Abstract:

Parental overprotection has been an issue related to adolescents’ academic success. However, few studies examined the effect of overprotective parenting on the adolescents’ academic performance. Therefore, this study investigated the effects of parental overprotection on the academic achievement of male high school students across three years of high school education. Korean National Achievement Test score on language and mathematics for 494 and 493 male participants were collected every semester for three years, and PBI (Parental Bonding Instrument) was completed at the beginning of the study. Results found that higher maternal overprotection predicted a decrease in the language trajectory intercept, and it was found to increase the probability of one being in the lower language achievement class among three latent classes. Paternal overprotection was associated with a negative intercept, slope, and quadratic function for language achievement and a negative intercept and slope for mathematics achievement. Higher paternal overprotection increased the likelihood of one being assigned to the lower achievement group among three language achievement classes and among four mathematics achievement classes. These results revealed the long-term negative effects of parental overprotection on academic achievement among male high school students as well as the heterogeneity of achievement patterns across language and mathematics outcome over time. This study implies that, rather than mother's overprotection, father's overprotection may lead to worse educational outcome among male adolescents and that the higher the boys’ age, the more negative effects emerge related to academic achievement due to parental overprotection. In addition, this study suggested that increased parental overprotection is associated with a greater amount of risk for language achievement relative to mathematics achievement. Implications for parental and educational interventions, and directions for future research are discussed.

Keywords:

Parental overprotection, academic achievement, male adolescents.