1. Harsh parenting may lead to poor school outcomes

8th February 2017byMaarten Rikken(https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maarten-Rikken-2)

Below you can read a summary of the report by Maarten Rikken

Evolutionary theories have suggested that, because harsh environments can make survival uncertain, individuals growing up in harsh environments are primed to try and capitalize on immediate rewards rather than focusing on long-term goals or outcomes.

Many of the messages that children get about why education is important are related to long-term goals, like getting into a good college or getting a better-paying job. Based on the evolutionary theory, Rochelle Hentges, a psychology researcher hypothesized, that children growing up in environments with harsh parenting would be less likely to complete high school or go to college.

Thestudy (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.12719/full) conducted by her to better understand how and why some children leave education early, either by dropping out of high school or not completing college found that those who were parented harshly were more likely by ninth grade to place more importance on their peer group than other responsibilities, including obeying their parents' rules.

The researcher and her team tracked 1,500 students beginning in seventh grade. The sample was collected in a large county in Maryland near Washington, D.C. and was diverse in terms of race, income, and geographical location (urban, rural, and suburban). In the study, harsh parenting was considered to be acts of verbal or physical aggression, such as yelling, name-calling, shoving, or threatening the child. It was found that harsh parenting in seventh grade (around age 12-13) predicted an extreme peer orientation in eighth grade. An extreme peer orientation means that the child is more influenced by what their peers think or want instead of their parents. For example, they're more likely to blow off doing homework if a friend calls and wants them to hang-out and they're more likely to disobey parents' rules if it means going along with what their friends want to do. This extreme peer orientation predicted higher delinquency for both boys and girls and early sexual behavior for girls in eleventh grade. For boys, higher delinquency predicted lower educational attainment at age 21, while for girls it was early sexual behavior that predicted lower educational attainment. When the research team ran their analyses, they controlled for prior standardized test scores, GPA, and students' beliefs about how important school was to them. They also controlled for other potential contextual factors that might have influenced educational attainment, like race, family income, and the parents' education level.

Something that is unique about evolutionary life history theory is that it tries to explain why children in harsh environments would focus on immediate rewards instead of long-term goals. If the future is uncertain, there is a certain adaptive value to capitalizing on what's in front of you rather than putting a lot of resources toward something that might not pay off. So telling students that education is important for their long-term success may motivate children growing up in stable environments with warm, supportive parents. But for other children, this message may not mean as much because they're focused on surviving and getting through their day-to-day life.