“Who’s the Student at Home?”: Parental Help-Giving Orientation in Learning at Home Predicted using a Parent’s Personal Characteristics

Abstract

The present study focuses on the involvement of a parent in their child’s learning processes, particularly, their help-giving orientation while learning at home. The main goal of the study was to identify the connection between the parent’s personal characteristics and the help-giving orientation the parent provides to their child: autonomous vs. dependent (parent as student) help-giving. The sample was collected using online participant recruitment surveys in Israel. In total, 306 parents aged 27–59, who had at least one child in elementary school, answered five questionnaires measuring the research variables: the short grit scale; the satisfaction with life scale; the advice/affect management–overparenting subscale; the parenting sense of competence scale; the parental help-giving orientations scale (PHGOs), and a background questionnaire. The findings identified negative associations between parental personal characteristics (grit, advice/affect management, well-being) and parent-as-student orientation and positive associations between the parent’s characteristics and parental autonomous help-giving orientation, with all of these effects at least partially mediated by parental self-efficacy (indirect effects). The results provide greater insight into the relationship between a parent’s personal characteristics and their choice of assistance to their child and contribute to the knowledge regarding parental involvement in learning at home and educational contexts in general.

1. Introduction

The present study investigates parental involvement in learning processes while focusing on the parent–child helping relations in the context of learning at home. The theoretical framework of this study is based on the integration of educational and psychological perspectives that examine the effect of a parent’s personal characteristics while giving assistance to the child in academic matters at home. Much attention has been given in recent years to family–school collaboration and creating a partnership [1,2,3]. Epstein [4] conceptualizes family involvement as occurring on multiple levels, considers the overlapping spheres of influence that families and schools have on students and how those spheres interact, and calls for a greater overlap between roles than those which often exist in schools as well as for greater partnerships between home and school. Studies conducted in recent years have supported the importance of this collaboration [5] which have encouraged learning-at-home activities and a strong relationship between the home and school arenas [6,7] and have demonstrated the variety of ways that families are involved in children’s education, as well as the positive outcomes in terms of better performance, better attitudes toward school, and higher graduation rates [5,8,9].

The parent–teacher–student relationship has been examined from different angles. Epstein [4] distinguished between parental school-based activities, such as volunteering, communicating, decision making, and collaborating and home-based activities, such as parenting or learning at home. Accordingly, Medwell and Wray’s research [10] indicates that the vast majority of teachers felt that practice and learning assignments at home promoted partnership between the school and parents in regard to their child’s learning.

In the present study, we focus on the involvement of a parent in their children’s learning processes at home and specifically, in parental help-giving with learning assignments and academic matters at home. The main goal of the present study is to examine a parent’s personal characteristics that are associated with the type of help the parent provides to their child in academic assignments. We see importance in understanding the helping relations in this area because of the impact of different types of involvement which may contribute to encouraging effective and proactive assistance for the child, in addition to the understandable importance of parental involvement in their children’s educational processes. Therefore, first, we will present the helping relations in an educational context, focusing on the help-giving of a parent to their children, and later, we will lay out the foundations for predicting the parent’s personal characteristics that can influence the parental help-giving orientations which we examined in the present study.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Help Giving in an Educational Context

Providing assistance in educational contexts has been of interest to various researchers in recent decades. Much research has been conducted to examine helping relations between teachers and students and the variables influencing this relationship. For example, the relationship between teachers’ behavior and attitudes and children’s willingness to receive assistance from them [11,12]; the effect of classroom characteristics and classmates’ perceptions on helping relations in the classroom [13]; and teachers’ perceptions of student characteristics were examined in this context [14].

In addition, much attention has been given to parents’ contribution to home learning processes and the provision of assistance to their children. Hoover-Dempsey et al. [15] reviews research on parental involvement in student homework, focused on the reasons given by parents for providing assistance to children, and the implications of the help provided. Findings suggest that parents involve themselves in student homework because they believe that they should be involved, believe that their involvement will make a positive difference, and perceive that their children or children’s teachers want their involvement. William and William [16] examined the impact of different learning assignments on parental involvement in home learning and pointed out the importance of matching home tasks to the ability of parents to provide help for their child.

Parental involvement in learning processes, especially in dealing with challenges and difficulties, can be expressed in different ways. Parents see support for their children’s education as a key part of their parenting [8,17] reflected, among other things, in the provision of study assistance at home and help-giving to their child with learning at home [18,19].

