Parental educational involvement and educational stress among adolescents of Kerala: Mediational effect of psychological control

Introduction: Kerala parents are craving for a proper guideline regarding the kind of involvement they have to make in the education of their wards. They either exercised over involvement or no involvement at all. Despite the good intentions of parents, parental involvement often slips into a sort of unhealthy “entanglement” which usually disrupts all possibilities for intrinsic unfolding and overall well-being of students. The present study focused on parental educational involvement and wanted to see its influence on the educational stress levels of school going adolescents of Kerala. Subjects and Methods: The sample consisted of 261 adolescents with a mean age of 16 years (standard deviation = 0.592). Participants were randomly selected from two aided, two private, and two government higher secondary schools of Thrissur district in Kerala state. Three Likert scales, namely, Parental Involvement Questionnaire, Perceived Parental Autonomy Support Scale, and Educational Stress Scale for Adolescents were used for data collection. Results: The data analysis carried out using SPSS version 23 revealed a significant negative association between various indicators of parental educational involvement and educational stress of adolescents. Furthermore, parental practices such as discussing future evinced significant predictive power in the educational stress of adolescents. Of the mediational analyses conducted for the mediational effects of autonomy support and psychological control, the later (psychological control) emerged as the significant mediator in the relation between parent educational involvement and educational stress of adolescents. Conclusions: Parents' practice of discussing future, talking of school activities, and school involvement had a buffering impact on the education stress of adolescents. However, all these practices must be free from traces of psychological control. The results of the study have significant implications in parenting and teaching as well. Parental practices such as discussing future, talking of school activities, and school involvement must be free from traces of psychological control to have positive, buffering impact on the educational stress levels of adolescents