Parent Practices and Home-School Partnerships: A Differential Effect for Children with Same-Sex Coupled Parents?

Parents can profoundly influence the long-term academic success of their children. Parental involvement with their children's schools has consistently been associated with much better long-term academic and social outcomes. Unfortunately, same-sex parents often feel disconnected and unwelcome in schools. In order to extend the research supporting parent practices and strong family-school collaboration, the present study used the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) data set to examine the following: (1) How same-sex families compare to heterosexual families with respect to the parental practices of helping and communicating; (2) How home-school partnerships compare across same-sex and heterosexual families; and (3) Whether a strong home-school partnership is more important for the academic achievement and social adjustment of children with same-sex parents given the societal context in which these children are embedded. Results indicated that same-sex and heterosexual parents did not differ with respect to their parent practices or home-school partnerships. Further, home-school partnerships were not differentially important for children with same-sex parents.