Advancing understanding of overparenting and child adjustment: Mechanisms,methodology,context,and development

Shin and Adame

“Helicopter parenting” is a familiar term in the overparenting literature that encompasses a broad set of parenting strategies and behaviors described as overprotective or overcontrolling (e.g., calling to track a student’s schoolwork or whereabouts, intervening in roommate issues or grade disputes). Although substantial evidence indicates the potential negative effects of helicopter parenting on college student outcomes, we know less about the potential mechanisms through which helicopter parenting may compromise college students’ adjustment. Shin and Adame apply self-determination theory to help aid our understanding of the potentially detrimental effects of helicopter parenting on first-semester college students’ adjustment to college in terms of functioning in educational, relational, and psychological domains. The first semester in college is a critical transition point, and college students’ adjustment at this transition point predicts subsequent educational and social outcomes, making understanding the role of helicopter parenting in first-semester adjustment especially important.

Shin and Adame used cross-sectional survey data from 211 full-time undergraduate students (M = 18.4 years, SD = .8, range = 18–23) who were enrolled in their first semester of college in Fall 2021 at two large U.S. universities. 58% of students identified as cisgender women, 39% identified as cisgender men, and 3% identified as transgender or nonbinary. Regarding race and ethnicity, 67% of students identified as White, 10% as Asian, 8% as Middle Eastern, 9% as Latina/o/x or Hispanic, 4% as Black, and the remainder did not report any racial or ethnic identification. Students reported on their parents’ parenting behaviors, feelings of basic psychological need frustration (i.e., competence frustration, autonomy frustration, and relatedness frustration), and their perceived quality of college adjustment. Structural regression model analyses with tests of indirect effects revealed that greater helicopter parenting was associated with lower educational, relational, and psychological functioning indirectly through greater competence frustration. In addition, greater helicopter parenting was also associated with poorer psychological functioning via greater autonomy frustration.

Results from this study indicate that helicopter parenting may not only compromise college students’ adjustment by thwarting their psychological need satisfaction, but also by directly frustrating those needs. Understanding the mechanisms via which helicopter parenting may subvert college students’ adjustment can help inform interventions to reduce and/or lessen the negative consequences of helicopter parenting at the critical transition to college.

Eberly Lewis et al

Driven to ensure their children’s academic success and career prospects, some parents resort to overprotective and developmentally inappropriate strategies (e.g., privacy invasion, premature problem-solving, infantilizing). However, this overprotection likely only contributes to lower academic and social adjustment to college. Eberly Lewis and colleagues sought to uncover mechanisms via which overprotection by both mothers and fathers may contribute to emerging adults’ poorer academic confidence.

Using self-report data from a sample of 967 college students across three U.S. universities (two in the Midwest and one in the South) with a cross-sectional design, Eberly Lewis and colleagues investigated whether intrapersonal (i.e., emerging adults’ elevated depressive symptoms and lower self-regulation) and interpersonal (i.e., parental hostility) factors would mediate the association between parental overprotection and emerging adult children’s academic confidence. Of the college student participants, the average age was 18.71 years (SD = .94, range = 17–22); 75.6% were women; 60.3% were from families with two biological married parents, most were from middle-class families of origin (with annual median household income of $75,000–$99,999), and their racial and ethnic distributions were 59% White, 8.3% Black/African American, 10.5% Hispanic/Latino, 7.5% Asian/Pacific Islander, 3.9% Native American, 9.9% multiracial, and .5% other. College students reported on maternal and paternal overprotective parenting, maternal and paternal hostility, their own depressive symptoms and self-regulation, and their academic adjustment, academic efficacy, and confidence in graduation. A double mediation model revealed that perceived greater maternal and paternal anxious overprotective parenting was associated with elevated depressive symptoms and lower self-regulation in emerging adults, which were predictive of lower academic confidence.

Eberly Lewis and colleagues conclude that parental hostility, characterized by belittling, criticism, and verbal abuse, likely acts as a mechanism through which parental overprotection contributes to reduced autonomy in children, later manifesting as poor adjustment to college during an important transition period. Results were consistent with a developmental cascade, as controlling parental behavior and hostile family dynamics were associated with greater emerging adult psychological difficulties, and in turn with poorer emerging adult outcomes. Mothers were perceived as engaging in greater overprotective parenting than fathers, and mothers’ overprotective parenting appeared to affect perceptions of fathers as well as those of mothers, indicating its broader potential implications for the family system. Given that college represents a time during emerging adulthood where individuals experience opportunities for increased autonomy and personal growth, Eberly Lewis and colleagues’ research demonstrates the need for overprotective mothers and fathers to shed controlling and hostile behavior as emerging adults depend on social-emotional support to flourish socially and academically.

The next three papers in the special issue take the critical step of extending research on overparenting from emerging adulthood to adolescence, when it may be no less impactful but is more rarely studied. Key innovations in this set of studies include examining overparenting by mothers and fathers in relation to adolescent social anxiety, considering the role of discrepancies between parents’ and adolescents’ expectations in overparenting, and reexamining assumptions about overparenting in the context of youth chronic illness.

