Viewing Generativity and Social Capital as Underlying Factors of Parent Involvement

Parent involvement in education is a multifaceted support that has many well-documented benefits for students of all ages. Parent involvement is also a common expression of generativity as defined in Erik Erikson’s theory of psy-chosocial development. The activities parents engage in during their children’s educational pursuits, as well as their behaviors that reflect generativity, cor-respond to, in total, the creation of social capital. This article uses structural equation modeling to illustrate the relationship between the characteristics of generativity and social capital as underlying factors of parent involvement. The parent involvement factors are measured using the School and Family Part-nership Survey (Epstein & Salinas, 1993). The results suggest a three-factor model, in which generativity serves as one factor and in which social capi-tal is distinguished into two factors: individual-level and community-level. At the individual level, social capital reflects interactions between two individuals such as the teacher and the parent. Community-level social capital addresses opportunities created by the school for parents to participate