The Impact of Parent's Life Skills on Family General Functioning and Children's Academic Achievement

This research was conducted to assess parent's life skills and their relationships with family general functioning as well as children’s academic achievement. The population of the study included all junior high school girl students in Tehran in 2011-2012 academic year alongside their parents. For the purpose of sampling, 120 students and their parents were selected through random multistage cluster sampling. The instrumentation included life skills questionnaire, Family Assessment Device (FAD), and students’ GPAs. The data were analyzed by Pearson correlation coefficient, multivariate regression analysis, and t test. The findings showed that parents’ life skills had a significant, positive correlation with family general functioning and its subscales, i.e., problem solving, communication, roles, affective responsiveness, affective involvement, and behavior control (p<0.05). Results of regression analysis indicated that parents’ life skills were a good indicator of family functioning. Students’ academic achievement was correlated with fathers’ life skills scores; however, no significant correlation was observed between students’ grade point averages and mothers’ scores. The findings of this study indicated that any improvement in parent's life skills would lead to better family functioning and students’ academic achievement as prerequisites for maintaining a healthy society. Therefore, institutions and organizations should pay more attention to life skills training.