Relations Between Parents’ Math Anxiety and Children’s Math Learning: The Role of Homework Help

At the intersection of developmental and educational science, recent studies have focused on the role of parents’ attitudes and beliefs towards math and their homework-helping behaviors. Specifically, findings from Maloney et al. (2015) suggest that parents’ math-related anxiety is negatively related to children’s gains in math achievement only when parents frequently help with math homework – suggesting that frequent math-related interactions at home with caregivers who hold negative affect towards math may relate to children’s lowered math achievement, and in turn, their math anxiety. To further understand this complex developmental mechanism, the current study aimed to replicate these findings with a larger, and more diverse sample of elementary school children. A sample of 3,018 kindergarten, first-, second-, and third-grade students (50.48% female) nested across 242 classrooms in a Southeastern U.S. state were assessed on their math achievement and anxiety at the beginning and end of the school year. Parents self-reported their own math anxiety and frequency of homework help. Results revealed negative main effects of (a) parents’ math anxiety and (b) homework help frequency on children’s gains in math achievement across the school year. Contrary to the work of Maloney et al. (2015), there was no significant interaction effect between parent math anxiety and homework help on children’s math achievement. These findings underscore the role of parents’ math anxiety as it relates to child math outcomes. However, there remains a need for additional examination of parents’ homework help and how this process may play a role in children’s math development.