College mothers in the dual roles of student and parent: implications for their children's attitudes toward school.(Report)
Article from: Merrill-Palmer Quarterly | January 1, 2009 | Ricco, Robert; Sabet, Sarah; Clough, Cassandra | Copyright inShare 2
The experiences of female college students who are raising children while pursuing higher education have received limited attention in the educational and psychological literature (Christopher, 2005; Colbry, 1995; Dyk, 1987; Gigliotti, 2001, 2004a, 2004b; Haleman, 2004; Home, 1998; Quimby & O'Brien, 2006; Ricco, McCollum, & Schuyten, 2003; Ricco and Rodriguez, 2006; Scott, Burns, & Cooney, 1996). The research that has been conducted with this population is primarily concerned with psychological stress resulting from conflicts among student, family, and work roles and with identifying the antecedents and moderators of such stress as well as the impact of role conflict on academic performance and overall adjustedness (Gigliotti, 2001, 2004a, 2004b; Home, 1998; Quimby & O'Brien, 2006).
While research with college mothers has understandably focused on the negative consequences of their efforts to occupy multiple, conflicting social roles, the more positive implications of multiple roles for these mothers have not been consistently explored (Christopher, 2005; Dyk, 1987; Quimby & O'Brien, 2006). Mothers attending college are in a unique position as parents; they share with their school-age children the important and demanding social role of student. Within ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979a, 1986) the sharing by family members of a social role (e.g., worker, student) that originates outside the family can provide a basis for effects at the microsystem, mesosystem, and exosystem levels. Two prominent microsystems for college mothers are the family and school (college). Because a college mother and her school-age child both occupy the student role, mother's parental oversight of her child's schooling represents a potential locus of influence between mother's school (college) and family microsystems (Bronfenbrenner, 1979b). Sharing of the student role by college mothers and their children should promote a blending of the parent and student roles for these mothers (Wayne, Grzywacz, Carlson, & Kacmar, 2007). Specifically, it seems likely that a college mother's parenting attitudes toward her child as a student will be influenced by her attitudes toward her own ongoing experiences in the student role (Bronfenbrenner, Alvarez, & Henderson, 1984). For example, college mothers' homework assistance attitudes and preferred achievement goals for their children could be related to--and perhaps influenced by--their own motivational orientation as college students.
This focus on role-sharing and role-blending represents a more integrative and, potentially, positive perspective on the experiences of college mothers (Christopher, 2005; Sieber, 1974). Rather than characterizing the relationship between mothers' school and family microsystems as one merely of conflict and competition over limited resources, the attitudes that college mothers develop in their student role are viewed as informing, and possibly enhancing, their parenting of a school-age child (Cinamon, Weisel, & Tzuk, 2007; Tiedje, Wortman, & Downey, 1990; Quimby & O'Brien, 2006).
Relations between Mothers' Student-Role and Parent-Role Attitudes
One preliminary aim of the present study is to identify specific relationships between college mothers' student-role attitudes and their attitudes as parents toward their child's education. If such relationships were to obtain, what specific student-role and parent-role attitudes might be involved? Those nontraditional students who pursue higher education at least partly out of intellectual curiosity or self-improvement, rather than strictly as a means toward greater financial, vocational, or social opportunities, tend to be intrinsically motivated and learning focused in their approach to academic tasks (Donaldson, 1999; Vallerand & Bissonnette, 1992), although this may be accompanied by significant extrinsic motivation (Bye, Pushkar, & Conway, 2007; Kasworm, 2003). In turn, college students with a primarily intrinsic orientation tend to have higher academic efficacy and greater self-regulation and resource management as learners (Dupeyrat & Marine, 2005; Duncan & McKeachie, 2005; Pintrich, 2000; Pintrich & Garcia, 1991). We therefore have a complex of motivational factors in college students that are interdependent. These are intrinsic reasons for going to college, an intrinsic or mastery orientation in approaching academic tasks, and high self-regulation and efficacy in the student role. We might speculate that college students who possess these characteristics and who are also parents would tend to approach their child's education in particular ways. Because they are generally successful in the academic role and find that domain to be rewarding for its own sake, such students are likely to intentionally model the role of student for their child, recognizing and exploiting the opportunity to convey positive educational experiences in their interactions with their child. They might discuss their college experiences with their child, draw parallels between their own and their child's student roles, or stress the desirability of a college education. They are also likely to expect their child to pursue higher education and reap the same benefits they are deriving. That is, they should have relatively high expectations for their child's educational career (Davis Kean, 2005; Wentzel, 1998). In addition, their intrinsic orientation should lead them to emphasize learning or mastery goals over performance goals with their child (Ames & Archer, 1987; Pomerantz, Ng, & Wang, 2006; Ricco et al., 2003) and to see school-related parent-child interactions, such as homework assistance sessions, as mostly positive occasions that present potential benefits for both parent and child (Pomerantz, Wang, & Ng, 2005; Ricco et al., 2003).
