The Causal Relationship between Covert and Overt Conflicts and School Performance, Mediated by Parent-Child Relationship, Antisocial Behavior and Withdrawal/Depression among High school Students

The The relationship between parents is an important factor in misbehaviors of children. Is there a relationship between parental conflicts and school performance of children? Are parent-child relationship, antisocial behavior and withdrawal/depression related with school performance? In response to these questions a model was tested to study the causal relationships of covert and overt inter-parental conflicts with school performance, mediated by parent-child relationship, antisocial behavior and depression of high school first graders in Dezful. The sample consisted of 200 students selected through multi-stage random sampling. In this research, the students completed, the Inter-Parental Conflict (IPC), the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and the Parent-Child Relationship (PCRS) questionnaires. The school performance was measured by the grade point average of students. The fitness of the proposed model was examined through structural equation modeling. All of the paths, except parent-child relationship to withdrawal/depression, antisocial behavior to academic performance and withdrawal/depression to school performance, were significant. The indirect relationships were tested by using bootstrap procedure. The findings indicated that the proposed model fitted the data. The results also showed that the multiple indirect paths from overt inter-parental conflict to academic performance, mediated by parent-child relationship, and antisocial behavior were significant. Also, the multiple indirect paths from covert inter-parental path to academic performance, mediated by parent-child relationship and withdrawal/depression, and the indirect path from parent-child relationship to academic performance, mediated by antisocial behavior and withdrawal/depression were significant. In total, 60 percent of the variance of academic performance was explained by the proposed variables in the model.