The impact of family environment on academic burnout of middle school students: The moderating role of self-control

Family environment appears to have impact on academic burnout of middle school students, but the mechanism of family environment on academic burnout is still unclear. This paper examined if self-control moderates the impact of family conflict and intimacy on academic burnout among middle-school students. A total of 1,081 1st- and 2nd-year middle school students (7th and 8th graders) from Guangdong, Jiangxi, and Shaanxi provinces were surveyed using four scales. Results showed that self-control moderated the impact of family conflicts and intimacy on academic burnout in middle schoolers. Follow-up simple slope analyses indicated the negative association between family intimacy and academic burnout was greater under the condition of higher levels of self-control. And family conflict was positively related to academic burnout for participants with high and average levels of self-control, but not for participants with low levels of self-control. We confirmed that middle school students with low self-control are more likely to experience academic burnout when exposed to family environments that lack intimacy, whereas higher levels of self-control protected the students from academic burnout while living in unfavourable family environments (more conflicts, less intimacy). This study filled the gap in literature between the family environment and academic burnout.