“We Don't Know How to Do This”: Rural Parents' Perspectives on and Roles in Enrollment at a Private,Selective Liberal Arts College

Rural youth trail their non-rural counterparts in college enrollment and attainment, especially for degrees from selective schools; these gaps further spatial inequality in the United States. Much research has focused on rural parents as impediments to rural college-going: many rural parents did not attend college, and their educational aspirations for their children are lower than those of urban parents. However, every year, thousands of rural students do head to college, even to selective schools, and little is known about their parents' influence on their enrollment. This qualitative study focuses on rural parents without a bachelors degree, investigating the roles they play in their children's aspirations and enrollment at a private, selective liberal arts college and examining their perspectives on this type of school. The results suggest that parents are an important source of social capital, supporting aspirations and enrollment. They also show that these parents see a liberal arts education as a path to a remunerative and rewarding career, and, in supporting their children's college choice, they value factors—financial aid, proximity, and a welcoming school culture—that mitigate the social, cultural, and moral boundaries separating home from college.     

Breaking New Ground: Diverse Routes to College in Rural America*

Abstract Rural communities pose a challenge to status attainment models that explain children's educational attainment primarily in terms of the parents' education and professional status. Alongside the rural professional class are farmers of similar social status but with less education and other families that lack the status and resources of both professional‐class and farm families. The prolonged agricultural crisis in the American Midwest has turned rural youths toward college and has raised questions about the educational value of resources provided by farm parents and other rural parents. We classified youths from the Iowa Youth and Families Project into three SES groups: professional‐managerial, farm, and lower‐status. We compared these groups on resource levels and on the extent to which the resources predicted enrollment in a four‐year college one year after high school. Findings indicated three distinct routes to four‐year college. Professional‐managerial youths tended to follow the traditional path from parents' educational and other resources and support to their own academic involvement and aspirations for higher education. Successful farm youths, in lieu of parental educational advantages, drew on parents' community ties. Resourceful lower‐status youths, in the absence of family background advantages, generated educational attainment through early educational ambition and varied community and school involvements. Even relatively low levels of involvement were valuable to these youths' educational attainment.     

Do parental assets matter for children's educational attainment?: Evidence from mediation tests

This study investigates (1) the effects of parental assets on children's educational attainment from high school completion to college degree attainment, and (2) mediating roles played by parental involvement, child's educational expectations, and child's self-esteem. The study sample (N = 632) is drawn from the Child and Young Adult data supplement to the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979. Results indicate that parental assets are associated with children's later educational attainment. Financial assets and home-ownership are significantly associated with high school completion and college attendance. In addition, family income becomes non-significant when specific measures of assets and liabilities are taken into account. Non-financial assets and income are significant predictors of college degree attainment. Children's educational expectations mediate the effect of financial assets on high school completion. Empirical evidence provides support for asset-building programs and policies designed to promote long-term educational attainment.     

Expectations,education, and opportunity

Using a long panel of youths, we establish a causal link between parental expectations regarding education and educational attainment. In particular, we use an instrumental variables approach to find that the child’s chances of obtaining a high school or college degree are increasing in the parent’s expectations of the likelihood of these events. We then use differences between the objective likelihood of a child’s educational attainment and the parents’ subjective probabilities to consider the hypothesis that lower educational outcomes among certain groups are driven by a “culture of despair,” where children are low-achieving because they are expected to underachieve. While we do find that children from households with lower levels of income, wealth, and parental education are less likely to attain high school and college degrees, we reject the hypothesis that this is driven by low subjective expectations of educational success. Rather, we find that parents from disadvantaged groups have expectations for the educational outcomes of their children that differ more from the statistical likelihood of these outcomes than do parents of children from advantaged households. That is, we find that parents in more disadvantaged households are more optimistic about the educational outcomes of their children than those from more advantaged households.     

FAMILY STRUCTURE AND COLLEGE GRADUATION: IS THE STEPPARENT EFFECT MORE NEGATIVE THAN THE SINGLE PARENT EFFECT?

We use data from the National Longitudinal Education Study (NELS) to build upon previous research that considered the negative effects of living in mother-only families and stepparent families on the subsequent educational attainment of children. Our results break new ground in finding that although those who lived in a mother-only family are not less likely overall to graduate college than those who lived with two biological parents, they are significantly less likely to graduate college given four-year college attendance even when other important factors are controlled. In addition, we find that those who lived in a stepparent family are less likely overall to graduate college than those who lived with two biological parents when other important factors are controlled. This difference for those who lived in a stepparent family is due to lower chances of four-year college attendance given high school graduation and of college graduation given four-year college attendance.     

When the Kids Live at Home: Coresidence,Parental Assets,and Economic Insecurity

This study uses National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort data from 1994 through 2012 (N = 16,108 person‐years, 4,671 individuals) to investigate how coresidence with adult children influences asset levels among parents. It applies hybrid mixed effects regression models that partition between‐ and within‐person variation to estimate parental savings and financial assets over time and across different households. The results suggest that coresidence with adult children led to decreases in parental assets and savings. In the years in which their children lived at home, parents held 24% less in financial assets and 23% less in savings when compared with the years when adult children were not present. By expanding previous research that shows a relationship between increasing economic insecurity, limited wealth, and the rise in coresidence among young adults, this study also offers broader implications for the interconnectivity of financial hardship across generations.     

