Mothers’ and Fathers’ Influences on Status Attainment

This paper reports on the relative influences of mother’s education on sons’ and daughters’ educational attainment, relative to father’s influences. Following the framework of Korupp et al. (2000, 2002), we explore to what extent parental influences are dominated by fathers or mothers, the highest status parent, and/or are specific to the gender of the child (sex-role model). The research questions concern the most appropriate operationalization of mothers’ and fathers’ influences on children’s educational attainment as well as the historical trends of each parent’s influence. We use data from the International Stratification and Mobility File (ISMF) that includes data from 1970-1999 from 29 countries and 151 studies. We find that (A) the influence of mother’s education is larger than the father’s when she is the highest educated parent, (B) her influence is larger on the daughter than on the son, and (C) both parents’ educations are necessary to explain the largest amount of variance in children’s educational attainment. We also find that the influence of mother’s education is not only declining but is declining more rapidly over time than that of the father’s.