As in recent studies [18,20,21,22], in the present study, the theoretical framework of helping relations according to Nadler [23,24] was used. Nadler’s theory of helping relations emphasizes the differences between dependent versus autonomous help-giving. Where autonomous help-giving fosters the recipient’s ability to cope with similar challenges in the future, dependent help-giving establishes the recipient’s inability to deal with similar challenges as a result of over-reliance on the help provider [25]. In educational contexts, dependent help-giving means providing the student with the solution to the problem instead of explaining how to solve the problem, and how to establish control and understanding on the subject matter [26].

Following Nadler’s theory of helping relations [18,23,24]. identified different types of help-giving orientations that characterize a parent’s involvement in learning at home: autonomous help-giving, parent as reminder, parent as partner, and parent as student. The last three themes are increasingly dependent help-giving orientations, with parent as student reflecting the parent’s over-involvement in the introduction of learning assignments, as if the assignments were for them. Moreover, in a study that synthesized the results of nine meta-analyses which examined the impact of parental involvement on academic achievements, Wilder [27] found that the relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement was positive, regardless of the definition of parental involvement or the measure of achievement and that this correlation was strongest if parental involvement was defined as parental expectations for the academic achievements of their children and weakest if parental involvement was defined as homework assistance. Wilder’s distinction is consistent with the difference between the provision of autonomous versus dependent help-giving as presented above and, therefore, supports the importance of understanding the personal characteristics that predict the provision of distinct parental help-giving orientations: dependent help-giving—parent as student—on the one hand, and parental autonomous help-giving, on the other.

2.2. Personal Characteristics Influence Parental Help-Giving in Learning at Home

Parental self-efficacy is the parent’s belief in their ability to perform their parenting role successfully [28], a critical factor that determines the goals a parent chooses for themselves and how persistent they are in working toward those goals [29]. Parental self-efficacy is also reflected in the parent’s choices in a variety of areas [30]. Regarding parental self-efficacy for helping children succeed in school, it is usually influenced by a variety of sources [29] such as a parent’s educational experiences, their own relationships with teachers during childhood, and their readiness for their role as caregiver as well as a socio-economy status parameter [31]. Previous research showed that parental self-efficacy is associated with encouraged social, academic, and psychological well-being of their child [28]. For example, Liu and Leighton [31] provide evidence for significant mediating relationships between parental perceptions and children’s math achievement via positive association with parental self-efficacy, and negative association with parental involvement in children’s schoolwork. The negative association between parental involvement and children’s achievement was demonstrated in other previous research, such as Niia et al., [32] which indicated that the partially inconsistent results regarding the relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement can be explained by the lack of theoretical and methodological uniformity regarding the nature of parental involvement in children’s schooling. Parents’ involvement and help-giving may lower children’s autonomous and self-directed motivation and result in children developing negative perceptions about themselves which, in turn, may negatively affect their academic achievement [31,33]. In the present study, we seek to focus on dependent vs. autonomous help-giving orientations in learning at home and to examine the role of parental self-efficacy in mediating the effect of additional parental characteristics to those distinct help-giving orientations: subjective well-being, grit, and parental advice/affect management.

A previous study indicates that parental self-efficacy is predicted by a parent’s subjective well-being and their parenting style [18]. In a study conducted among parents of elementary school children which focused on parental help-seeking from teachers, an authoritative parenting style and high subjective well-being were positive predictors of parental self-efficacy, whereas non-authoritative parenting styles were negative predictors of parental self-efficacy. Moreover, parental dependent help-seeking from teachers was positively correlated to non-authoritative parenting styles, low subjective well-being, and low parental self-efficacy [20]. Another study found that parental self-efficacy was a positive predictor of autonomous parental help-seeking, whereas negative parental self-efficacy correlated with dependent help-seeking from teachers [18]. Following these studies that focused on parental help-seeking, the current study focuses on a parent’s help-giving for their child in order to identify the parent’s personal characteristics which predict parental autonomous versus dependent over-involvement in help-giving, as reflected by the parent-as-student orientation. In this context, we sought to examine parental characteristics related to providing assistance, and we, therefore, choose to focus on advice/affect management, one of four dimensions of overparenting [34]. Overparenting is a form of parenting in which a parent applies overly-involved and developmentally inappropriate tactics to their children who are otherwise able to assume adult responsibilities and autonomy [34,35,36]. Even though this parenting practice can occur at any stage of childhood, argued Segrin and his colleagues, it is most often used in reference to parents of late-adolescent or young-adult children. Overinvolved and overly controlling parenting may lead to negative child outcomes, and children come to expect that problems will be solved for them and that they should not have to tolerate or suffer discomfort or dissatisfaction with their desires. It is worthwhile noting that parenting children of primary school age has other responsibilities which vary, among other things, in the degree of autonomy required for the child, relative to young adults [37] and which should be taken into account when examining this concept at younger ages.

