J Child Fam Stud (2010) 19:90–100
DOI 10.1007/s10826-009-9288-4
ORIGINAL PAPER
Academic Stressors and Anxiety in Children: The Role of Paternal
Support
Grace S. M. Leung Æ K. C. Yeung Æ Daniel F. K. Wong
Published online: 24 June 2009
Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009
Abstract We examined the role of paternal support in the
relation between academic stress and the mental health of
primary school children in Hong Kong. The participants of
this cross-sectional study were 1,171 fifth and sixth grad-
ers. The results indicated that academic stress was a risk
factor that heightened student anxiety levels and that
parental emotional support was a protective factor that
contributed to better mental health among children. How-
ever, paternal informational support delivered to children
during times of high academic stress appeared to heighten
student anxiety levels. The practical implications of the
findings on parent education are discussed.
Keywords Paternal support
Academic stress

Student anxiety
Stress and coping

Primary school children
Introduction
The Chinese aspire to high levels of scholastic success,
which is a way to achieve social mobility, respect, and
family pride (Gow et al. 1996). This emphasis on educa-
tional achievement results in high demands and great
pressure on children (Bossy 2000; Ho 1996). Academic
G. S. M. Leung (&)
K. C. Yeung
Department of Social Work and Social Administration,
The University of Hong Kong, 13/F, K. K. Leung Building,
Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China
e-mail: gsmleung@hku.hk
D. F. K. Wong
School of Nursing and Social Work, The University of
Melbourne, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences,
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
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stress, conceptualized as a disturbance induced by a
student’s appraisal of academic stressors, is common in
children, and often leads to psychological and somatic
distress (Lee and Larson 2000; Lou and Chi 2000).
Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory holds that a
child’s development can be understood within the context
of relationships in his or her environment (Bronfenbrenner
2005). Fathers and mothers, who are significant figures in a
child’s microsystem (Bronfenbrenner and Ceci 1994), play
an important role in enhancing their child’s competence to
face challenges. Most parental support studies tend to focus
on the maternal side and to examine parental support in a
global way by assessing the overall support from both
fathers and mothers (e.g., de Kemp et al. 2007; Sim 2000).
Mothers are usually the ones who shoulder a large portion
of parenting tasks and responsibilities (Hong Kong Census
and Statistics Department 2003; Lu et al. 2000). However,
fathers have become more involved in child care and child
support in recent decades (Brent et al. 2002; Halme et al.
2006; Lamb 2004; Lu et al. 2000), and have a profound
influence on the lives of children and adolescents (Flouri
2005; Lamb 2004). This has motivated us to investigate
whether paternal support can enhance children’s resilience
to academic stress.
Academic stress is a common risk factor that adversely
affects student health and psychological well-being (Fields
and Prinz 1997). Stomach ulcers, high blood pressure, and
asthma are frequently found among students with high
academic stress (Aheneku et al. 2000; Bossy 2000; Guidi
et al. 1999). These students are reported to have a higher
frequency of suicide, bullying, drinking, or substance abuse
(Ang and Huan 2006b; Ma 2001; McCormack 1996;
Weidner et al. 1996). Regarding mental health, anxiety and
negative emotions are found to be related to academic
stress (Wang and Ding 2003; Zhou et al. 2005). In this
J Child Fam Stud (2010) 19:90–100
study, we chose anxiety as the criterion variable for the
following reasons. First, anxiety, which is a distressing and
aversive feeling ‘‘arising from the anticipation of a real or
imagined threat to the self’’ (Fonseca and Perrin 2001,
p. 127), is quite common in childhood and adolescence
(Gullone et al. 2001). Epidemiological studies reveal that
approximately 20% of children and adolescents are affec-
ted by anxiety at some point in their lives (Morris and
March 2004; Muris et al. 2000). Second, evidence indicates
the existence of a causal link between anxiety and later
psychopathology (Cole et al. 1998; Last et al. 1996). Third,
Chinese students have been found to have anxiety scores
higher than those of students in Western countries (Dong
et al. 1994; Shek 1991). Research reveals that Chinese
children and adolescents are anxious about how others
evaluate them (Dong, et al. 1994; Tao 2003). We hypoth-
esized that this kind of fear is common among students
with academic stress because students are concerned about
how their academic attainment will be evaluated by
their significant others; hence, we predicted that children
reporting higher levels of academic stress would have
higher levels of anxiety.
