<p>Focusing on the impact of family background on students' academic development has long been an important issue in promoting equality in the educational process and improving the quality of talent cultivation. Yet, there has been controversy as to whether the influence of family on children can be extended to the university stage. Based on the perspective of China's urban–rural dichotomy, this study constructed samples of undergraduates with different levels of family socioeconomic status (FSES) and parental conflict to explore their contributions to learning engagement. It is found that: (1) Family factors continue to have a significant impact on engagement in learning in the higher education domain. (2) Family factors have a more insidious effect, with the exogenous factor of FSES failing to significantly predict learning engagement, and the implicit factor of parental conflict being a significant negative predictor. (3) There is a significant difference between the types of family combinations, with the group having less parental conflict being significantly more involved in learning than the group with more parental conflict under equal conditions of extrinsic FSES. This pattern also holds even when the extrinsic family status is not dominant. (4) FSES can indirectly influence learning engagement through parental conflict and children's cognitive appraisals of parental conflict, forming a chain-mediated model. Thus, education educators are prompted to objectively view and analyze the engagement of students from different family backgrounds dialectically, focusing on the important role of parental conflict. External disadvantages in terms of FSES can be compensated for by internal circumstances such as reducing parental conflict, which provides a new perspective on preventing and intervening in college students' engagement in learning.</p>