Faculty Publications

The Relations Among Types Of Parentification, School Achievement, And Quality Of Life In Early Adolescence: An Exploratory Study

Document Type

Article

Keywords

adolescence, current parentification, instrumental parentification, quality of life, school achievement, school grades

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Frontiers in Psychology

Volume

12

Abstract

Children who experience parentification may have trouble performing developmental tasks due to being overwhelmed by their family caregiving roles and responsibilities. Past studies have found that parentification is negatively associated with academic achievement. However, most of these studies are limited in that they are retrospective and examine the association but not the mechanisms shaping them. The aim of the study was to explore to what extent diverse types of parentification relate to academic achievement and to what extent these relations are mediated by self-reported quality of life among adolescents. The study sample was composed of Polish early adolescents (N = 191; age: M = 14.61; SD = 1.26). Types of parentification were measured with the Parentification Questionnaire for Youth, and quality of life was assessed with KidScreen27. School achievement was measured based on mean semester grade. We explored the associations among study variables and performed six mediation models in the planned analyses. Overall, bivariate relations were significant in a theoretically expected way, although the effect sizes for these associations were rather small. In the mediation analyses, the results showed that four of the six models were not significant. Different from previous studies, instrumental parentification was positively related to school achievement. Additionally, this positive association was mediated by adolescents’ general quality of life. Taken together, the findings were similar and different from the empirical literature base on types of parentification and select outcomes.

Department

Center for Educational Transformation

Original Publication Date

3-29-2021

DOI of published version

10.3389/fpsyg.2021.635171

Repository

UNI ScholarWorks, Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa

Language

en

Link to Full Text

Comments?

Share

COinS