Normally, the academic stress of students comes mostly
from examinations, tests, excessive homework, unsatis-
factory performance, time pressures, intense competition
with other students, and parent and teacher expectations
(Burnett and Fanshawe 1997; Gu 1999). Academic stress
of Chinese students may also be linked to the Confucian
value that underscores the importance of education in
achieving life goals; hence, Chinese parents are very
willing to invest in their children’s education, and they
often socialize their children to study diligently and to
strive for academic achievement as such success is related
to family shame and pride (Chao 1996; Ho 1996). Filial
piety is a highly valued cultural virtue among the Chinese,
and that striving for and attaining academic success is a
way for children to demonstrate filial piety (Li 2004). If a
child fails to achieve academically, parents will be criti-
cized for not monitoring their children properly, and chil-
dren will be condemned for not fulfilling their filial duty.
The importance of education, which is a traditional Chi-
nese value, is strongly imprinted on the hearts of Chinese
students (Chen and Lan 1998). Chen and Lan (1998) found
that Chinese students were more willing than were Amer-
ican students to try to meet parental expectations regarding
academic achievement, and that the scores of Chinese
students on parent-related fears induced by poor exami-
nation results were significantly higher than those of
American students. Another study reported that Chinese
students experienced greater anxiety than did their Amer-
ican counterparts because the former feared that unsatis-
factory academic performance would disappoint their
parents and make them worry (Xing et al. 2005). The
91
aforementioned studies indicate that it is worthy to exam-
ine this kind of stress among Chinese students.
In the transactional stress and coping model, stress is the
result of a particular person-environment transaction,
where the stressful event is appraised by a person as
threatening and exceeding his/her coping resources
(Lazarus 1999). Social support is an important intervening
variable in the transaction that shields a person from per-
ceived pressures (Sorensen 1993). Studies show that child-
perceived support from fathers can protect children from
possible risks such as acute life stressors, negative peer
influence, and social conflicts (Crean 2004; Marshal and
Chassin 2000), and promote children’s socio-emotional
and cognitive development (Flouri 2005). Usually, fathers
are expected to be involved in discipline and fun activities
but less involved in children’s schoolwork (Phares et al.
2009). A survey in Hong Kong examined the expectation
of wife towards the responsibilities of husband revealed
that only 24% of the respondents expected their husband to
assist their children in studying, but 62% expected their
husband to involve in child discipline and 47% hoped that
their husbands to engage in fun activities with their kids
(The Chinese Young Men’s Association of Hong Kong
2005). Little is known about the role of paternal support in
student academic activity, especially when children are
experiencing academic stress. Therefore, it is worth explor-
ing whether or not paternal support helps children to
combat academic stress. This support can be in the form of
giving children emotional and informational support, that is,
becoming involved in children’s education by coaching
and guiding them in their schoolwork, and spending more
time with them. We speculated that paternal support would
be inversely related to student anxiety.
The influence of parental support on children can be
studied through main and interactive effect models. The
main effect model suggests that social support can enhance
or impede people’s health and psychological well-being
independent of the stressor (Barrera 1988). A positive
effect may be brought about simply because social relat-
edness guides people to believe that when stress occurs,
they can get support. This model is supported by studies of
adolescent problem behavior (Alva and de Los Reyes
1999; Windle 1992). The interactive effect model proposes
that social support is activated only in conjunction with
stress. According to this model, support plays a moderating
role in mitigating the adverse effects of stress, the expec-
tation being that distress, both psychological and physical,
will be more severe when one is under high-stress condi-
tions with a low level of support than when one has a high
level of support under similarly stressful conditions (Gore
and Aseltine 1995). Wenz-Gross et al. (1997) found that
adolescent middle school students experiencing high aca-
demic stress but receiving low emotional support from
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their families had a lower academic self-concept. Cohen
and Wills (1985) speculated that structural measures of
social support tend to exert their influence through the main
effect model and that functional measures of social support
tend to work through the interactive effect model. Hence,
we hypothesized that paternal time spent with children
would exert a main effect on student anxiety, and that
paternal emotional and informational support would mod-
erate the impact of academic stress on student anxiety.