In the overparenting conceptual and methodological development, Segrin and colleagues [34] presented four different metrics for this behavioral structure, one of which is used for the present study: advice/affect management. This inverted dimension in the scale for measuring overparenting refers to providing assistance to the child in a variety of areas through advice given by the parent as well as addressing the emotional aspects of coping with difficulty. The researchers found that this dimension was related positively to the authoritative parenting style and negatively to the non-authoritative parenting style [34]. In the present research context, we would expect a positive correlation between parental advice/affect management and parental self-efficacy as well as autonomous help-giving in learning at home.

Finally, in a recent study focusing on help-seeking in the context of music learning, autonomous help-seeking and grit were positively correlated with amateur musicians’ self-efficacy [38,39]. Grit is a personal characteristic which is defined as passion and determination towards achieving a long-term goal, perseverance with effort, and consistency of interest [40]. Grit impacts psychological outcomes, including commitment in learning and careers [41] and meaning in life [42]. Alhadabi and Karpinski [43] suggest that grit is positively associated with academic performance through a sequential pathway of mediators, including self-efficacy.

3. The Current Study

The present study differs from previous studies that examined parental involvement in learning at home in two ways: (1) it focuses on the type of help provided by the parent; in other words, the help-giving orientation characteristics, following recent previous studies that identified different help-giving orientations of parents [21,22]. (2) It identifies the parent’s personal characteristics which affect the help-giving orientation the parent provides in learning at home.

In the present study, which focuses on providing parental help to a child while learning at home, we aim to introduce a path model predicting parental help-giving to their child depending on their parental self-efficacy, which mediates the effects of the parent’s grit, advice/affect management, and subjective well-being.

Following the literature reviewed, we expected that parental grit would be inversely associated with the orientations of parental help-giving at home: a positive association with autonomous help-giving and a negative association with parent as student (Hypothesis 1). Accordingly, parental advice/affect management would be positively associated with autonomous help-giving in learning at home (Hypothesis 2). Since a parent’s personal characteristics are frequently associated in the research literature with educational outcomes also through mediating variables (see above), we expected the links between parental grit and advice/affect management and the parental help-giving orientations (i.e., autonomous help-giving and parent as student) to also be indirect, via parental self-efficacy as a mediator (Hypothesis 3). Finally, based on previous evidence, we expected that parental subjective well-being would be positively associated with PSE which, in turn, would be positively and negatively (respectively) related to the autonomous help-giving and the parent-as-student orientation. In other words, we hypothesize that PSE will mediate the relationship between parental well-being and help-giving orientations (Hypothesis 4).

4. Method

4.1. Participants

We use a cross-sectional study design, in which data were collected from families with elementary school children using mothers’ and fathers’ self-reports on valid questionnaires. The research is based on 306 Israeli parents with at least one child in elementary school (156 females, 150 males) aged 27–59 (M = 40.06; SD = 5.90). Eighty-nine percent were married, another 7% were single parents (divorced or widowed), and 4% were cohabiting without being married. Seven percent of the participants had one child, 39% had two children, 35% had 3 children, 12% had 4 children, and 7% had 5 children or more. Forty-two percent of participants had a child in first grade, 21% of participants had a child in second grade, 17% of participants had a child in third grade, 18% of participants had a child in fourth grade, 14% of participants had a child in fifth grade, and 20% of participants had a child in sixth grade. About 7% were self-defined as lower class, 78% as middle class, and 15% as upper class. Twenty percent of the participants had no academic education, 34% had an academic education without a degree, and 46% had a B.A. degree or higher.

Parents were asked to answer five questionnaires described below: the short grit scale (Grit-S); the satisfaction with life scale (SWLS); the advice/affect management–overparenting subscale; the parenting sense of competence scale (PSOC); and the parental help-giving orientations scale (PHGOs). They also answered a general background questionnaire.