Race/Ethnicity,Attitudes, and Living With Parents During Young Adulthood

Non‐White young adults are more likely to live with their parents throughout their 20s, more likely to return home after going away to college, and less likely to leave again after returning. Scholars have speculated that subcultural differences in attitudes toward marriage and family play a key role in generating racial/ethnic differences in rates of coresidence with parents among young adults. Data from the National Education Longitudinal Survey of 1988 (N = 11,228) were analyzed in order to test this hypothesis. Attitudes toward marriage and family were significantly associated with coresidence, especially among young men, but did not substantially account for racial/ethnic differences in living arrangements. Among young non‐White women and young Black men, higher rates of coresidence were related to differences from Whites in socioeconomic or marital status (and sometimes both) that were largely independent of differences in attitudes toward marriage and family.     

Women's Changing Attitudes Toward Divorce, 1974–2002: Evidence for an Educational Crossover

This article examines trends in divorce attitudes of young adult women in the United States by educational attainment from 1974 to 2002. Women with 4‐year college degrees, who previously had the most permissive attitudes toward divorce, have become more restrictive in their attitudes toward divorce than high school graduates and women with some college education, whereas women with no high school diplomas have increasingly permissive attitudes toward divorce. We examine this educational crossover in divorce attitudes in the context of variables correlated with women's educational attainment, including family attitudes and religion, income and occupational prestige, and family structure. We conclude that the educational crossover in divorce attitudes is associated most strongly with work and family structure variables.     

Social Closure and Educational Attainment

This article examines how network closure among parents affects adolescents’ educational attainment. First, we introduce a distinction between informal closure and school‐based closure. Second, we investigate whether and how the effect of informal and school‐based parental network closure varies across social contexts. Findings from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and multilevel models show that parental network closure modestly impacts educational outcomes. Moreover, educational benefits of informal closure in parent networks are contingent on social context. Closure only benefits educational attainment in low‐poverty schools. In high‐poverty schools, informal closure in parent networks lowers educational attainment. The social closure generated in informal connections among parents thereby contributes to the encapsulation of disadvantage in areas of concentrated poverty, which is not the case for school‐based closure.     

Understanding Grandfamilies: Characteristics of Grandparents,Nonresident Parents,and Children

Using data from the Year 9 Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N ～ 3,182), we investigated the characteristics grandfamilies (grandparents raising their grandchildren with no parent present, N = 84) and compared them to other key groups, including children's nonresident parents and other economically disadvantaged families with children. Results show that grandparents raising their grandchildren were generally better off in terms of educational attainment, marital status, and economic well‐being than the child's parents. Grandparents raising their grandchildren also had characteristics very similar to other disadvantaged mothers. Academic and socioemotional well‐being were poorer among children in grandfamilies compared with those living with their mothers, but parenting practices were very similar. These findings suggest that although children in grandfamilies may be at a disadvantage academically and socioemotionally, grandparent caregivers are in many ways similar to other fragile‐family mothers. Overall, this study enhances our knowledge of an important yet understudied family type.     

Competition for Resources: A Reexamination of Sibship Composition Models of Parental Investment

The predictions of resource dilution and sibship gender composition models of educational investment are tested using the Japanese Nationwide Survey on Families (N = 6,985). Japan is an important case because of its postindustrial economy, coupled with high levels of dependence on parental investment to attend a university and persisting gender inequality in educational attainment. In previous between‐family analyses of educational attainment in Japan, boys were found to drain resources from their sisters. The within‐family, multilevel models of parental educational investments in this analysis show that girls with college‐educated brothers fare better than their peers without brothers. An alternative model incorporating the educational investments received by brothers in the same family is proposed.     

Young Adults' Fertility Expectations and Events: Associations With College Enrollment and Persistence

The analyses described in this article investigated the association between adolescent fertility expectations and college enrollment (N = 7,838). They also explored the potential impact of fertility expectations and events on college persistence among 4‐year (n = 2,605) and 2‐year (n = 1,962) college students. The analysis, which used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 cohort, showed a significant association between expectations for early parenthood and the likelihood of going to a 4‐year college or 2‐year college for both men and women. In addition, the authors found that pregnancies were associated with an increased risk of college dropout for women; however, if all of the estimated effect of pregnancies on the risk of dropout were causal, they would still not be a major factor contributing to educational attainment because fertile pregnancies among college women are so rare.     

