Parental Pressure, Family Support and Household Workload Among High School Students in Rural Parts of Nepal: An Observational Study

Abstract

Introduction: When parents have higher academic-related demands from their children and when children have higher household workload, academic stress occurs. Consequently, student cannot concentrate on their studies and hamper their academic performance. Nonetheless, family support can be a vital contributor to academic success of a child. Therefore, the objective of this study was to assess the level of parental pressure, family support and household workload in high school students in rural part of Nepal.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in Thabang village of Rolpa district among 521 students of class 11 and 12 using a self-structured questionnaire based on literature reviews. The questionnaire for parental pressure had 10 items, for household workload had 6 items and for family support had 7 items. The data collection period was from June to August 2019. Ethical approval was taken from Nepal health research council (reference no. 233/2019). Descriptive statistics were reported to find out the frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation.

Results: Findings of this study showed that there was low parental pressure among 242 (46.45%) students, low family support among 240 (46.07%) students, and high household workload among 135 (25.91%) students. Conclusions: The participants had low parental pressure in academic areas as well as low family support but they had high workload of household chores. High household workload and low family support may lead to academic stress in students which can hamper academic performances of the students.