4.2. Measures

Short grit scale (Grit-S). Duckworth and Quinn’s [44] scale which measures trait-level perseverance and passion for long-term goals was used. The short grit scale (Grit–S), the eight-item version of the grit scale, retains the two-factor structure of the original scale and improved psychometric properties. Participants ranked their agreement with eight statements on a five-point scale ranked from 1 (not like me at all) to 5 (very much like me). Higher scores mean a stronger sense of grit (e.g., ‘‘I finish whatever I begin”) and lower scores mean a weaker sense of grit (‘‘I was obsessed with a project or idea for a short time and then I lost interest in it’’). The scale was scored by totaling the individual five-point items after reverse-scoring the negatively worded items (2, 4, 7, 8). The reliability of the test scores in the current research was Cronbach α = 0.70.

The satisfaction with life scale (SWLS) [45]. The SWB, well-known as the satisfaction with life scale (SWLS), was used. Participants were asked to rate their agreement with five items on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). All five items together make up one grade of SWB. The higher the grade, the better the SWB, e.g., “In most ways my life is close to my ideas”. The reliability of the test scores in the current research was Cronbach α = 0.91.

Advice/affect management [34]. The present study measured advice/affect management as a parenting strategy, one of three subscales of overparenting [34]. It is a six-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). The scale was originally built and validated for measuring young adults’ parents’ behavior. In the present study, the advice/affect management strategy was used among parents of children in primary school in an attempt to point out the positive meanings of parental behaviors for this particular strategy. The items from the original scale of advice/affect management are 1, 2, 9, 10, 13, 20, 22, 23. Item 20 was removed from the overall score of this variable because it compromised the scale’s reliability level. After that, the reliability obtained in the present study is Cronbach α = 0.88 (instead of 0.72).

Parenting sense of competence scale (PSOC) [46]. A measure of parenting satisfaction and parental self-efficacy, well-known as the parental self-efficacy scale (PSOC), was used. It is a six-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). Nine items are reverse scored (2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, 14, 16), so that high scores indicate positive parental experience. Originally, the scale has a 17-item self-report questionnaire divided into two subscales: satisfaction from parental experience: items 1–9, and parental self-efficacy: items 10–17. Based on later studies on this scale (e.g., Gilmore and Cuskelly, [47]), in the present study, the eight items measuring parental self-efficacy were used (e.g., “Relative to the time I have been functioning as a parent, I feel completely comfortable with the role”), with Cronbach’s α = 0.85.

Parental help-giving orientations scale (PHGOs) [22]. In the current study, we used two distinct subscales of the parental help-giving orientations scale (PHGOs) questionnaire which has a six-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). Four items measuring the autonomous help-giving orientation (e.g “It’s important for me to strengthen in my child the academic skills that will help them tackle learning assignments or homework alone”) and the five items measuring dependent help-giving—parent as student (e.g., “When my child has difficulty with learning assignments, I answer the questions instead”) were used. The more the parent agrees with the details of the help-giving orientation, the higher the score in the subscale. In the current study, Cronbach’s α = 0.81 and Cronbach’s α = 0.83, respectively.

General background questionnaire includes the following variables: gender, age, family status, number of children, the grades in which the children study, socioeconomic status (SES), and education of the parent.

4.3. Procedure

The study was planned during the months of July–August 2021. After receiving approval from the research ethics committee, the sample was collected in December 2021 by IPanel—an online participant recruitment service for surveys based on over 100,000 paid participants from Israel, which adheres to the international guidelines and standards of ESOMAR concerning credibility and control. The sample population were parents (mothers and fathers) who had at least one child in elementary school. Only those who meet this criterion among those registered as potential research participants in IPanel received an invitation to participate in the research for a $20 gift card. Data collection was stopped after 306 participants completed all the questions and submitted their answers, based on the existing research budget. Participants received gift certificates for their participation in the research after answering all the survey questions and submitting their answers. There were no missing data. It took about 15 min to answer the questionnaires. For the statistical analyses, we used IBM SPSS, ver. 22, and AMOS statistical packages.

5. Results

5.1. Preliminary Analyses

The general correlations between the study variables (

Table 1. Means, standard deviations, and zero-order inter-correlations between the variables of the study.

