Mothers Under Pressure: Different Types of Pressure and Chinese Mothers' Quality of Homework Involvement in Daily Life

Abstract

The quality of parental involvement in children's homework are vital parenting practices that influence children's academic and emotional functioning. Therefore, studies on the contributing factors of parents' homework involvement quality are warranted. Notably, environmental, parental, and child-related factors may put parents under pressure that impairs parents' homework involvement quality. Yet, extant literature lacks an examination of this issue holistically, especially in non-Western societies. The current research addressed this gap by investigating how Chinese mothers' perceived stress in life, child-based worth, and children's general helplessness toward homework, which created pressures on mothers, uniquely contributed to mothers' daily homework involvement quality. Chinese mothers (N = 261, mean age = 40.90 years, SD = 2.65) of fourth graders reported on these pressures via survey and their daily constructive (i.e., positive emotions, autonomy support, and mastery-oriented teaching) and unconstructive homework involvement (i.e., negative emotions, control, and performance-oriented teaching) for 14 consecutive days after the completion of the survey. Results from multilevel modeling indicated that mothers' perceived stress negatively predicted their constructive involvement, while mothers' child-based worth and children's helplessness toward homework positively predicted their unconstructive involvement over the daily diaries. The findings highlight the importance of understanding daily family processes holistically by considering environmental, parental, and child factors, and extending knowledge about the contributing factors of parents' homework involvement quality in real-life settings. Practitioners and educators are encouraged to alleviate multiple pressures parents may experience to make parents' homework involvement constructive to child development.