I was not able to find an article in a printed scholarly journal that directly related to my topic (birthing decisions), but I found an article in The Journal of Educational Psychology that seemed appropriate enough since it is about parenting.  The article is titled “The Differential Impact of Early Father and Mother Involvement on Later Student Achievement”, and it is by Brent A. McBride, W. Justin Dyer, Ying Liu, Geoffrey L. Brown, and Sungjin Hong. The topic of the article is student success. The article explains a study that was conducted in order to determine if there is a relationship between parenting in the early stages of a child’s life and their success in the future, as well as parents involvement in their child’s future schooling. The first part of the study was to understand how involved parents were in their children’s life, and the second part of the study analyzed test scores from the schools. The type of data needed for the first part of this study was reports of acts, behavior, or events, and it was collected through questionnaires. The type of data that was needed for the second part of the study was organizational data, which was collected with private and public records. All of the data was analyzed with a program called Mplus to see if there was a correlation between parental involvement and student success.

In the questionnaires, parents were asked how often they engage with their children and their activities, the limits they set for their children, how affectionate they are with them, as well as how often they participate in school activities (e.g. volunteering, parent-teacher meetings, etc.) on a 0-5 point scale. Data about student success was gathered from the CDS (Child Development Services) standardized test scores. All of the gathered data was compared in tables. The study concluded that parental involvement in early life and school life does effect student success.

I think the study was fascinating, however I wish there was more information from the parents. Instead of having the parents answer the questionnaires on a 0-5 scale, it would have been interesting to have more detailed information. However it would be difficult with the amount of people that were involved in the study.

This article is primary literature.

Citation:

Mcbride, Brent A., W. Justin Dyer, Ying Liu, Geoffrey L. Brown, and Sungjin Hong. 2009. “The Differential Impact of Early Father and Mother Involvement on Later Student Achievement.” Journal of Educational Psychology volume 101(2). 498-508.