School engagement and the mother-child relationship

This study focused on how children’s engagement in school might be affected by their mothers’ values about school and the emotional qualities present in the mother-child relationship. Other research suggests that when a child feels connected, supported, and respected in a relationship, the child experiences a sense of relatedness, and will be more likely to embrace the values of the other person in the relationship and adopt those values as their own. In this study, 66 mother-child pairs were observed and videotaped doing four everyday activities (mother worked while child played independently, mother and child had a snack, mother and child played a game, mother and child cleaned up). In addition, the mothers filled out a questionnaire reporting their own valuing of school, and children participated in the Berkeley Puppet Interview, an interview between researcher and child in which children reported their engagement in school through talking with two dog puppets. Data were analyzed to look at relations among child engagement in school, the relatedness present in the mother-child relationship, and the mother’s values about school. It was found that the connection between mother’s values about school and the child’s engagement in school depended on the amount of relatedness present in the mother-child relationship. When mother-child relatedness was low, the values of the mother were strongly associated with child engagement in school, with low relatedness and low valuing associated with the lowest observed levels of engagement. However, when mother-child relatedness was medium to high, the engagement of the child was not affected by the mother’s valuing of school. Overall, these findings underscore the importance of mother-child relatedness in understanding children’s engagement in school.