2020 Volume 107 Pages 111-132
Adolescents’ educational expectations are closely associated with their later educational attainment. Moreover, educational expectations mediate the effect of socioeconomic status on educational attainment. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the factors affecting adolescents’ educational expectations. Previous studies have demonstrated that parental expectations are an important factor that influences adolescents’ educational expectations. In Japan, several studies have investigated mothers’ educational expectations. On the other hand, there is little research on fathers’ educational expectations. However, it is unclear whether fathers’ educational expectations are relevant or not when predicting adolescents’ educational expectations. It is also not clear whether mothers’ expectations are more important than fathers’ expectations as a predictor of adolescents’ educational expectations and attainment.
This study investigates the influences of educational expectations of both parents on middle and high school students’ educational expectations in Japan. Specifically, this study examines the relative importance of fathers’ and mothers’ expectations as a factor that relates to adolescents’ educational expectations. Data used for this study were taken from the “Survey on Life and Awareness of Junior High and High School Students” conducted by NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute in 2012. The research target of the survey was 1,800 adolescents aged 12 to 18 (born between April 2, 1994 and April 1, 2000) who were randomly selected from all parts of Japan, and their fathers and mothers. This study used only cases in which all the children, mothers, and fathers responded for analyses. Listwise deletion yielded a sample of 742 cases.
The estimation results of the diagonal reference model (DRM) demonstrated that the estimated weights (representing the relative importance) of fathers’ and mothers’ educational expectations were 0.363 (36.3%) and 0.637 (63.7%), respectively. This result indicates that mothers’ expectations are more strongly related to students’ educational expectations than fathers’ expectations. Fathers’ expectations had a statistically significant association with students’ educational expectations, although the association was weaker than mothers’ expectations. These results did not depend on students’ gender.
When only fathers expect their children to go on to college, the weight of mothers’ expectations was larger than that of fathers’ expectations. The estimated weights of fathers’ and mothers’ expectations were 0.239 (23.9%) and 0.761 (76.1%), respectively. On the other hand, when only mothers expect their children to go on to college, the weights of fathers’ and mothers’ educational expectations were almost the same. That is, the weight of fathers’ as well as mothers’ educational expectations was not significantly distant from 0.5 (50%). This result suggests that mothers’ expectations are not necessarily more closely related to students’ educational expectations than fathers’ expectations. Furthermore, the combination of parents’ educational expectations was associated with their education levels and occupational status. The findings suggest the importance of considering the role of fathers’ (as well as mothers’) expectations in capturing the influence of the family in generating socioeconomic inequalities in educational attainment.
