Family environment on emotional, social, and academic adaptation of adolescents: A study of middle school students

Received May 8, 2020 Revised Aug 6, 2020 Accepted Sep 13, 2020 Maintaining a positive relationship among family members creates a harmonious learning environment. When children are nurtured in such surroundings, they are likely to increase their emotional, social, and academic accomplishments and learn more effectively. The purpose of this paper was to analyze the familial role in emotional, social and academic adaptation of middle school students. The sample consisted of 9,728 middle school students from different parts of a Middle East country. The size of the sample was determined using multistage random sampling. Data were obtained using an emotional, social and academic survey and a family structure questionnaire. The study showed that most students have average or better behavior adaptation. Moreover, healthy family structures, favorable economic situation, and high-end paternal professions facilitate behavior adaptation. On the other hand, maternal employment has no effect upon behavior adaptation.


INTRODUCTION
Education and training of children is one of the most important principles upon which the development of a country is dependent. In order to efficiently educate and guide adolescents, we must correctly understand them. Even though the modern meaning of the term adolescence has been established in the 20th century, the essence of adolescence is still vague and self-contradictory and thus cannot be properly defined. According to classic interpretation, adolescence is a period of conflict, confusion, and anxiety.
Hall has defined adolescence as a period of internal disturbance, stress, and physical, mental, and emotional changes. Many psychoanalysts still regard adolescence as a period of psychological confusion [1]. Integration of the self and environment is a vital necessity for all living beings. All creatures endeavor to adapt to their surroundings in order to preserve their security and obtain their needs. According to the Piagetian model, adaptation is described as the equilibrium of organism and environment. Adaptation is the balance between accommodation and assimilation. It is a process with two scopes with which a child creates new mind structures in order to effectively associate with its surroundings [2,3].
According to Erickson [4] adolescents are in search of individual identity. Thus, they endeavor to establish a correlation between the disparate elements of their personality and subsequently re-experience their previous conflicts. As a result, they frequently quarrel with their parents. By the time a child reaches adolescence, he has experienced three social groups: family, peers, and school [5]. As indicated by Gesell's model, adolescence is the period between ages ten and sixteen. This phase of growth is full of change and vicissitude. In this model, adolescence is divided into four successive stages. Ages eleven and twelve are considered a conduit between childhood and adolescence. This stage consists of much change for the adolescent. Age thirteen is a period of introspection and self-analysis in which adolescents experience the novelties of their new situation, distance themselves from others, and prefer to refrain from talking about their problems. At age fourteen they become more extroverted, direct their interests toward others, and enter their social life. After much undulation, a person reaches the final cycle of adolescence at fifteen years of age and thus attains a type of equilibrium [6,7]. Many delinquencies and social offences are rooted within psychosocial maladjustment. Maladjustment is a biological, mental, and social phenomenon which is derived from a sense of insecurity. It is a mechanism which causes a person to be unable to cope with the demands of normal society [8][9][10]. The sense of maladjustment can be found within the family [11]. Furthermore, the causes of many students' difficulties are familial troubles [12,13]. The extent of adherence to the norm of society is directly related to the general condition of families. Moreover, all social traumas are directly or indirectly associated with families.
The quality of cultural and moral upbringing is slowly degrading in today's societies. Many social psychologists assume that this decline originates from dysfunctional families. Long periods of absence of working fathers and mothers from home, and socioeconomic crisis are considered the main reasons of unbalance in families. Unfavorable familial performance creates disruptions and breaks in child development [14].
In his research, Steinberg [15] investigated five types of families: a) intact affectionate families; b) responder families; c) indifferent families; d) autocratic families; and e) dysfunctional families. The findings show that intact and affectionate families and also responder families are the best types of families for the upbringing of a child. Dysfunction, autocracy, and indifference lead to anxiety, depression, antisocial behavior, and a severe delinquent mentality in children while family solidarity leads to mental health in children [16]. A child's family deeply affects formation of their personality, maladjustment, and tendency for delinquency through its child-parent relationship and unique structure.
The social and emotional adjustment of students whose mothers are employed is significantly better than that of students whose mothers are homemakers. Additionally, students who live in families with low economic and social situations are less socially adjusted and have more problems with their studies [17]. Prior studies show that the existence of traumatic relations between mother and child, incompatibility between family members, stressful and unstable atmosphere, parent drug use, divorce, collapse of family structure, inferiority feeling relative to siblings, uncertainty and confusion, and insecurity are effective factors in maladjustment and delinquency and also cause psychopathological disorders in parents and their children [18][19][20]. Therefore, in this study the purpose was to ascertain the extent of emotional, social, and academic adjustment of students and determine the degree of familial influence in their adjustment. For this study, four research questions were formulated: 1) what is the condition of the emotional, social, and academic adjustment of middle school students nationwide?; 2) does family structure influence student adjustment if so, how?; 3) how does parental employment and profession type affect student adjustment?; 4) in what ways does the economic situation of families affect student adjustment?

