Perfectionism can be defined as a pursuit of flawlessness that can have negative effects on the functioning of the individual. Previous studies have mainly focused on how the behavior and expectations of parents affect a child’s school success while relations between parental expectations and behavior with the psychological functioning of the child, especially perfectionism, are relatively unexplored. Taking that into consideration, the main aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between parental educational expectations and the child’s assessment of parental behavior with particular dimensions of child’s perfectionism. The survey involved 93 students from first to fourth grade of high school and their parents. Instruments used in the study were the Scale of Educational Aspirations and Expectations for Adolescents–SEAEA (Jacob, 2010) which examined parental educational expectations, Children’s Reports of Parental Behavior Inventory-CRPBI-57 (Keresteš, 1999) and the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale-MPS-F (Frost et al., 1990; Zubčić & Vulić-Prtorić, 2008) which were completed by students. The results showed associations between different dimensions of perfectionism on the one hand, and parental educational expectations and behavior on the other. It has been shown that significant correlates of adaptive aspects of perfectionism are expectation and evaluation of parental education, mother’s participation in the preparation for educational achievement and assessment of children’s acceptance by their parents, while the non-adaptive aspects of perfectionism are significantly associated with children’s assessment of parental acceptance, psychological and behavioral control and the father’s instability of educational expectations.

perfectionism, parental educational expectations, assessment of parental behavior