ACCOUNTING FOR THE GENDER GAP IN COLLEGE ATTAINMENT

One striking phenomenon in the U.S. labor market is the reversal of the gender gap in college attainment. Females have outnumbered males in college attainment since 1987. We develop a discrete choice model of college entry decisions to study the driving forces of changes in college attainment by gender. We find that the increase in relative earnings between college‐educated and high‐school‐educated individuals and the increasing parental education have important effects on the increase in college attainment for both genders, but cannot explain the reversal of the gender gap. Rising divorce probabilities increase returns to college for females and decrease those for males, and thus are crucial in explaining the reversal of the gender gap in college attainment. (JEL J24, J16, I20)     

Gender and Achievement: The Early Careers of College Graduates

Abstract

NORC longitudinal data on a national sample of 1961 college graduates are analyzed to determine gender main and interaction effects in a model of educational, occupational and income achievement among employed graduates. The results indicate that (1) there is a direct female disadvantage in educational and income achievement but gender comparability in occupational prestige; (2) in general, grades are no more important than gender of student as a determinant of achievement; and (3) for men more than women; high freshman prestige expectations result in high undergraduate grades; high grades translate into high senior prestige expectations; and graduate school enrollment results in degree attainment.     

Exploring Nonnormative Coresidence in Urban China: Living With Wives’ Parents

We model histories between two cohorts of urban Chinese couples (N = 1,191) of a rarely studied living arrangement—coresidence with the wife's parents—using a dynamic life history analysis in contrast to previous cross‐sectional studies of coresidence. We examine patterns of entry into and exit from coresidence with the wife's parents, comparing the predictive power of modernization theory to the effect of demographic change and the resources and needs of each generation. Given China's well‐known patrilineal family system, we find a surprisingly high number of couples ever residing nonnormatively, and significant differences between cohorts in what determines the pattern of coresidence. Resources and needs that reflect conscious choices to coreside most strongly influence nonnormative coresidence. Its importance may increase as the children of the One‐Child Family Policy grow up and marry.     

Educational background,high school stress,and academic success

This research considers whether students without college-educated parents encounter more stressful life events, and if this exposure influences high school academic success, college matriculation and college degree attainment. Analyses were performed on 7989 students between 1988 and 2000 from NELS:88/2000. Findings suggest that students without college-educated parents encounter more stressful life events. This difference did not account for group differences in outcomes. However, exposure to certain stressors affects high school success over the entire sample. These stressors tend to be beyond student control. In addition, total life events in high school relates to students' ability to finish a college degree over the entire sample. This research extends current knowledge by considering stress' impact on student growth, academic trajectory and retention.     

Do neighborhood conditions affect high school dropout and college graduation rates?

This article estimates the effects of neighborhood conditions on the educational attainment of young people. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to measure the background characteristics of young people and their educational attainment at age 25 and the U.S. Census to describe the characteristics of the neighborhoods in which respondents lived between ages 14 and 18, the paper estimates neighborhood effects separately for blacks and whites and tests for nonlinearities and important interactions in these effects. We find that neighborhood characteristics influence educational attainment among young people, but do so differently for black and white youth. Among black youth, growing up in neighborhoods with wealthier residents, more two parent families, and a greater percentage of workers in professional or managerial occupations leads to a substantial decrease in the high school dropout rate. These neighborhood characteristics do not affect the probability of graduating from college, however. Neighborhood effects among black youth occur primarily among those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Among white youth, neighborhood conditions positively affect the probability of graduating from college but do not significantly affect the high school dropout rate. These effects are concentrated among those from relatively advantaged backgrounds.     

Bilingualism and Status Attainment among Latinos

Recent research demonstrates that bilingualism is associated with positive educational outcomes. Less is known, however, about its influence on status attainment in young adulthood. In this study, we utilize data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 2000 to examine the influence of bilingualism during adolescence on educational attainment, occupation, and income among Latinos. We find that compared with English dominance, biliteracy is positively associated with high school completion and occupational prestige among Latina women and that oral and passive bilingualism are negatively associated with high school completion among Latino men. We suggest these differences reflect the gendered experiences of language. Spanish‐speaking men may be stigmatized, whereas biliterate women may gain valuable skills that are rewarded in school and in the labor market.     

Nonparental Adults as Social Resources in the Transition to Adulthood

This short‐term longitudinal study examined whether the social resources of important nonparental adults (VIPs) perceived by youth during their senior year of high school had a significant relation to their educational and socioemotional adjustment 1 year later. One month before their high school graduation, a multiethnic sample of youths (N=754) reported on their grades, educational expectations, and selected psychosocial characteristics (i.e., depressed mood and misconduct); the educational attainment and perceived psychosocial characteristics of an important nonparental adult in their lives; and the educational plans and perceived psychosocial characteristics of their close friends. Key measures were included in a mailed survey 1 year later. VIP characteristics (particularly their educational attainment) were associated with post‐high school adjustment, even after controlling for previous level of youth adjustment and contributions from demographic and peer characteristics.     

Differential predictors of academic achievement: individual and familial factor interactions with community poverty

We present an analysis of the contexts within which adolescents graduate from high school and enroll in college. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health show that adolescents’ school engagement, maternal academic monitoring, and community poverty significantly interact to explain differences in high school graduation and college enrollment rates (n?=?7100). To examine this association, we performed weighted logistic regression analyses, controlling for gender, race, block level unemployment, and block level median income. Findings suggest that protective factors can help youth overcome the challenges associated with community poverty and achieve academically in low and medium levels of poverty, but that youth in high-poverty contexts may need more resources to reach higher levels of academic attainment.