RESEARCH METHOD 2.1. Participants
The subjects for this study included a wide spectrum of middle school students in different provinces of the country. There were 9,780 students recruited from middle schools nationwide using random multistage sampling. The sample was intentionally selected in order to contain an equal quantity of each gender.

Instrumentation
Deductive statistics were used to analyze accumulated data. Adjustment and its influential factors were measured using questionnaires: a 55-item adjustment questionnaire [21,22] consisting of emotional, social, and academic adaptation assessments, and a familial structure survey.
The content validity of these surveys was investigated by six professors with considerable experience in research who made the necessary corrections. The reliability of these surveys and their components was calculated using Cronbach's Alpha with a random sample of 1,800 student participants. The results are shown in Table 1. These values illustrate the internal parallelism of the surveys which adequately indicates their reliability.

RESULTS
Evaluation of social, emotional, and academic adjustment: the frequency and distribution ratio of the sample was evaluated in five classes which are shown in Table 2. According to Table 2, most students have an adjustment ratio of average or better. Furthermore, emotionally 30.8%, socially 21.4%, and academically 20.1% of the students had under average adjustment ratios. These students are socially, emotionally, and academically maladjusted. In order to determine influential familial factors upon student adjustment, the independent t-test was used to analyze data collected from the surveys in relation with intact and dysfunctional families as displayed in Table 3. As shown in Table 3, there is a significant difference in adjustment ratios between the two groups (a ˂ 0.001). The mean adjustment score for students of intact families is higher than that of students living in dysfunctional families. The independent t-test was used to ascertain the effects of maternal employment on student adjustment by comparing the survey scores of students with employed and unemployed mothers as shown in Table 4. As can be seen from Table 4, no significant difference was found concerning student adjustment within these two groups. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Scheffe's test were used to determine the effects of economic status on student adjustment as shown in Table 5. According to the ANOVA regarding effects of economic status on student emotional adjustment, there is a significant difference between the means (a ˂ 0.002). The ANOVA regarding social adjustment of students showed a significant difference between social adjustment score means (a ˂ 0.001). Furthermore, the ANOVA regarding student academic adjustment showed a significant difference between academic adjustment score means (a ˂ 0.001).
Scheffe's test was applied to compare student emotional as seen in Table 6, social as seen in Table  7, and academic as seen in Table 8 adjustments based on economic status. The test indicated that student emotional adjustment means were significantly higher in families with good economic situation (monthly income higher than 301,100 Tomans; roughly 320 dollars) when compared with families with lower economic situations. No significant difference was observed regarding other economic classes.
One-way ANOVA was also performed in order to determine effects of various paternal professionals on emotional, social, and academic adjustment of students as displayed in Table 9. The analysis showed a significant difference between means regarding emotional adjustment (a ˂ 0.0007). Also, with respect to social and academic adjustment, a significant difference between means was found (a ˂ 0.001). Scheffe's test was also implemented in order to compare effects of various paternal professions on student adjustment. The average emotional shown in Table 10, social shown in Table 11, and academic shown in Table 12 adjustment score for students whose fathers were in the military, or were staffers, teachers, specialists, or self-employed was significantly higher than the average emotional adjustment score of students whose fathers were laborers or unemployed.