To summarize, our goal was to explore the role of
paternal support in the relation between academic stress
and student anxiety. The research questions and hypotheses
of this study were as follows. (a) Is perceived academic
stress predictive of student anxiety? We predicted that
children reporting higher levels of academic stress would
have higher levels of anxiety. (b) Do paternal emotional
and informational support and time spent with children
have an impact on student anxiety levels? We hypothesized
that the different types of paternal support would be
inversely related to student anxiety. (c) Through what
mechanisms does paternal support exert its influence? We
posited that paternal time spent with children would exert a
main effect on student anxiety, and that paternal emotional
and informational support would moderate the impact of
academic stress on student anxiety.
Method
Participants
The target of this study was children in the fifth and sixth
grades. The pressures of these students tend to mount
because the academic results of these 2 years will be used
for secondary school allocation. The way to locate suitable
respondents for this study was to approach primary schools.
The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region includes
Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the New Territories
within which it is consisted of eighteen districts. The Hong
Kong Census and Statistic Department (2007b) revealed
that the family socio-economic status differs in these three
regions, and we expected that this status might have an
impact on the kind of support the parents give to their
children; hence, we used cluster sampling method to choose
districts from these three respective regions. In each district,
we sampled randomly the government aided primary
schools because more than 85% of primary schools are
government aided in Hong Kong (Committee on Home-
School Co-operation 2004); and to control for pedagogical
differences that might be related to the subvention mode, the
sample of this study was limited to schools of this type.
Students from nine primary schools participated in this
study. All of the fifth and sixth graders in each school were
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J Child Fam Stud (2010) 19:90–100
invited to complete a self-administered questionnaire. From
a sample of 1,855 students, 1,793 questionnaires were col-
lected, yielding a 96.7% response rate. The response rate
was very satisfactory because the students were requested to
fill in the questionnaire during class time and the question-
naires were collected at the end of the class. Of those who
did not participate, either the students were not at school at
the time of data collection or parental consent was not
obtained. The analysis included the responses of only those
participants who had completed all items related to demo-
graphic variables, and whose father was alive and living in
Hong Kong. In total, 1,171 cases were retained.
The age of the participants ranged from 9 to 13
(M = 11.12, SD = .84); 482 were boys (41.2%) and 689
were girls (58.8%). The proportion of boys to girls aged 10–
14 in the Hong Kong Census and Statistic Department
(2007a) was 51: 49. Girls were over-represented because we
had recruited a girl’s school in the sample. The number
of fifth graders (50.5%) and sixth graders (49.5%) was
approximately the same. Father’s mean age was 43.82
(SD = 6.89) and mother’s mean age was 39.06 (SD = 6.01).
More than half of the fathers (53.1%) and mothers (55.3%)
had completed secondary education; however, more fathers
(10.2%) than mothers (6.9%) had received higher education.
The majority of the fathers (92.8%) and approximately half
of the mothers (52.4%) were employed. Most of the partic-
ipants were living in a two-parent family (90.7%), while
2.5% of the participants were living in a single-father family.
Eighty students (6.8%) were living either with their mothers
or not living with both parents. This group of respondents
most likely had contact with their fathers for they provided
information on paternal support.
Procedure
To ensure that the data were collected in a consistent manner
across schools and classes, the survey was conducted in
classrooms by trained research assistants who were students
in their final year of Bachelor of Social Work degree pro-
grams. The assistants were instructed to read aloud the
objectives and instructions of the study in a standardized way
before administrating the questionnaires. As the perception
of students towards academic stressors might change before
or after an examination, the survey was not conducted
10 days before or after examinations so as to capture the
general perceptions of students of academic stress.
Measures
Academic Stress
Most of the existing instruments that inquire into sources of
academic stress have been designed for adolescents and
J Child Fam Stud (2010) 19:90–100
young adults, not younger students. For example, the
Academic Stress Scale (ASS; Kohn and Frazer 1986), and
Academic Stress Questionnaire (ASQ; Abouserie 1994) are
for college and undergraduate students. The School Stres-
sor Inventory for Adolescents (SSIA; Fanshawe and
Burnett 1991), High School Stressor Scale (HSSS; Burnett
and Fanshawe 1997), and Academic Expectations Stress
Inventory (AESI; Ang and Huan 2006a) are for middle and
high school students. Therefore, some of the items of these
scales are not suitable for preadolescent children, such as
‘‘I worry about getting a job when I leave school’’ in the
HSSS and ‘‘Irrelevant class towards major’’ in the ASS.
