Love, Money and Involved Parenting? Associations Between Parents’ Perceptions of Economic Inequality, Financial Scarcity, and Their School Involvement

Stijn Van Petegem (), Cindy Eira Nunes, Bénédicte Mouton, Annalisa Soncini, Elli-Anastasia Lamprianidou, Nino Skhirtladze and Emilio Paolo Visintin
Additional contact information
Stijn Van Petegem: Université Libre de Bruxelles
Cindy Eira Nunes: Université Libre de Bruxelles
Bénédicte Mouton: Université Libre de Bruxelles
Annalisa Soncini: Université Libre de Bruxelles
Elli-Anastasia Lamprianidou: Université Libre de Bruxelles
Nino Skhirtladze: Ilia State University
Emilio Paolo Visintin: University of Ferrara

Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 2025, vol. 46, issue 1, No 2, 34 pages

Abstract: Abstract It has been suggested previously that rising economic inequality would push parents to become overly involved in their children’s academic lives. In the present investigation we examined whether parents’ perceptions of economic inequality, in terms of perceived income inequality and perceived job insecurity, is predictive of their school involvement, thereby distinguishing between controlling and autonomy-supportive school involvement. Further, we also tested whether these associations are particularly pronounced among parents facing financial scarcity. To test these hypotheses, we gathered data among 908 parents (58.70% mothers), who filled out questionnaires assessing their perceptions of income inequality and job insecurity, their financial scarcity, as well as their controlling and autonomy-supportive school involvement. Analyses indicated that higher levels of perceived income inequality related to more autonomy-supportive school involvement, whereas higher levels of perceived job insecurity related to more controlling school involvement. Parents’ financial scarcity did not moderate any of the associations, but higher levels of financial scarcity consistently predicted more controlling school involvement. To conclude, these results suggest that both parents’ macro-economic perceptions as well as their personal financial situation shape their child-rearing practices in ways that may potentially perpetuate socio-economic disparities.

Keywords: Economic inequality; Financial scarcity; Job insecurity; School involvement; Parenting; Adolescence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10834-024-10016-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:jfamec:v:46:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s10834-024-10016-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... es/journal/10834/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10834-024-10016-6

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Family and Economic Issues is currently edited by Joyce Serido

More articles in Journal of Family and Economic Issues from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().