The effect of father involvement on adolescents' academic performance

Abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), this study investigated the academic performance of adolescents who had different type of fathers. Adolescents with their biological fathers were found to perform better in terms of academics than adolescents with stepfathers, adolescents who did not know their biological father, adolescents whose biological fathers were deceased, or adolescents who did not live with biological fathers. Adolescents with adoptive fathers did not show any difference from the other adolescent father pairings. Stepfathers, in this study, did not compensate for the loss of a biological father. In addition, adolescents with no knowledge of their biological fathers had the lowest GPAs and were at the highest risk of school failure. Gender differences indicated that females, who had no knowledge of their biological fathers, had higher probability of experiencing school failure than males. Finally, shared activities with fathers had a larger effect on adolescents' academic achievement and could reduce the risk of school failure than that of father's educational expectations or frequencies of communications with their fathers.