Also, some items did not fit our context, such as ‘‘going to
the wrong class’’ in the HSSS—Hong Kong primary school
students usually stay in the same classroom and are not
required to move around very often in the school. Because
of the intense pressure on primary school children to per-
form and the lack of an adequate existing scale, we
developed items to measure the intensity of academic stress
perceived by primary school students in Hong Kong.
To generate an initial pool of items, we conducted
preliminary surveys in three primary schools involving a
total of 107 fifth and sixth graders. In the survey, students
were invited to express in an open-ended questionnaire
what they felt were their three most stressful academic
experiences, and this information was used to generate the
items. Face validity was established by soliciting com-
ments from four professionals who had rich experience in
working with preadolescent children. These four profes-
sionals included a student guidance teacher in a primary
school, a school social work supervisor, a supervisor of a
children and youth social center, and a frontline social
worker in a primary school. They were requested to eval-
uate whether or not the items were comprehensible and
reflected stressful academic situations commonly experi-
enced by primary school students. Questions that lacked
clarity were either revised or deleted, and 25 items were
retained. Examples of these items are ‘‘Every day, I have a
lot of homework to do’’ and ‘‘The homework is too diffi-
cult.’’ To verify the validity of our scale, 30 fifth and sixth
graders were invited to fill in the questionnaire in a pilot
test. The Revised Children Manifest Anxiety Scale
(RCMAS; Reynolds and Richmond 1978) was used as the
criterion measure because this scale is widely used in
Chinese populations (Dong et al. 1994; Kao 2001). Sta-
tistical analysis showed that our scale of academic stress
was positively correlated with the RCMAS (r(30) = .54,
p \ .01) and that the direction of the correlation was as
predicted; hence, the scale was used in the survey. The
participants rated the items on a 4-point scale, with higher
scores indicating a higher level of academic stress experi-
enced by primary school students. The Cronbach’s alpha of
these items was .91.
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Emotional Support
Emotional support refers to the warm and caring parent-
child relationship through which children realize they can
rely on a parent or parents for comfort, especially during
times of stress. Children’s perceptions of paternal and
maternal emotional support are captured by the care
dimension of the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI: Parker
et al. 1979), and this instrument has been validated in
Chinese populations (Shu et al. 1999). Kendler (1996)
shortened this dimension to seven items and the confir-
matory factor analysis indicated that it provided a better
goodness-of-fit statistic than Parker’s model. In view of its
brevity, the shortened version was used in the present study
though this version has not been validated in Chinese
populations. Examples of items include ‘‘Could make me
feel better when I was upset’’ and ‘‘Appeared to understand
my problems and worries.’’ The extent of emotional sup-
port from each parent was captured by items that were
rated by participants on a 4-point scale, with higher scores
indicating greater perceived warmth. The Cronbach’s alpha
was .87 for paternal emotional support and .88 for maternal
emotional support.
Informational Support
The existing Child and Adolescent Social Support Scale
(CASSS, Malecki and Demaray 2002) inquires into the
general informational support that children obtain from
parents. However, we wanted to inquire into the academic
informational support children obtain from parents; hence,
we developed twelve identical items for both fathers and
mothers. These items were developed based on two focus
group interviews with fifth and sixth graders, and capture
the amount of cognitive guidance and advice children
obtain from their parents. In the item construction, we
solicited the views of professionals and invited school-aged
children to test the readability of this scale. Examples of
the items are ‘‘Did not teach me how to do the homework’’
and ‘‘Assisted me to prepare for the examination.’’ Previ-
ous research shows that greater informational support from
parents can enhance children’s skills in handling academic
demands, which results in better academic attainment;
hence, these children are less likely to attend remedial
classes (DePlanty et al. 2007; Sheldon and Epstein 2005).
A concurrent known-group validity test was performed
based on the data from the pilot test to examine whether
paternal and maternal informational support could distin-
guish among students in normal and remedial classes in
school. The mean score of the paternal informational
support items of the normal class group (M = 32.88,
SD = 5.84) was higher than that of the remedial class
group (M = 22.00, SD = 9.90). There was a significant
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difference in the mean scores for paternal informational
support between these two groups (t(26) = -2.45;
p \ .05). A similar result was obtained for the maternal
informational support items. The mean score of the normal
class group (M = 37.42, SD = 5.24) was higher than that
of the remedial class group (M = 24.50, SD = 3.54). The
t-value indicates that there was a significant difference in
the mean scores of maternal informational support between
these two groups (t(26) = -3.40; p \ .01). Scale validity
was established, and so these items were included in the
survey. Respondents rated their perceptions of their
father’s and mother’s informational support on a 4-point
scale, with higher scores indicating higher levels of such
support. The Cronbach’s alphas of paternal and maternal
informational support were .79 and .76, respectively.
