7/20 Opportunity Research - On Parents (Education Engagement and Influence on Careers)

By Andrew 

• From Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis - a report on a randomized field experiment that used text messages to engage parents to ask their children specific questions about science. The report, “demonstrates parents respond to encouragement from schools about engaging in their child’s education, and that students like such interventions more than they would expect...On the other hand, policymakers and educators must consider what other parenting behaviors may be crowded out as a result of redirecting parents’ efforts.”

Notably, the intervention did not change academic outcomes for the students (science test scores did not improve). Measuring the second-order effects of changed parental behavior is complicated. At the very least, districts and schools should consider the unintended consequences of asking parents to take a specific action as part of their family engagement programming. 

• From Demography - a new paper found that, “the deci­sions of high-SES women to hold on to their full-time careers while raising young children are particularly sensitive to whether their own mothers did the same. In contrast, the intergenerational relationship is much weaker for lower-SES women and mothers.” In other words, daughters from high-SES families are able to translate the skills and beliefs from their working mothers into their own careers, whereas low-SES daughters don’t attain the same benefit because of the “forces of insta­bil­ity—such as the risk of job dis­place­ment; irreg­u­lar work hours, unpredictable shift scheduling, and employer-provided work-family support; and inconsistently afford­able childcare,” that do not allow their mothers to hold jobs. 

Family-friendly policies for frontline and low-wage workers, especially parental leave, daycare assistance, and flextime/flexible working arrangements, are likely necessary to break this intergenerational transfer of economic status.