Parent-Adolescent Congruence and Incongruence in Parental Involvement and Academic Achievement: The More, the Better?

Abstract

Parents and adolescents can differ in their perceptions of parental involvement, yet most research relies on a single informant, potentially overlooking important discrepancies. Using data from 89,448 fifteen-year-olds (50.3% female) and their parents (78.2% female) across 13 economies in East Asia, Latin America, and Europe, this study examined how parent-adolescent congruence and incongruence in two forms of parental involvement-academic socialization and general involvement-were associated with adolescents' academic achievement. Multilevel polynomial regression and response surface analyses revealed a significant curvilinear relation, suggesting that adolescents achieved higher scores when both parents and adolescents were congruent at moderate levels of parental involvement. However, this pattern varied by culture and gender, with East Asian girls achieving higher academic performance from congruence at high levels of parental involvement. In contrast, mismatches between parent and adolescent reports on parental involvement were consistently linked to lower academic performance across regions and genders. These findings underscore that both the degree and alignment of parental involvement matter and that cultural and gender contexts shape how parental involvement influences academic success.