Balancing pressure and support: family influences on female students’ educational choices and academic integrity in the UAE

This study examines how family influence shapes Emirati female students' motivations, coping strategies, and ethical behavior within higher education. Drawing on Durkheim's sociological perspective of education as moral socialization, it views the family as a meso-level institution that transmits collective consciences and sustains ethical responsibility across generations. While the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has achieved remarkable progress in women's higher education, family expectations continue to define educational and professional choices, mediating the balance between empowerment and conformity. Using original survey data from 1,233 female students at the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU), the analysis explores how family motivations and pressures interact with students' attitudes toward academic integrity and cheating behavior. Ordered probit regression models show that family influence is both enabling and constraining: family motivation is positively associated with diligence but may, under intense performance pressure, increase the likelihood of academic misconduct. Conversely, when family expectations are internalized as responsibility rather than anxiety, they strengthen students' ethical self-discipline. The findings further reveal that attitudes toward integrity-particularly the conviction that cheating is never justified-mediate the relationship between family influence and academic behavior, confirming that ethical orientation, once internalized, guides conduct more strongly than external control. The study contributes to debates on ethics and sustainability in education by demonstrating that families remain key socializing institutions, shaping academic integrity through the transmission of ethical values rather than coercive authority. Promoting sustainable integrity in the UAE thus requires engaging both students and families in culturally grounded ethics education that aligns academic achievement with collective responsibility and social trust.