or not the youth lives in a single-or two-parent household (for reviews see Hetherington, Camara, & Featherman, 1983; Shinn, 1978; and White, 1982). However, several investigators (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 1986; Felner & Felner, 1989; McLoyd, 1990) have pointed out that the socioeconomic structure and resources that characterize the home should be viewed as relatively "distal" influences on academic and other outcomes in so far as they do not directly describe the life circumstances and demands that result from them, nor the adaptive processes they require. Those articulating this view have emphasized the importance of examining the adaptive significance of the conceptually more proximal interpersonal transactions and systemic processes that define the child's or adolescent's immediate day-to-day experiences in the family context. It has been argued that these factors merit careful examination both as potentially important influences on adaptive outcomes in their own right (Maccoby & Martin, 1983) and as possible mediators of the effects of the broader and more structural familial socioeconomic circumstances within which they are nested (cf. Felner et al., in press; McLoyd, 1990). Consistent with this view, several investigations have found that indices of conceptually more proximal aspects of the family context exhibit substantial correlations with school adjustment, even after controlling for any overlap that exists between these types of family variables and indicators of socioeconomic status and/or family composition (see Dornbusch, Ritter, Leiderman, Roberts, & Fraleigh, 1987; Felner et al., in press; Hetherington & Clingempeel, 1992; Kurdek & Sinclair, 1988; Stevenson & Baker, 1987). Of the family-related experiences that have been found to be associated with school adjustment in this work, the child's or adolescent's dyadic relationships and interactions with members of his or her family seem especially important. Significant predictors of academic adjustment in this area include the youth's ratings of positive and negative dimensions of his or her relationships with each parent (Biller, 1982; Forehand, Long, Brody, & Fauber, 1986; Hetherington Clingempeel, 1992; Starkey, 1980; Steinberg, Mounts, Lamborn, & Dornbush, 1991), as well as the youth's perceptions of the degree to which he or she receives adequate social support from family members (Dubow & Tisak, 1989; Rowlison & Felner, 1988). …