Time Spent with Children Daily
We designed an item to solicit information on the amount
of time spent by fathers and mothers in communicating
with their children per day. This item was rated on a 5-
point scale ranging from 1 (less than five minutes) to 5
(more than 2 hours), and reflected the presence and degree
of connectedness between parent and child.
Student Anxiety
The Revised Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS)
is used to measure children’s emotional well-being
(Reynolds and Richmond 1978). The scale used in the
present study was adopted from a study of Taiwanese chil-
dren, which is a 37-item scale with 28 anxiety items and 9 lie
items, with a reported reliability of .86 (Kao 2001). The 28
items consist of three factors: physiological, worry/over-
sensitivity, and concentration anxiety factors. Only the 28
anxiety items were used in this study. Respondents rated
items pertaining to anxiety on a 4-point scale, with higher
scores indicating higher levels of anxiety. The internal
consistency of the RCMAS in this study was .91.
Data Analyses
Based on the data from the 1,171 respondents, we first
performed factor analysis of the two self-constructed scales
to eliminate the redundant items before using these scales
for subsequent analyses. Principal component analysis was
performed followed by varimax rotation. Items with a
communality value of .50 or higher were retained, and
items with a factor loading greater than .40 on two factors
were discarded.
The resulting scale to measure academic stress consisted
of eight items, with a two-factor solution. The first factor,
which was related to academic inefficacy, accounted for
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J Child Fam Stud (2010) 19:90–100
42.53% of the total variance. This factor included five
items, including ‘‘My learning ability is worse than that of
my peers,’’ ‘‘I feel unhappy when peers have better test
scores,’’ and ‘‘I feel anxious when the teacher distributes
the marked papers because I worry that I may have failed
the test.’’ The second factor, which was related to parental
demands, explained 10.61% of the variance. This factor
included three items, including ‘‘My parents consider that I
have not tried my best in studying’’ and ‘‘My parents have
high expectations of my academic achievement.’’ How-
ever, these two factors were found to be highly correlated
(r(1169) = .82; p \ .001), which suggested that the two
factors were identical constructs. Hence, to prevent multi-
collinearity, the scores of the eight items were combined to
form the general academic stress scale that was used in the
subsequent analyses. The Cronbach’s alpha of this scale
was .84.
The resulting scale measuring paternal informational
support consisted of four items, which taken together
accounted for 44.47% of the total variance (Cronbach’s
alpha = .77). The items measuring maternal informational
support were identical to those measuring paternal infor-
mational support, and taken together accounted for 36.27%
of the total variance (Cronbach’s alpha = .76). Examples
of these items were ‘‘Assists me in solving academic
problems,’’ ‘‘Encourages me in my studies,’’ and ‘‘Teaches
me how to develop a study plan.’’
To explore whether different types of paternal support
exerted a direct or an interactive effect, hierarchical
regression was performed, controlling for the sociodemo-
graphic and maternal support variables. In step 1 of the
regression model, predictors including student gender and
school grade, parental age and educational level, and
maternal and paternal emotional and informational support
and time spent with children daily were entered. In step 2,
the academic stress score was entered. In the final step, the
interaction terms between the academic stress score and
support variables were entered into the regression models.
To reduce multicollinearity due to the interaction terms,
centered variables were used (Aiken and West 1991). The
RCMAS score was the dependent variable.
