Schools functioneren na scheiding en de rol van ouderlijke conflicten en de kwaliteit van de ouder-kind relatie bij Nederlandse jongeren

Abstract

Background: Recent studies have shown that about 86.000 children annually face a divorce or separation of their parents. On average, these children develop more academic problems compared to children from intact families. In terms of subsequent education and career opportunities, it is important to understand the risk and resilience factors of academic achievement. Aim: To explore whether the father-child and mother-child relationship could be a risk or resilience factor in academic achievement for 443 Dutch minors, who faced the interparental conflicts in different extents. Method: Data is used from the ‘Scholieren & Gezinnen, 2013’ study. A translated version of the ‘Conflict Awareness’ instrument was used to investigate the frequency and adolescents’ awareness of interparental conflicts. To investigate the parent-child relationship, a translated version of ‘Network of Relationship Inventory’ was used. The academic achievement is measured through certain questions about conduct behavior at school and the students’ grades. In this study, regression analyses were performed. Results: Interparental conflicts and the parent-child relationship both explain significant variance in indicators of academic achievement. Furthermore, an interaction-effect was found between the father-child relationship and interparental conflicts on the academic achievement. Conclusion: The father-child relationship appears to be a risk factor regarding to school results when the students experience a high-quality relationship, while simultaneously experiencing high levels of interparental conflict. This means that the students’ grades could decrease when he or she experiences a high-quality relationship with his or her father. However, this result explains a small variance in the average grades of students, so this relationship should be interpreted carefully.