Child’s Behavioral Problems and Parental Perception of Child’s Academic Performance: The Role of Child’s Gender, Race and Family Structure

Parents who see their child as having frequent or severe behavioral issues may view these problems as obstacles to academic success, leading them to adjust their perceptions accordingly. Nonetheless, studies that examine whether parents adjust their perceptions due to child’s behavioral problems similarly or differently across child’s genders, racial groups and family structures are still missing. The present study aims to understand how child’s behavioral problem at school predicts parent’s perception of child’s academic performance and how child’s behavioral problem interacts with child gender, race and family structure to predict parent’s perception. We used data from The National Household Education Survey (NHES:2019): Parent and Family Involvement in Education (PFI) dataset (Hanson & Pugliese, 2020) and sequential multiple regression as the main analytical method. Child’s behavioral problem, child’s gender, race, parent’s education, parent’s gender, parent’s school involvement, parent’s working hours, family income were statistically significant predictors of parent’s perception of child’s academic abilities. The interaction terms between child’s behavioral problem and child’s gender, child’s behavioral problem and child’s race, child’s behavioral problem and family structure were also statistically significant.