Do school teacher parents make a difference?

Abstract

Two national probability samples are used to uncover whether children benefit from having school teacher parents. The inquiry is motivated by frequent commentaries by teachers that substandard student performance is associated with unhelpful parenting practices. If teachers believe that parents are crucial for determining child outcomes, then we may better learn of the potential for parenting to affect children's development by examining the environments teachers create for their own children. I find significant school teacher effects on children's cognitive and behavioral outcomes, after accounting for family SES, mothers’ cognitive ability, occupational aspirations, college field of study, and her early preferences for family life. Once I control for self-selection into teaching and home environment quality, which parents create for children, I find that school teacher parents significantly make a difference in lowering the incidence of behavioral problems in male children.

Introduction

The debate on the role that parents play on impacting the long-term development of child behavior and personality has commanded widespread attention (Bornstein, 1995). Historically, social scientists have contended that parental influences are a meaningful component of child development. In recent times, however, critics of this notion point to weak evidence in claims that parenting substantially matters, while suggesting that other significant forces shape development (Harris, 1998).¹

In this paper, I extend the parenting research literature by investigating the question “Do school teacher parents make a difference?” One motivation for pursuing this question comes from a repeated commentary by school teachers that poor student performance is associated with poor parenting practices (Gibbs, 2005). If school teachers believe the provision of stimulating experiences outside the classroom cultivates success within it, then an examination of how teachers themselves structure their own home environments may shed light on more effective parenting behaviors. A more substantive motivation concerns the broader and more hotly debated issue of how much parents actually matter for the optimal development of children. If indeed a strong, positive school teacher effect is uncovered, it lends credence to the view that not only does parenting matter, but also that parents can be educated to improve the school performance and behavior of children. To my knowledge, this paper is the first to examine the relationship between school teacher parenting skills and child cognition and behavior.

There are good theoretical reasons to believe why school teacher parents make a difference. Their skills or human capital, acquired through both formal training and experience in classrooms, can be practically applied at home through adequately preparing their own children for the rigorous demands of formal education. Teachers can also supply them with quality professional assistance once enrolled. It may be less transparent how school teachers’ skills facilitate improved child behavior. Yet teachers instruct children who enter school socially and emotionally unprepared (Huffman, Mehlinger, & Kerivan, 2000) and therefore develop skills to help them cope with child behavioral problems. Additionally, their awareness of the importance of “soft skills”—for example, the development of social skills, the ability to work as part of a group and effectively communicate ideas—may encourage them to instill these same behaviors early in their young children at home. Finally, school teachers may make better parents because of their special status in the learning community. Because teachers interact with their colleagues as well as other school administrators, they come to know intimately the structure of social capital within and between educational institutions. They can in turn use these social ties to extract the most out of schools to facilitate the development of their children.

To explore the extent to which school teacher parenting influences child outcomes, I employ two national probability samples: the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth for 1979 (NLSY) and the National Education Longitudinal Survey 1988 (NELS). In both surveys, children are administered achievement tests in math and reading. Additionally, a behavior problems index and preschool receptive vocabulary assessment are featured in the NLSY. NELS also contains students’ instructor reports that assess parental involvement levels and an array of student behavioral outcomes.

I find that school teachers’ children benefit both cognitively and behaviorally when compared to children whose parents also have a 4-year college degree. The teacher effect remains for children's mathematics achievement and behavioral problems once accounting for broader socioeconomic characteristics, maternal cognitive ability, and also mothers’ preference for traditional gender roles in the home and her early aspirations to teach. However, after controlling for levels of cognitive stimulation and emotional warmth within the home—both proxies for the provision of a quality home environment by parents—teacher effects for all children's outcomes are diminished, while a significant effect remains only for behavior problems.

The paper is structured as follows. In the next section, I discuss who teaches and also illustrate mechanisms for how school teachers augment their parenting capital, which in turn affects child development. In Section 3, both data sets are reviewed. In Section 4, I define school teacher and discuss econometric approaches. In Section 5, I provide a summary of school teacher families and child outcomes for both samples. I then present results in Section 6. In Section 7, I discuss results and conclude.