Troubled in school: does maternal involvement matter for adolescents?

We estimate the causal effect of mother’s involvement on the amount of trouble an adolescent experiences in school based on a sample of high school students in the USA. Our measure of mother’s involvement encompasses discussing school-related matters and providing help with school projects. We use multiple measures of trouble in school to construct a composite that we link to noncognitive skills. Using an instrumental variable based on a suitably chosen peer group, our main finding is that an increase in maternal involvement leads to a significant decrease in adolescents’ trouble in school. This result is robust across a large number of sensitivity tests aimed at detecting selection effects, shocks at the peer group level, and further potential violations of the exclusion restriction. Additionally, we present evidence suggesting adolescents’ college aspirations, mental health and the perception of parental warmth as potential channels through which the mother’s involvement effect operates.