Family Distance Regulation and School Engagement in Middle-School-Aged Children.

The purpose of this study was to explore how family distance regulation and other family demographic factors influence parenting behavior and family routines, which, in turn, influences the child's school engagement. The data from the project came from a larger study conducted in a large Northwestern urban area and included both two-parent and single-parent families. These two family structures were compared in order to emphasize that it is the foundational family process of family distance regulation that supports other parenting practices as well as chronic stress that leads to school engagement regardless of the number of parents in the household. Implications for practice and the results of this study in relation to previous literature are discussed.Key Words: family distance regulation, middle-school-aged youth, parental involvement, school engagement.The purpose of this study was to investigate how family distance regulation might be an underlying process that supports family practices such as family routines, parenting practices, and parental involvement, processes that have been found to encourage school engagement. It was hypothesized that there would be a "spillover" effect from family to school for those children who live in a family system that struggles economically (chronic stressors) and relationally (i.e., family distance regulation). We predicted that the more imbalanced the family's distance regulating processes and the more economically disadvantaged that family, the less parents would be involved in their child's education and the less positive would be the child's engagement with the school.School engagement is linked to increasing achievement and decreasing high school dropout. It is defined as the extent to which a student is cognitively, behaviorally, and emotionally involved in his or her learning (Holt, Bry, & Johnson, 2008). High school dropout rates remain an area of critical concern nationally because they are associated with higher rates of lifetime unemployment or underemployment, lower earnings, and mental health problems (Annunziata, Hogue, Faw, & Liddle, 2006; G. L. Bowen, Rose, Powers, & Glennie, 2008; Carter, McGee, Taylor, & Williams, 2007; Garcia-Reid, 2007; Holt et al., 2008). School engagement, in fact, is the most widely studied outcome in school dropout prevention research (Perry, 2008). Yet, despite the amount of literature in this area, little research has been conducted on how family processes such as family distance regulation impact school engagement. Therefore, this study investigated school engagement from a systemic perspective, specifically exploring how family distance regulation impacts family practices that have been shown to influence school engagement.School and family can be seen as separate spheres, with both having significant influence on the life of a child. Bronfenbrenner and Ceci (1994) saw the two influences as part of the innermost layer of components in a person's environment. They recognized that the way that the two influences interact affects the way that they influence the child. Although Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model in which the environment is viewed as a set of layers that are nested within each other (Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994) has been applied to studies about school engagement, there has rarely been a more specific family systems perspective applied to this issue that includes notions around stress and spillover effects from engaging in multiple roles, particularly for students. There is a large literature about the spillover of family to work and work to family for adults. In this literature, we see that work institutions and families are the two most central institutions in peoples' lives (Mortimer, Lorence, & Kumka, 1986) and that at the intersection of these components, adults can experience conflict (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). The idea of spillover could also be used to help systematically explain school engagement, because school and family are the two central institutions in children's lives. …