Emotional Capital as a Type of Parental Strategy in Relation to Secondary School Choice Making

The study examined two types of parenting and their relationships with the parents’ involvement in the education of their children. A small-scale study1 of one classroom at a urban public school in the Czech Republic suggests that children from families with different backgrounds and different attained education perceive distinct types of parental upbringing styles in relation to their education achievement: the article discusses helicopter and submarine parenting. The main interest is dedicated to helicopter and submarine parenting in their weak and contradictory forms since the research revealed these two forms to be the most prevalent in the studied classroom. As the research data indicates, these two parental models are associated with specific dimensions of emotional capital. The survey revealed that the children of helicopter parents clearly benefit from parental involvement since their parents effectively transform their emotional capital into cultural capital.