New York City
Parents direct more academic and homework help to their children who struggle in the early years of school, but those kids miss out on broader parent connections and investment that go to academically superior children, according to a new Indiana University study.
The study, "When Children Affect Parents: Children's Academic Performance and Parental Investment," previewed at the American Sociological Association meeting held here this week, tracked the academic achievement of more than 11,600 students in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study from 1st through 3rd grades, and then followed more than 7,800 of them as far as 8th grade. Study author Natasha Yurk, a sociology doctoral student at Indiana University, Bloomington, tracked students' reading test scores in grades 1, 3, 5, and 8, and compared it to an array of ways parents reported "investing" in the child, including academic, economic, cultural, and social resources.
