Abstract:

This study investigated the effects of separation from parents, during secondary school, in the relationships between perceived parental behavior, peers' cohesion and school adjustment.

309 secondary school students, aged between 11 and 15 years (M = 13.26, SD = 1.23), 56% girls, 69.3% living in urban areas, participated in the study. 26,2% of students were separated from at least one parent, most of them because of migration (14,2%) and of parents’ divorce (10%).

Perceived parental behavior was measured with four scales from CRPBI (Schaefer, 1965): acceptance, involvement, hostile control, and extreme autonomy in mother and in father parenting practices. Data about the perceived peers' cohesion were collected with a scale from the WIHIC (Aldridge and Fraser, 2000). School adjustment was investigated as school grades in Language, Math, school behavior and as number of school absences at the end of the first semester. Data were collected prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Independent sample t tests showed that adolescents raised by both parents had higher grades in Math, and perceived higher involvement and hostile control from father than their colleagues separated from one or both parents. Pearson correlation indicated negative associations between hostile control from father and Language grades and between extreme autonomy from mother and Math grades. We found that adolescents perceiving higher acceptance from parents, higher father involvement in their education, and higher peers’ cohesion had better behavioral outcomes in school. Pupils perceiving higher parental acceptance and higher involvement of parents in education accumulated fewer school absences. Multiple regression analyses, through Backward method, showed that extreme autonomy from mother and the separation from parents were negative determinants of Math grades. Hostile control from father and separation from parents had negative effects on Language grades. Peers' cohesion positively determined the school behavior. Moreover, we found a significant interaction effect between the separation from parents and the extreme autonomy from mother on Math grades: the separation from parents accentuated the negative relationship between perceived extreme autonomy from mother and math results. Specifically, students who perceived high extreme autonomy from mother and were separated from at least one of parents, had lower grades in mathematics than their colleagues nonseparated from parents. The moderation analyses through Process 3.5.3 for SPSS (Hayes, 2018) indicated that the separation from parents moderated the effect of acceptance from father on school behavior: a positive effect of the acceptance was found only in the students raised by both parents.

In conclusion, separation from one or both parents accentuated the negative effects of some parental behaviors on school adjustment and prevented the production of positive effects of other behaviors. The positive effect of peers' cohesion on school behavior was not conditioned by the separation from parents. The implications of the present research results on the educational strategies for improving the school adjustment of secondary school students are discussed.

Keywords:

perceived parental behavior, secondary school, school outcomes, peers' cohesion, separation from parents