Perceived parental attitudes of the father and the school achievements of adolescents

BACKGROUND: This article focuses on the relationship between parental attitudes of the father perceived by adolescents and their school achievements. Nowadays, interest in the role of the father in raising a child is growing. The influence of the students’ family environment in shaping their school achievement is very important. PARTICIPANTS AND PROCEDURE: The study group consisted of 687 pupils, including 418 (60.8%) girls and 267 (39.2%) boys. Fathers’ attitudes were examined with the Parental Attitudes Scale version of “My Father”. In order to establish the relationship between the father’s parental attitudes perceived by teenagers and grade point average (GPA), Pearson’s r correlation coefficient values were calculated. In the next step the role of gender as a moderator of these relationships was evaluated. RESULTS: The results of the conducted research show that the acceptance and autonomy attitudes positively correlate with the average grade from last year, while the requirements and inconsistency attitudes showed negative correlations with school achievements. The results indicated that gender moderated the relationship between perceived acceptance, autonomy, protectiveness and GPA. CONCLUSIONS: It was found that an increase in the level of the father’s perceived acceptance and autonomy leads to a higher average grade than the previous year, although only among girls. The level of protectiveness was found to be a negative predictor of school achievements, although only among boys.