	1	2	3	4	5	6
1. Grit	-	-	-	-	-	-
2. Subjective Well-Being	0.41 **	-	-	-	-	-
3. Advice/Affect Management	0.34 **	0.26 **	-	-	-	-
4. Parental Self-Efficacy	0.43 **	0.47 **	0.54 **	-	-	-
5. Parent as a Student	−0.28 **	−0.19 **	−0.26 **	−0.32 **	-	-
6. Autonomous Help-Giving	0.27 **	0.15 *	0.56 **	0.43 **	−0.43 **	-
Mean	3.60	4.95	4.98	4.42	1.93	4.89
SD	0.57	1.44	0.69	0.80	0.85	0.82

Note: N = 306; * p ≤ 0.01 ** p ≤ 0.001.

) initially confirmed our research hypotheses, as the independent variables of the parent’s personal characteristics (i.e., grit, advice/affect management, subjective well-being, and parental self-efficacy) were inversely associated with the parental help-giving orientations of parent as a student (i.e., negatively) and autonomous help-giving (i.e., positively). The study’s independent variables were positively intercorrelated, and they significantly differed by parent’s gender only with respect to parental subjective well-being (t(304) = 2.07, p = 0.040; Cohen’s d = 0.24) and parental advice/affect management (t(304) = 3.73, p < 0.001; Cohen’s d = 0.43), whereby mothers scored significantly higher than fathers in both indexes. Parental gender also had a significant effect on the study’s dependent variables of parent as a student (t(304) = 2.31, p = 0.022; Cohen’s d = 0.26) and autonomous help-giving (t(304) = 2.00, p = 0.046; Cohen’s d = 0.23), according to which fathers were higher than mothers on the former orientation and mothers were higher than fathers on the latter orientation. It should be noted that these effects are statistically significant but small. Parent’s age was not significantly correlated with either of the study’s independent or dependent variables. Finally, the parental help-giving orientation did not differ by parent’s education level, either with respect to parent as a student (F(3, 302) = 0.87, p = 0.46) or to autonomous help-giving (F(3, 302) = 2.53, p = 0.06).

5.2. The Associations between a Parent’s Personal Characteristics and Parental Help-Giving Orientation with Parental Self-Efficacy as Mediator

Based on our hypotheses, we established a path analysis linking between a parent’s personal characteristics and parental help-giving orientations in a child’s learning at home assignments (i.e., parent as student and autonomous help-giving) while testing the mediating role of parental self-efficacy in this context (Figure 1). The model was also considered separately for mothers and fathers, due to gender differences on some of the study variables (as detailed in the preliminary analysis section). However, since the separate models merely partially differed in the estimates of the effects measured for some paths (pairwise parameter comparisons using Z scores indicated insignificant differences between the effects observed for fathers and mothers in the model), we used the parents’ sample as a whole and presented one unified model for both parents. The fit indexes for the gender multiple group analysis of the path model were good (χ2 = 12.161, p = 0.14; normed fit index [NFI] = 0.974; comparative fit index [CFI] = 0.991, root mean square of error approximation [RMSEA] = 0.041), indicating configural measurement invariance across parental gender [48]. This also warrants using a unified model.

Consistent with our hypotheses, a parent’s grit is negatively associated with the parent-as-a student orientation, both directly and indirectly (via self-efficacy). Both CI’s values of the indirect path are below zero (

Table 2. Path estimates, SEs, and bootstraps 95% CIs with 5000 samples for the regression model predicting parental help-giving orientations from a parent’s personal characteristics.

Model Paths	Unstandardized (B)			Standardized (β)
	Estimate (SE)	Lower 95% CI	Upper 95% CI	Estimate (SE)
Direct effect
Grit–PSE	0.25 (0.06)	0.15	0.35	0.17 (0.04)
Grit–Parent as Student	−0.20 (0.09)	−0.35	−0.05	−0.14 (0.06)
Advice/Affect M.–PSE	0.57 (0.09)	0.44	0.72	0.38 (0.06)
Advice/Affect M.–Autonomy HGO	0.69 (0.11)	0.58	0.86	0.41 (0.07)
SWB–PSE	0.17 (0.04)	0.12	0.24	0.31 (0.06)
PSE–Autonomy HGO	0.20 (0.07)	0.10	0.32	0.20 (0.06)
PSE–Parent as a Student	−0.12 (0.08)	−0.26	0.00	−0.12 (0.08)
Autonomy HGO–Parent as a Student	−0.36 (0.08)	−0.48	−0.23	−0.35 (0.07)
Indirect effect (via PSE)
Grit–Autonomy HGO	0.05 (0.02)	0.02	0.09	0.03 (0.01)
Grit–Parent as a Student	−0.05 (0.02)	−0.09	−0.02	−0.03 (0.02)
Advice/Affect M.–Autonomy HGO	0.12 (0.05)	0.05	0.20	0.08 (0.03)
Advice/Affect M.–Parent as a Student	−0.36 (0.06)	−0.47	−0.27	−0.22 (0.04)
SWB–Autonomy HGO	0.04 (0.01)	0.02	0.06	0.06 (0.02)
SWB–Parent as a Student	−0.03 (0.02)	−0.06	−0.01	−0.06 (0.03)

