The (all)determining Role of the Silent Educator

This study focuses on the relationship between parental socio-economic status, parental educational involvement, and educational attainment. In order to gain more insight into this relationship, I investigated whether parental educational involvement serves as a mediating factor in the relationship between parental socio-economic status and educational attainment of the child. In doing so, I differentiated between parental literary involvement and parental cultural involvement as two dimensions of parental educational involvement. In addition, I investigated whether the relationship between both dimensions of parental educational involvement and educational attainment of the child was affected by parental emotional involvement. Based on relevant theoretical frameworks and scientific studies, expected outcomes were formulated into a total of five hypotheses. These were tested using linear regression analyses based on the Family Survey Dutch population (Meuleman, Tolsma & Kraaykamp, 2017/2018). The analyses revealed there to be significant correlations between parental socio-economic status and educational attainment, in which both dimensions of parental educational involvement served as a mediating factor. Parental emotional involvement on the other hand did not come up as a significant moderator. In conclusion, it can be stated that parental socio-economic status does seem to determine the educational attainment of a child. Additionally, parental literary involvement and parental cultural involvement offer an explanation for this mechanism while parental emotional involvement does not play a role here.