College Mothers' Student-Role Attitudes as a Source of Influence on Children
A more significant gap in the literature on college mothers concerns their children. There is virtually no research on the relevance of college mothers' experiences in the student role for their children (but see Ricco et al., 2003). While the sizable parenting literature within psychology has certainly addressed the impact of mothers' nonparent roles on their parenting and on child outcomes (Ford, Heinen, & Langkamer, 2007; Somech & Drach-Zahavy, 2007), the majority of this research has focused on the relevance of spousal or other familial roles (Bornstein & Sawyer, 2006) and on employment-related roles (Nomaguchi & Milkie, 2006; Schnittker, 2007). It has not focused on the student role. The question arises as to whether aspects of college mothers' student role are relevant to their children's experiences. Can mothers' attitudes toward their own ongoing education accurately predict child characteristics? If so, this would add to available parenting models by identifying possible sources of parent influence on children that fall outside the usual parenting parameters.
While ecological accounts of child development have explored interactions among parents' workplace, the family, and children's school and peer systems (Cinamon et al., 2007; Eamon, 2001; Wayne et al., 2007), interactions driven by parents' school microsystem have generally not been a focus of study. From the perspective of ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1986), the sharing of the student role between mother and child sets up two unique paths of influence from mother to child, an indirect path at the exosystem level and a direct path at the level of the mesosystem. Figure 1 presents a partial mediation model that includes both of these pathways. The indirect path represents the influence of mother's student-role attitudes on the child by way of their impact on mother's parental oversight of her child's schooling. Specifically, mothers' intrinsic orientation and self-regulation in the student role should contribute to the adoption of a learning or mastery focus with respect to their children as well as to positive attitudes toward the providing of homework assistance. It may also lead college mothers to intentionally model the student role. This set of parenting attitudes, in turn, should tend to promote mastery goals in children as well as a state of relatively high self-regulation as learners. In this path, mother's parenting attitudes toward her child as student serve as a mediator of the effects of mother's student-role attitudes on the child's student-role attitudes. With respect to the child, this indirect path takes place at the level of the exosystem because a context in which the child does not directly participate, namely mother's school (college) microsystem, has an impact on the child's development (Bronfenbrenner, 1979a, 1986).
The other pathway from mother to child is a direct influence of mothers' student-role attitudes on those of her child by way of mothers' incidental or nonintentional modeling of the student role. The fact that college mothers share the student role with their children makes them available as educational role models in a way that is not possible for mothers who are out of school (Ricco et al., 2003). While this modeling may have intentional aspects to it, as discussed previously in describing the impact of mothers' motivational orientation as college students on their parenting, it almost certainly will have nonintentional components. Mothers may unintentionally serve as student-role models when they espouse various attitudes and beliefs about college in their conversations with the child or other family members or when they relate their college experiences. They also serve as models when the child sees the mother studying or engaging in other college activities. This second, direct pathway involves an effect at the mesosystem level. That is, the child is directly exposed to the parent as a student-role model within the family system (Bronfenbrenner, 1979a, 1986), and this in turn influences the child's attitudes and experiences outside the family in the student role.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
Previous parenting research provides evidence of three key relationships that are consistent with the proposed direct and indirect pathways of influence of mother's student-role attitudes on her child's student-role attitudes. First, the extent to which mothers' maintain an intrinsic learning goal, or mastery orientation, is positively related to certain key attitudes toward their child as student, such as their preference for a process focus over a product focus in evaluating their child's schoolwork and their use of indirect strategies in assisting their child on homework (Ames & Archer, 1987; Pomerantz et al., 2006; Renshaw & Gardner, 1990; Wentzel, 1998). Most importantly for the proposed model, this relationship is robust in mothers who are attending college and whose mastery orientation is assessed with respect to their own studies, that is, independently of their attitudes toward parenting or toward their child (Ricco et al., 2003). College mothers with a mastery orientation as students are also more confident that the homework assistance they provide is beneficial to their child and to themselves (Ricco et al., 2003). In addition, college mothers' espousal of a more sophisticated personal epistemology (beliefs about learning and knowledge) with regard to their own studies is positively related to their adoption of a learning or mastery focus with respect to their child's academic activities (Ricco & Rodriguez, 2006). Second, mothers' positive attitudes about homework assistance and their use of indirect strategies and a process focus in regard to their child's schoolwork are, in turn, positively related to their child's adoption of a learning goal or mastery orientation at school (Hess & McDevitt, 1984; Hokoda & Fincham, 1995; Gonzalez, Doan Holbein, & Quilter, 2002; Pomerantz et al., 2006; Pomerantz et al., 2005; Ricco et al., 2003). Thus, there is a connection between how mothers' view their child as a student and how their child approaches the student role. Third, there is a positive relationship between college mothers' adoption of learning or mastery goals with respect to their college studies and their child's adoption of these same (mastery) goals in elementary school (Ricco et al., 2003). These three sets of findings point to the transmission of academic attitudes from a college mother's student role to her child by way of mother-child interactions (e.g., homework assistance) involving mother's oversight of her child's education and, possibly, through a more direct pathway such as the nonintentional modeling of student-role attitudes for her child.
Study Hypotheses
In the research presented here, three basic sets of variables were assessed: college mothers' parent-role attitudes and student-role attitudes and their children's …
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