Note: CI = confidence interval; Advice/Affect M. = advice/affect management; PSE = parental self-efficacy; Autonomy HGO = autonomous help-giving orientation; SWB = subjective well-being.

), indicating that the indirect effect of grit on the parent-as-student orientation is significant. A parent’s grit was also indirectly associated with higher parental autonomous help-giving, meaning that those two variables are positively associated due to the mediation effect of high parental self-efficacy. (Note that the CI’s values of that indirect path are both above zero.) However, in this model, grit was not positively–uniquely associated with autonomous help-giving as hypothesized (β = 0.050, p = 0.32). Moreover, the size of the significance effects must be observed, and will be addressed in the discussion chapter. As can be seen from Figure 1, the other two independent variables, parenting style and subjective well-being, have stronger predictive power in the current model.

In detail, both parental advice/affect management and subjective well-being were related to higher parental self-efficacy which, in turn, significantly mediated their effect on both parental help-giving orientations. Fully confirming our primary hypotheses, parental advice/affect management was found to be positively associated with parental autonomous help-giving both directly and indirectly (via parental self-efficacy) and also negatively–indirectly associated with parent as student. Parental subjective well-being was associated with the parental help-giving orientations in a similar way (i.e., positively and negatively), as expected via parental self-efficacy as a mediator (for both independent variables, positive indirect effects on the parental help-giving orientations are represented in Table 1 bootstrapping by positive lower CI values and negative indirect effects by negative upper CI values). It could be generally concluded that the links between a parent’s personal characteristics and parental help-giving orientations are at least partially explained by the mechanism of higher parental self-efficacy which mediates the association with higher and lower levels of autonomous help-giving and parent-as-student orientation, respectively. This conclusion is in accord with our expectations regarding the mediating role of parental self-efficacy in the relationships between a parent’s personal characteristics and parental help-giving orientation to the child which was reflected in all the hypotheses of the study.

Taken together, the proposed model showed a good fit to the data (see Figure 1 for the specific model-fit indexes), with its independent variables explaining proportions of 32% (Cohen’s f² = 0.47) and 22% (Cohen’s f² = 0.28) of variances of the autonomous help-giving and parent-as-student variables (respectively).

6. Discussion and Conclusions

The present study aimed to advance the understanding of the connections between a parent’s personal characteristics and the kind of help given to their child for academic assignments at home. The results demonstrated a path analysis linking between parental grit, advice/affect management, and subjective well-being and parental help-giving orientations in a child’s learning at home, with parental self-efficacy as mediator in this context. Generally, in accordance with our primary expectations, the findings identified inverse links between a parent’s personal characteristics and the parental help-giving orientations of the parent as student (with negative associations) and parental autonomy (with positive associations), with all of these observed effects to be at least partially mediated by parental self-efficacy (i.e., indirect effects).

The results provide greater insight into the relationship between a parent’s personal characteristics and the choice of assistance to their child. Moreover, as demonstrated in the distinction between parent-as-student and parental autonomous help-giving, the findings of the present study demonstrate the way in which the personal characteristics of the parent, such as parental self-efficacy, advice/affect management, and subjective well-being are reflected in the type of help the parent provides to their child in academic matters. As for grit, it has little impact on the type of help a parent provides to their child. Noting the subjective well-being and advice/affect management correlations with grit, it is possible that, in fact, only these two variables have an effect on the type of help that a parent provides to their child, and not grit. This result is consistent with recent evaluations of grit (e.g., Lam and Zhou, [49]).

As demonstrated in previous research, different types of help have different effects on a child’s abilities, their ways of dealing with challenges, and their perception of self-efficacy [11,12]. For this reason, it is important to recognize the consequences of these parental characteristics on a child, academically. From this, we emphasize the importance of increasing awareness of the various types of help that a parent can provide to their child academically, in order to expand the range of parental behavior.

