Authoritative parenting, parental scaffolding of long-division mathematics, and children's academic competence in fourth grade

The current study examined the relationships among authoritative parenting, parental scaffolding of long-division math problems, and children's academic competence. In a sample of 70 two-parent middle class families participating in a longitudinal study on the transition to school, authoritative parenting was assessed globally at the beginning of fourth grade, when the children were 9-10 years old, from a broad sample of laboratory-based parent-child interactions. Microanalytic assessments of parent scaffolding were conducted during a long-division task. Teacher reports and child self-reports of the children's competence were obtained at the end of fourth grade. Extending past studies, results showed that mothers' scaffolding behavior early in the fourth grade predicted teachers' reports and children's own reports of the children's academic competence at the end of the year, after controlling for the effects of authoritative parenting and prior math achievement on those outcome variables. Discussion focuses on the role of scaffolding as a tutoring strategy that may promote academic competence in school-aged children.