Results
The means, standard deviations, and correlations from the
regression analyses are presented in Table 1. The mean
scores of maternal emotional support, informational sup-
port, and time spent with children were higher than those of
the corresponding paternal variables. The academic stress
scores were positively related to student anxiety and neg-
atively associated with the paternal and maternal support
variables. All of the support variables were negatively
J Child Fam Stud (2010) 19:90–100 95

Table 1 Means, standard deviations, and correlations of predictor and outcome variables (N = 1,171)
Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1 Academic stress 18.34 5.42 –

2 Paternal emotional support 19.14 5.49 -.25*** –
3 Maternal emotional support 22.32 5.06 -.29*** .30*** –
4 Paternal informational support 11.20 3.18 -.16*** .69*** .24*** –
5 Maternal informational support 12.52 2.87 -.17*** .34*** .66*** .45*** –
6 Paternal time spent with children daily 2.39 1.29 -.16*** .47*** .19*** .35*** .20*** –
7 Maternal time spent with children daily 3.28 1.35 -.14*** .16*** .34*** .07* .25*** .52*** –
8 RCMASa 68.02 14.60 .45*** -.24*** -.28*** -.14*** -.16*** -.16*** -.14***
* p \ .05, ** p \ .01, *** p \ .001
a
RCMAS is the Revised Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale

related to student anxiety. The results revealed positive
correlations between the paternal and maternal support
variables.
We conducted hierarchical regression to test the study
hypotheses. Step 1 of the regression showed that student
gender and school grade, and maternal and paternal emo-
tional support were associated with student anxiety (F(12,
1158) = 14.34, p \ .001) (Table 2). Girls, fifth graders,
and those students with low levels of paternal and maternal
emotional support tended feel more anxious. In step 2, the
academic stress score was added to the model, introducing
additional variance (F(1, 1157) = 192.64, p \ .001). The
first hypothesis was supported, as academic stress signifi-
cantly contributed to a higher level of student anxiety.
Student gender and paternal and maternal emotional sup-
port remained significant in step 2. In step 3, the interaction
terms of academic stress with the different types of paternal
and maternal support were added to the model, and these
variables accounted for a slight increase in the variance
(F(6, 1151) = 2.40, p \ .05). Similar to the previous
model, student gender, paternal and maternal emotional
support, and academic stress had main effects on student
anxiety. Two interactions were significant in the analysis.
Paternal emotional support moderated academic stress,
which contributed to lower levels of student anxiety, but
with high paternal informational support, student anxiety
levels mounted in high-stress situations. Hence, hypothesis
two was only partially supported because among the types
of paternal support, only emotional support helped to lower
student anxiety. Hypothesis three was also partially sup-
ported because the structural dimension of social support,
paternal time spent with children daily, did not predict
student anxiety. The functional social support dimensions,
maternal and paternal emotional support, exerted both
main and interactive effects on student anxiety, and
paternal informational support was found to have only an
interactive effect. It is interesting to note that only the
paternal, not the maternal, support variables had an
interactive effect on student anxiety. No values of the
variance inflation factors (VIFs) exceeded 2.4 which indi-
cated that multicollinearity was not a problem in this
model.
Discussion
Our findings on the adverse impact of academic stress on
children’s emotional well-being are consistent with those
of previous research (Chen and Lan 1998; Salili et al.
2004). Academic stress was found to be a risk factor that
heightened student anxiety. The items that composed the
academic stress scale developed in this study reflect the
kind of academic stress that Hong Kong students encoun-
ter. This stress is related to fears of academic inefficacy and
parental demands. A collectivistic cultural orientation
might explain why these kinds of academic stress are sig-
nificant among Chinese students. Influenced by their col-
lectivist culture, the Chinese are prone to use others as a
reference in the development of self-efficacy beliefs (Bond
and Hwang 1986; Kim et al. 1994). In contrast, Western
culture is characterized by individualism; thus, achieve-
ment standards are defined by individuals themselves, and
a student’s sense of efficacy can be boosted through
achieving self-defined standards. Because the standard of
excellence of Chinese students is defined by others in the
group (Yu and Yang 1994), although students might obtain
good grades, they are disappointed and doubt their own
abilities when their test scores are lower than those of their
peers. The learning environment of students in Grades 5
and 6 is particularly competitive. Student must outperform
their classmates to gain admission into high-achieving
secondary schools, and constant comparisons of academic
results with those of classmates are made. Such fierce
competition has a negative impact on the sense of efficacy
of students, especially when they are unable to surpass their
classmates (Chan and Lam 2008).

