Does Ohana Mean Academic Success?

Family influence, even for the smallest of children, runs deep and lasts long.

As if there weren’t already enough to worry about during a pandemic, parents across America are having to face one more problem this fall: what in the world is going on with their kids’ education?

Whether in-person or at home, learning in a classroom with a mask on or Zooming lectures with their teachers, there’s a lot to navigate. Many parents are particularly worried about their kids’ academic progress, and whether they may fall behind the expected milestones for their age. Is remote learning and staying home from school going to screw their kids up forever?

Perhaps that isn’t the question we should be asking. Perhaps, instead, we should be asking what it is that makes a student successful.

This question has been pondered, argued, and dissected by many, but one idea seems to hold strong over time: the influence of a student’s parents — and, more broadly, a student’s entire family — is the real mover-and-shaker of a student’s academic well-being. The education provided by outside sources such as governmental or private institutions can only go so far. Research shows that a child’s real primary, elementary and secondary education reinforcement lies in the hands of the community (primarily the nuclear family unit).

Children who are not well equipped from the home have a much harder time succeeding outside of it. These positive influences do not necessarily need to come from biological or adoptive family, but at-home nurturing can be the turning point on which a child’s academic future rests.

To understand this further, we must first define “success” — for the purposes of this discussion, I will argue that academic-related success can be quantified as:

a) good scholastic standing (graduation from high school, at least), b) respectability in one’s immediate community, and c) personal achievement in the workforce that leads to reasonable financial comfort.

When children are successful in school, studies show that this outcome correlates directly to parental involvement. This involvement can take many forms.

The first type that may come to mind is a parent’s interest in their student’s school work. The University of New Hampshire conducted a study that showed the effect of parental discussions of school work at the dinner table with their children. This study surveyed over 10,000 eighth-grade students enrolled in various public and private schools, and the data suggest that parents tended to lean toward encouraging their daughters’ school work more than their sons. Though the motivations of individual parents may be subconscious, perhaps this is due to a more recent surge in encouraging women to take places in STEM and other academic fields that were once restricted to men only — making up, in a way, for lost time.

Annie Murphy Paul, writing for Time, argues that communication is the key. In what seems an almost coldly classist statement, she writes,

“A major part of the academic advantage held by children from affluent families comes from the ‘concerted cultivation of children’ as compared to the more laissez-faire style of parenting common in working-class families.”

She goes on to describe how talking with children influences them more than any other factor of parental involvement: making students feel heard, understood, and listened to made more of a difference than simply showing up for PTA meetings and school concerts.

Talking with children about their school work is closely followed in importance by parents who read aloud to their children (welcome news for those like me who plan to read incessantly). The Wall Street Journal recently documented the phenomenon that occurs when an adult reads aloud a picture book to a child, arguing that while television, computer, and smartphone screens actually deter a child’s cognitive development with their information overload, the human connection fostered by an adult reading aloud a picture book significantly boosts a young child’s fast-growing brain. Megan Gurdon writes,

“The collaborative engagement that a child brings to the experience is so vital and productive that reading aloud ‘stimulates optimal patterns of brain development,’ as a 2014 paper from the American Academy of Pediatrics put it, strengthening the neural connections that will enable him to process more difficult and complex stories as he gets older.”

In 2013, MDRC conducted a study on the influence of parental involvement in the lives of students aged three to eight from 100 families. Not surprisingly, given the nature of MDRC’s work (studying the reduction of poverty and boosting of economic structure), this research addressed the disconnect between parents who have the financial resources to invest heavily in their children versus parents from a lower income bracket.

The argument that many parents struggling to make ends meet do not have the luxury of time, money, and energy (often after an exhausting, overtime work day) to go above and beyond in spending quality time with their children is a valid one. Yet this study, which targeted literacy and math achievement outcomes as well as social and emotional skills, suggested that the differences may not be as stark as some may think:

“Although family poverty level affected the number of students read to by a parent (90 percent of children in families over the poverty line, compared with 78 percent of children in families below the poverty line), there were no significant differences by poverty level in parents’ telling stories; working with letters, words, or numbers; and teaching songs to their children.”

This claim is a welcome antidote to Paul’s statement in Time, quoted earlier, which seemed to imply — to put it bluntly — that wealthier parents care more about their children than poor parents do. Though we are told constantly that money cannot buy happiness, we live in an era that begs to differ — at least insofar as basic comforts and advantages for one’s children are concerned. It is refreshing to see empirical data that reflects what we all want to be true: that love, effort, and determination can equate success even without waving the magic wand of money.

Gordon Berlin, president of MDRC, wrote of the study quoted above,

“The review finds that parents from diverse backgrounds, when given direction, can increase their involvement with their children’s learning at home and at school and that, when parents are more involved and more engaged, children tend to do better academically and socially.”

This concept seems simple, but putting it into practice can be difficult. Even under pandemic circumstances, simply finding time to nurture and engage child development is often easier said than done.

Statistics aside, one particularly compelling argument against the principle of family involvement equaling success is the example of students who grew up without a nuclear family unit. Whether raised in a single-parent home, foster care, or with other relatives not including two adoptive or biological parents, children from non-traditional families are becoming less and less marginalized as our society works to define the meaning of “family.” And history is full of children in these types of homes who grew up into adults with meaningful legacies.

But in pragmatic, 21st-century America, does the research mean that children will automatically be more likely to fail if they are not raised in a home with two parents invested in their future?

In 2017, grants were distributed across small villages in Indonesia to help facilitate early childhood education and development. Communities in these villages came together to use these grants to establish play groups for children who came from disadvantaged family backgrounds, and, not surprisingly, the children thrived. “Even three years after the project began, disadvantaged children had significantly larger improvements in social competence, emotional maturity, and language and cognitive development compared with children from more advantaged backgrounds,” researchers from the University of Chicago wrote.

When other adults in the community give of their time and efforts to improve children’s readiness for scholastic achievement — regardless of each child’s individual parenting advantages or deficiencies — the fruits are obvious. This leads us, then, to the conclusion that it is not always our traditional view of a family that fits the mold for shaping a child’s future. Rather, it is the presence of an adult who can advocate for a child, who can show that child that he or she is wanted, needed, and valued that makes the difference.

In the Disney film Lilo and Stitch, the phrase “ohana means family” is often repeated.

“Ohana means family. Family means no one gets left behind or forgotten.”

Though the phrase “no child left behind” has been co-opted in other ways and can carry negative connotations in some circles today, the principle of children having someone in their corner is one we can all get behind.

Ohana means family. And family means no one gets left behind or forgotten. When all is said and done, family is what makes the difference.

From any social class, any ethnicity or economic background, any race or geographic location, children have a common need: guidance in the form of love, support, and encouragement.

When these needs are met in the home or in a community-based alternate to the home, children thrive. And those children grow up to be adults who thrive, too. Many barriers exist to keep students from coming out on top, but with the care they need from adults who care about them, success is on the horizon… whether they learn at home, in the classroom, or through the Internet.