The ULB team published a new study on the SAFE-SORRY data, in close collaboration with colleagues from Italy and Georgia! In this paper, we tested one of the key hypotheses proposed in the book Love, Money, and Parenting, claiming that economic inequality affects the ways in which parents raise their children. In our study, we specifically focused on associations with parents’ school involvement, thereby looking both at parents’ individual financial situation as well as their perceptions of the broader economic context. In line with past research, we found parents’ financial scarcity (i.e., the experience of having insufficient resources) predicted more controlling school involvement. Importantly, above and beyond these effects, parents’ perceptions of more job insecurity in Belgium  predicted more controlling school involvement, whereas their perceptions of income inequality predict more autonomy-supportive involvement. Overall, these findings indicate that parents’ perceptions of the broader economy is related to the ways in which they are involved in their adolescent children’s schooling.

The study is published in Journal of Family and Economic Issues, and it can be read or downloaded, if you want to find out more.