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Table 2 Summary of
B SE b
hierarchical regression analysis
for variables predicting student Step 1
anxiety (N = 1,171)
Gender (0 = boy; 1 = girl) 2.73 .82 .09**
Grade (0 = 5th grade; 1 = 6th grade) -2.41 .81 -.08**
Mother’s age -.29 .81 -.01
Mother’s educationa -.08 .53 -.01
Father’s age -.63 .71 -.03
Father’s educationa .02 .51 .00
Maternal emotional support -.71 .11 -.25***
Maternal informational support .26 .21 .05
Maternal time spent with children daily -.29 .37 -.03
Paternal emotional support -.62 .11 -.23***
Paternal informational support .28 .19 .06
Paternal time spent with children daily -.20 .42 - .02
Step 2
Gender (0 = boy; 1 = girl) 3.62 .76 .12***
Grade (0 = 5th grade; 1 = 6th grade) -.93 .76 -.03
Mother’s age -.32 .75 -.01
Mother’s education -.12 .49 -.01
Father’s age -.37 .66 -.02
Father’s education -.13 .47 -.01
Maternal emotional support -.43 .11 -.15***
Maternal informational support .14 .19 .03
Maternal time spent with children daily -.19 .35 -.02
Paternal emotional support -.42 .10 -.16***
Paternal informational support .29 .18 .06
Paternal time spent with children daily -.11 .39 - .01
Academic stress 1.03 .07 .38***
Step 3
Gender (0 = boy; 1 = girl) 3.75 .76 .13***
Grade (0 = 5th grade; 1 = 6th grade) - 1.05 .76 -.04
Mother’s age -.28 .75 -.01
Mother’s education -.10 .49 -.01
Father’s age -.36 .66 -.02
Father’s education -.18 .47 -.01
Maternal emotional support -.42 .11 -.14***
Maternal informational support .15 .19 .03
Maternal time spent with children daily -.19 .35 -.02
Paternal emotional support -.40 .10 -.15***
Model 1 R2 = .13, Model 2
R2 = .24; R2D = .12***, Paternal informational support .24 .18 .05
Model 3 R2 = .25; R2D = .01* Paternal time spent with children daily -.05 .39 - .00
* p \ .05, ** p \ .01, Academic stress 1.05 .07 .39***
*** p \ .001 Academic stress 9 maternal emotional support -.23 .54 - .02
a
Education is a dummy Academic stress 9 maternal informational support -.21 .53 - .02
variable coded 1 for no educa-
Academic stress 9 maternal time spent with children daily .77 .47 .05
tion, 2 for primary level edu-
cation, 3 for secondary level Academic stress 9 paternal emotional support - 1.22 .54 - .09*
education, 4 for sixth form level Academic stress 9 paternal informational support 1.74 .54 .12**
education, and 5 for university Academic stress 9 paternal time spent with children daily .05 .50 .00
level education

123
J Child Fam Stud (2010) 19:90–100
Furthermore, the collectivist orientation of Chinese
culture means that academic success is not only equivalent
to having more opportunities for economic and social
advancement but is also related to family shame and pride
(Stevenson and Lee 1996). Tao’s (2003) study on a group
of adolescent students in Hong Kong supports this view.
She found that academic achievement is correlated with
filial piety. To strive for academic excellence is perceived
as a moral obligation that links with family pride, and the
consequence of poor performance is not an individual but a
familial matter; hence, children become stressed when they
know that they have not met the demands and expectations
of their parents (Xing et al. 2005; Yu and Chen 2001).
Traditionally, mothers are expected to take on a caring
role, that is, to provide more structural and functional sup-
port to children than do fathers. The results of this study
support this notion, as the mean scores of maternal emo-
tional and informational support were higher than those of
these paternal variables. Fathers are presumed to perform a
disciplinary role and act in an authoritarian manner, but it
was found that paternal emotional and informational support
significantly predicted student anxiety, even controlling for
the maternal support variables. This finding indicates that
the father’s role is very significant in the eyes of children,
and this echoes previous finding of Shek (1999) on paternal
parenthood qualities. He reported that paternal qualities
seemed to exert a stronger impact on adolescents’ mental
health than maternal parenthood qualities. The influential
role of father can be explained by the traditional Chinese
value. In Chinese culture, father-son relationship is con-
sidered as one of the three important relationships (sangang)
(Bell 2000). Paternal emotional support was found to have a
main effect on children’s emotional well-being and to buffer
student academic stress. In other words, fathers who showed
care and concern could calm their children’s agitated feel-
ings. This finding is consistent with that of previous
research, which highlights the importance of paternal
warmth in contributing to children’s mental health and
school adjustment (Chen et al. 2000; Heaven et al. 2004).