Further, the results contribute to the expanding knowledge regarding parental involvement in learning at home and in the educational context in general. Hoover-Dempsey et al. [15] demonstrated that a parent’s involvement in activities in learning at home can take many forms, from establishing structures for homework performance to teaching, for understanding and developing student learning strategies. Moreover, Judge [50] argued that creating opportunities for a sense of control and mastery, while coping with family challenges, by help-givers are more likely to promote and enhance a child’s development and personal well-being as well as the family’s well-being and can also serve as a method for empowering families through helping relations. The findings of the present study help to complete the picture that emerges from previous studies, such as by Silinskas et al. [17], who investigated through a longitudinal study the associations between a child’s academic performance and the mother’s perceptions and behavior in homework situations. The results showed that the more help the mothers gave with their children’s homework, the slower the development of their children’s academic performance was during elementary school, especially if mothers perceived their children not to be able to work autonomously. The distinction we have focused on in the present study—the parent-as-student orientation vs. autonomous help-giving—is consistent with and clarifies these findings, but, at the same time, it raises the question of the direction of the relationship between the parent’s perceptions of the child’s abilities and the help the parent provides. It is possible that a parent who perceives their child’s abilities as low will provide dependent assistance and thus reduce the child’s future coping ability and, in fact, will impair their academic success. In the present study, the parents’ perceptions of their children’s academic ability were not measured, and, therefore, further research is needed to clarify this issue.

Further to this idea, there are help-giving practices that have empowering outcomes and consequences that can positively influence beliefs about personal control and self-efficacy over a variety of life events and situations [51,52]. Therefore, we believe that the findings indicate a need to consider the design of program characteristics as part of the efforts to better understand a parent’s assessment of their help-giving attitudes and practice. Dunst and Trivette [19] include a description of a family-systems model for implementing child and family support assessment and intervention practices, and they recommended the adoption of help-giving principles that emphasize competency enhancement and avoid dependency. The findings of the present study highlight the importance of developing intervention programs that emphasize the importance of a child’s independent coping abilities as well as the relationship between their parent’s help-giving orientation and his or her personal characteristics. It can raise a parent’s awareness of the impact their characteristics have on the help they provide to their child and the possible long-term consequences of their choices for their child’s academic achievements.

Limitations of the Study and Recommendations for Further Studies

The current findings need further illumination. First, the study was conducted among Israeli Jewish parents, and it is desirable to broaden the understanding regarding the model and its generalization capability through a cross-cultural comparison based on diverse samples. Second, it would be interesting to examine additional personal characteristics regarding parental involvement from a gender perspective, due to the gender differences regarding parental advice/affect management that we have found in the present study and the fact that fathers were found to be more dependent help-givers (parent as student) while mothers were autonomous help givers. It is important to note that these gender differences are significant but small; further research is required to test their existence in another sample. If clear significant differences are found between fathers and mothers in providing help to their children, it would be interesting to examine them in family contexts, job characteristics, and other personal differences.

Third, although parenting age has not been found to be related to the variables of the present study, it is worth examining the current model among parents of children of different ages, not taken into account in the present study, leading us to the next and final idea in this context.

In the current study, two interesting characteristics that may affect the findings of studies in the field, and which concern a child’s academic abilities, were not measured. One measure is the child’s objective educational achievements. This variable has the potential to influence the type of help the parent provides to the child, even given different parental characteristics. A second measure in this context that is not taken into account concerns the parent’s perception of the child’s abilities. This characteristic may also affect the type of help the parent gives the child. For example, if the parent’s perception of the child includes a lack of confidence in their abilities, the parent may be overinvolved and provide assistance, as in the example of the parent as the student. The current study did not examine this issue, and it is recommended to consider it in a follow-up study.

Another interesting topic that arises from the findings of the current study and requires clarification in further research concerns the different implications that overparenting components have at different child ages. While studies show a predominantly negative effect of overparenting in young adults [35,36,53], in the present study which focused on parents of primary school-aged children, the dimension of advice/affect management is of positive significance in terms of parental involvement. Although even in Segrin et al. [34], this dimension was linked to authoritative parenting, when it comes to young adults who do not live at home, such a parental attitude is considered overparenting. Further research should focus on the different components of overparenting at different ages and their implications. In general, the current findings demonstrate the relationship between a parent’s characteristics and the help they provide to their child and the extent of their involvement, in an educational context. Expanding understanding and research on the subject may contribute to this important field of knowledge.