Children’s and mothers’ achievement goal orientations and self-efficacy: Dyadic contributions to students’ well-being

Abstract

Starting from the basic idea that identifying predictive family factors for children’s well-being is among the levels of the psychology of sustainable human development, our study aimed to investigate the impact of mothers’ achievement goal orientations and parental self-efficacy on their children’s academic well-being, considering children’s own achievement goals as a mediator variable. The entire sample comprised 350 participants: 175 children (42.86% boys) and their respective mothers. Children were enrolled in the 4th grade (n = 85; Mage = 10.44, SD = 0.49), in the 8th grade (n = 62; Mage = 14.45, SD = 0.53), and in the 12th grade (n = 28; Mage = 18.39, SD = 0.62). The results indicated that mothers’ motivational orientations had a strong effect on their children’s corresponding motivational orientations. Mothers’ achievement goal orientations and parental self-efficacy had significant effects on children’s well-being, mediated by children’s goal orientations. Children’s well-being was positively predicted by mothers’ mastery and performance-approach goal orientations, with variations between age groups. The importance of the parental motivational orientations in the development of the children’s corresponding orientations and well-being suggests that changing academic adaptation might be possible by operating early interventions at the parents’ level. Further research is necessary to explore why performance-approach goals had a positive impact on well-being in this cultural context, as previous studies revealed that this type of goal orientation may be detrimental to well-being.