However, the present study also found that when students
experienced high academic stress, paternal informational
support heightened student anxiety, which indicates nega-
tive social support (Cohen et al. 2000). It is worth men-
tioning that the items measuring paternal informational
support concerned whether or not a father assisted the child
to resolve difficulties in studying and to acquire good study
habits, and whether or not he encouraged the child to study.
When children felt very incompetent academically and
exceedingly incapable of fulfilling parental expectations,
paternal informational support intensified their anxiety.
Children appeared to interpret their fathers’ coaching on
how to study well and encouragement to study as additional
demands, which worsened their mental health.
97
Our findings did not support Cohen and Wills’s (1985)
view of the mechanisms through which social support
exerts its influence. Paternal emotional support exerted
both main and interactive effects on student anxiety,
implying that these effects may not be mutually exclusive.
The interaction effects suggest the importance of timing in
delivering support. The findings of this research revealed
that support can be toxic to the mental health of children if
it is delivered at an inappropriate time, such as providing
informational support to children when they are experi-
encing high academic stress, because this act will be
interpreted by children as an extra demand that further
heightens their anxiety.
The practical implications of this study are as follows.
First, the present study underscores the central role of
fathers in child development. Psychologists, social work-
ers, and family life educators can further promote the
participation of fathers in child rearing. Second, paternal
sensitivity to children’s manifested emotional states can be
enhanced, as the present findings suggest that it is inap-
propriate to provide informational support when children
are overwhelmed by academic stress. As paternal emo-
tional support was found to be conducive to children’s
well-being, helping professionals can teach fathers how to
express their care and concern. Third, time is an important
factor that hampers father to perform their role. Our result
showed that the amount of time spent by father with chil-
dren daily was lower than that of mother. A recent survey
in Hong Kong revealed that men were more likely to have
over-time work, and were less satisfied with the amount of
time spent with family (The University of Hong Kong
2008); hence, family friendly policies such as maximum
working hours per week should be enforced so that the
fathers can have more time to foster the development of
children. Fourth, this study provides further empirical
evidence that academic stress is detrimental to the emo-
tional well-being of students. The items in the academic
stress scale indicated that student stress resulted from
feelings of inefficacy generated from comparisons with
classmates and parental demands. Social comparison is
inevitable in school life, and especially in Chinese culture.
Therefore, we should think of how to use social compari-
son in a more constructive way. Special attention should be
paid to choosing the model and areas for comparison.
Comparison with classmates who are academically out-
standing gives rise to a sense of self-deprecation because
the standard is too high to be achieved. However, observ-
ing classmates of similar talent who perform successfully
can give rise to efficacy beliefs: that is, if someone with
comparable ability can do it, then so can I. Moreover,
comparisons that focus on the ways and means of achiev-
ing academic success can help students to learn strategies
that lead to successful outcomes. In addition, parents are
123
98
recommended to learn the level of demands that their
children can tolerate and reflect on positive ways to convey
their expectations.
The study limitations are as follows. First, the study was
unable to cross-validate the views of the children. Although
the findings captured the children’s perceptions of paternal
support, they might not reflect what a child’s father actu-
ally does. It is suggested that a future study obtain data
from fathers, which could add an additional dimension to
the understanding of their support. Second, as a cross-
sectional study, this study was unable to establish causality
between variables. Longitudinal studies could be con-
ducted in the future to examine the causal relationship
between academic stress and student anxiety. Third, we
used cluster sampling method to identify primary schools
from the three regions in our study. This sampling method
is efficient to locate suitable respondents but there is the
possibility that the reported standard errors from our cluster
sample are smaller than a sample from simple random
sampling because the units in a cluster tend to have similar
characteristics. Fourth, the sample was confined to those
children whose fathers are living in Hong Kong and those
who provided demographic information on both parents.
The failure of some students to supply information on their
parents could indicate that the bond between these students
and their parents is not close; however, these children were
excluded from the study, so the results should be inter-
preted cautiously. Fifth, the study involved only fathers
living in Hong Kong, and so the results may not be gen-
eralizable to other Chinese fathers. It is suggested that
similar studies be conducted in countries with Chinese
populations to further examine the role of Chinese fathers
in children’s academic activity.
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