Did your parents pay a lot of attention to your school work?

I think 30–40 years ago, parents weren’t that involved (I know mine weren’t). They trusted the teachers to instill a good education in us. My parents involvement was mainly going to parent-teacher conferences to hear how I was advancing or not in class work. My siblings and I were encouraged to get good grades but not pressured. These days I think parents are more involved in their child’s school work to the point of practically doing it for them.

I can’t remember much of that happening at all. Often the generations past have no clue what the present generation is trying to do, at least that’s the story I got.

Yes. My mother in particular was heavily involved with our schooling – chaperoning for events, designing flyers, planning activities (probably). As for actual schooling, both of them helped to keep me focused on my homework, offered ideas (and constructive criticisms) for projects, and proofread essays. And Dad, dear Dad, is the No. 1 reason why I passed Math class. I’ve never been good with math – I tend to mess up operations – and he spent countless hours re-teaching me what had been covered in class. More often than I realized, he was re-learning the math as he went, having left cubic geometry in the dust years ago in pursuit of higher mathematics.

Yeah, she frequently made sure I did it and checked my work.

My parents were moderately involved with my schoolwork. They didn’t always ask to see every assignment I got, but they did want to look at them every now and then. If I ever asked them for help, they were always willing. My dad is a math/science person, so he helped me with math and physics when I needed it (math and science were never my main interests so those were the subjects where I did ask them for help more).

They didn’t put much pressure on me to get good grades, but I always did. The thing they hated the most was when I just flat out didn’t do an assignment or forgot it entirely; they would always chew me out for that (thankfully it wasn’t something I was in the habit of doing).

My mom was also president of the PTA a few times and she was always heavily involved in the PTA and board meetings and all that, so she was always very aware of what was going on at school.

No, not at all. Like many Asian immigrant parents who weren’t fully fluent in English, they did not understand what we were learning in school, and because of that, they didn’t involve themselves in my school work. In addition, they were always too occupied with their work at their small grocery store——working 12 hour days, seven days a week, with only Christmas Day off, to have any time for me and my siblings.

But even though they didn’t pay a lot of attention to my school work, they always expected me to excel, and anything less than an A+ was not acceptable. In that respect, they put a lot of pressure on me to do well and compete for high marks.

My parents never hovered or micromanaged our homework, but we three were all exemplary students. My brother and I actually enjoyed homework and loved school and ended up with academic honors.

My mother did the PTA and class mother stuff too; I remember her chaperoning a trip to the Museum of Natural History in NYC and having us (as fourth graders) leave a tiny note stuffed in the side of an Indian war canoe. If that happened today, we’d probably all be hauled off to juvenile detention and my mother interrogated as a terrorist.

My parents were never involved my schooling. It was all on me since kindergarten. If I needed extra help it was up to me to ask the teacher or figure it out for myself.

I was a straight A student most of the time.

My mom was on top of my education before I even started school. All throughout elementary school I was really ahead of my classmates because she’d been so adamant about teaching me herself before I started, and made sure I got all of my homework done and would do her best to help me. She actually had to convince me not to try so hard in school at that time because I was a little kindergarten perfectionist and would stress myself out.
Quite the different story post-elementary school though!

Kind of. They didn’t help me study, but if I didn’t get good grades I was grounded. Fuckers. >:(

I am twenty-two, from American, and have been going to school since I was four. My parents were relatively involved in my academic career. They attended parent teacher conferences until I was in high school (though on occasion, they went to complain to my instructors.) They rarely checked my homework from what I remember, but they did ask each evening whether or not I had finished it. They drilled my siblings and I about our report cards when they felt we had received marks below our capabilities. They saved work that we did well on. They did not attend PTA meetings or get involved in campus events. Now that I am at university, they ask far less frequently how I am faring.

I think that the level of involvement a parent has depends on where you are from. I live in a suburb of LA county and there are some parents who are hyper-involved with their kids school work / life and others who don’t pay any attention when they probably should. I think it’s important for parents to at least talk to their children about how they are doing at school, what kind of work they have been getting, and keep a dialogue open if there are any issues.

Oh, and my mum also chewed out many a teacher / faculty member whenever I was picked on or mistreated at school.

My parents were very involved with my education and school work. My husband and I are also very involved with our children.

Education is very important in our family.

(I said very too much. Yikes. It’s late and my sleeping pill is starting to affect me. I’ll have to come back to this in the morning.)

My parents were. They still are, actually. My dad loves going over math and science with me. He’s the kind of person who really enjoys doing that, and it helps me, too, because I actually learn it that way, or at least learn it better, and I enjoy it, too.

My mother was involved in the non-academic end of things, but was incapable of helping me with much of my homework as she lacks the knack for math and the physical sciences I do.

My parents just made sure that I did my homework, and they would check over it to make sure that the answers were right. But my parents never got involved with my schooling until high school, and the only reason for that was for marching band. They avoided anything that involved being around other kids. Now that I’m older, I understand why

They monitored my grades rather than the actual assignments.

The extent of their involvement:

Parent: Are you getting good grades?
Me: Yeah.
Parent: Good.

I don’t think they even asked to see my report cards. They just took my word for it.

No, my parents didn’t want to be involved much. They were like many parents I knew who relied on schools to prepare a kid for everything necessary. My parents felt the extent of their participation was to ask how school was going and if all was in order so there’d be no negative surprises come report notices days.

I’m 24 and American. My parents were always very involved with my schooling, but they didn’t put a ton of pressure on me. As long as I did my work to the best of my abilities, they were cool.

When I was younger, my siblings and I had a set time after dinner that was ‘homework time’, and after we were done we would leave our work on the counter so my mom could go over it – not to correct it, but to make sure we’d actually done it all. If we were having trouble, my mom (or dad sometimes, if he was better at whatever we were working on) would sit with us and help us work it out.

My mom always went to parent-teacher conferences and open houses, even in high school.

My dad liked to be involved with our school work/life from helping with homework to parents evenings etc. My mum dragged herself to parents evenings but didn’t do much else. In my opinion she wasn’t confident in her own ability to help with our homework, I certainly don’t think it was because of lack of interest.