Learning to nurture: associations between parents’ self‑directed learning investment and children’s human capital

Against the backdrop of intense educational competition in China, an increasing number of parents are turning from direct investment in children toward self-directed learning aimed at improving their own educational capabilities. This study examines the associations between parents’ self-directed learning investment and children’s academic achievement and non-cognitive skills using micro-survey data from 1166 primary-school students and their families. The results show that parental learning expenditure and both fathers’ and mothers’ learning frequency are positively associated with children’s academic achievement, while the association with aggregate non-cognitive skills is concentrated mainly in parental learning frequency. Pathway analyses suggest that parental support represents a more consistent potential pathway across outcomes, whereas the parental-anxiety pathway is weaker and mainly evident for non-cognitive skills. Children’s prior academic achievement strengthens the positive associations of fathers’ and mothers’ learning frequency with current academic achievement. Heterogeneity analyses further indicate that structured and sustained forms of parental learning are more consistently associated with better child outcomes than fragmented forms, while school-level differences are concentrated primarily in fathers’ learning frequency. By shifting attention from parents’ direct investment in children to parents’ own learning and capability development, this study extends research on family educational investment and provides new evidence on parental self-directed learning as a dynamic component of the family educational environment.