Parenting with mild intellectual deficits: parental expectations and the educational attainment of their children.

We examined how the educational expectations that parents with mild intellectual deficits had for their children shaped their children's attainment, and how parents' own intellectual limitations affected this process. We identified 612 parents with mild intellectual deficits and 2,712 comparison parents from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, a prospective longitudinal study in which participants were followed from ages 18 to 64. Compared to the norm, parents with mild intellectual deficits expected their children to complete less education, even after controlling for sociodemographic background variables, and children of parents with mild intellectual deficits did, in fact, complete fewer years of education. For both groups, parental expectations were the strongest predictor of attainment. Results suggest that disparities in education are shaped in part by parents' beliefs about educational opportunities.