Darina M. Nechaeva

Background. Previous research highlights the importance of parental support, and in particular parental autonomy support, in homework motivation. However, the joint impact of parental autonomy support and parental control on homework motivation, cheating, persistence, and GPA has not been studied, despite the importance of homework motivation and homework behavior for students’ academic achievement.

Objective. To investigate how students’ parental control and parental autonomy support are related to homework motivation and homework behaviors (e.g., cheating and persistence), and academic achievement in Russian high school students.

Design. The participants were high school students, N = 526 (257 girls and 269 boys, M_age = 16.48, SD = .61). The measures used included the Perceived Parental Autonomy Support Scale (Mageau et al., 2015), the Motivation for Homework Scale (Gordeeva & Sychev, 2025b), the Homework Behavior Scale (Gordeeva & Sychev, 2025a), and students’ GPA.

Results. In contrast to control, parental autonomy support showed a clear positive effect on student academic achievement. Structural equation modeling showed that perceived parental autonomy support in childhood is positively associated with students’ GPA, autonomous homework motivation, and productive homework behavior. On the other hand, controlling parenting style demonstrated ambivalent patterns of results, being a predictor of low persistence, external and introjected homework motivation, with the latter related to higher GPA. 

Conclusion. This study extends previous self-determination theory (SDT) research on parenting styles by examining their role in homework behavior and academic performance, particularly emphasizing the dual importance of promoting parental autonomy support and lowering parental control for homework motivation.