Is Children’s Academic Performance Valuable to Parents? Linking Children’s Effort Vs. Results and Fathers’ Vs. Mothers’ Subjective Well-Being

Yuying Tong (), Jenny Xin Li () and Binbin Shu ()
Additional contact information
Yuying Tong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Jenny Xin Li: The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Binbin Shu: Shenzhen University

Child Indicators Research, 2021, vol. 14, issue 2, No 6, 583-605

Abstract: Abstract In today’s modern society, the economic value of children to parents has generally decreased. Instead, given the expansion of education and emphasis on educational success, the cost of raising children has increased considerably. To increase their children’s chances for upward social mobility, parents are investing much more in children’s education than before. However, although it is widely known that having school-aged children increases parental anxiety, little is known about how children’s academic performance is associated with parental psychological well-being. Using data from the 2010 and 2012 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), we examine how children’s academic performance is linked to parental subjective well-being, which is measured by life satisfaction and depression symptoms. We find that both children’s learning effort and academic results are significantly associated with parental well-being when examining them separately, but the statistical significance of effort disappears when we put both in the depression model, despite that such offset effect is not obvious in the life satisfaction model. This indicates that Chinese parents tend to value the results more than the effort. The analysis by parental gender further shows that both effort and academic results are associated with mothers’ well-being, but for fathers, only results matter. Our study adds to the literature on how school-aged children’s academic performance may be associated with middle-aged parents’ well-being, extending the understanding of the value of children to parents.

Keywords: Parental well-being; children’s academic performance; Study effort; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12187-020-09763-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:chinre:v:14:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1007_s12187-020-09763-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... f-life/journal/12187

DOI: 10.1007/s12187-020-09763-3

Access Statistics for this article

Child Indicators Research is currently edited by Asher Ben-Arieh

More articles in Child Indicators Research from Springer, The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().