Mathijs et al

Although studies have shown that overparenting contributes to emerging adult children’s social-emotional maladjustment (see Cui et al., 2022 for a review), the effects on adolescents are rarely studied. In this study, Mathijs and colleagues examined whether overprotective parenting in adolescence contributes to the development of social anxiety. Social anxiety is characterized as an excessive, persistent fear of being judged or scrutinized by others in social situations and is associated with poor well-being, relational difficulties, and emotion dysregulation. Mathijs and colleagues sought to increase precision regarding the role of family dynamics in social anxiety by examining whether intrapersonal deficits in emotion regulation may explain associations between greater overprotective parenting by mothers and fathers and elevated adolescent social anxiety.

Using data from a sample of 278 Swiss adolescents ranging in age from 14 to 17 years in a cross-sectional design, Mathijs and colleagues examined the intervening role of emotion regulation in the association between overprotective parenting and social anxiety. The sample was recruited from two schools in the French speaking part of Switzerland. The average age was 14.96 years (SD = .74), 51.1% were female, 72.3% lived with both parents, and 67.1% were of the Swiss nationality. Adolescent participants completed questionnaires on social anxiety symptom severity, perceived overprotective parenting by mothers and fathers, and emotion regulation across three domains—dysregulation (lack of control over one’s anxious feelings), integration (awareness of emotion and capacity to regulate one’s emotion), and suppression (ignoring and inhibiting expression of one’s emotions). A structural equation modeling framework was used to model relations among perceived overprotective parenting, emotion regulation, and social anxiety. Emotion dysregulation mediated the association between overparenting and social anxiety, as adolescents with overprotective mothers and fathers tended to feel overwhelmed or out of control when faced with anxious feelings, which was in turn associated with greater social anxiety symptoms. Emotion suppression also mediated the association between overparenting and social anxiety, but only for maternal (not paternal) overprotective parenting.

This study added to the current literature by using a sample of adolescents from Switzerland, separating the dimensions of emotion regulation (dysregulation, suppression, and integration), and examining maternal and paternal overprotection separately. These results suggest that overprotective parenting, as a reaction to adolescent children’s expression of negative emotion, may inhibit adolescent children’s development of certain effective emotion regulation strategies. In turn, adolescents may become more dysregulated during stressful situations or rely heavily on suppression, which could exacerbate social anxiety symptoms. Targeting overprotective parenting and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies may be a promising avenue for treating social anxiety in adolescents.

Hong and Cui

To promote educational and occupational attainment, parents often engage in overparenting behaviors, including overinvolvement, excessive assistance, and demandingness, which have been associated with maladaptive child development across socioemotional, relational, and career domains. However, high parental expectations have also been historically linked to favorable child outcomes. According to person-environment fit theories, greater congruence between external expectations and demands (e.g., parent’s expectations) and personal goals (e.g., adolescent’s expectations) is more likely to produce favorable outcomes. Therefore, Hong and Cui consider whether the potential incongruence between parent and adolescent expectations in educational and career goals is a driving force behind adolescents’ perceptions of overparenting, rather than high parental expectations alone.

To this end, Hong and Cui recruited 122 racially and ethnically diverse parent-adolescent dyads from four high schools in a Southeastern U.S. region with a cross-sectional design. Of the adolescent participants, 57.4% were female (37.7% were male, 4.9% did not indicate their gender or did not identify as male or female); the average age was 15.23 years (SD = 1.11, range = 12–18); 76.1% lived with both biological parents; and the racial and ethnic composition was 47.2% European American, 47.2% African American, 2.8% Asian American, .9% American Indian/Alaska Native, 1.9% Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islanders, and 16.4% Hispanic/Latinx. Of the parent participants, 89.2% were mothers; 56.7% were in their 40s; and the majority reported a college degree (40%) or higher (23.3%) with the median income category $75,000–$99,999. Reports from both adolescent participants and their parents were collected independently; adolescents reported on their own educational and career expectations, whereas their parents (89% mothers) reported their expectations for their children. Adolescents reported their perceptions of overparenting. Results from second-order polynomial regression with response surface analyses revealed that adolescents did not perceive higher levels of overparenting if their parents’ expectations and their own expectations were congruent (even when both parents’ and adolescents’ expectations were high). Rather than high parental expectations alone, greater incongruence of parent-adolescent expectations regarding the adolescent’s educational and career goals was associated with greater perceived overparenting.

The unique strengths of this study include using a dyadic approach and advanced statistical analyses with a diverse sample of adolescents. These findings may be explained by adolescents’ as well as parents’ attributions, as dyads with low congruent expectations may require increased parental involvement to ensure children meet certain expectations, whereas dyads with high congruent expectations may include parents who are content with their children’s expectations or their ability to meet expectations, thus not requiring additional involvement. Interventions to foster parent-child communication and goal negotiation may help reduce perceived overparenting in dyads with incongruent expectations.

Gagnon et al

Many studies of overparenting assume that—however well-intentioned—overparenting is universally detrimental to children’s development. Few studies have considered that overparenting may be necessary or even beneficial in some contexts. One such context involves youth chronic illness, which provides unique challenges to children’s development and places significant responsibility on parents to manage and protect their children’s health. Gagnon and colleagues examined overparenting within the context of one of the most common chronic illnesses affecting youth under 20 years of age—Type 1 Diabetes (T1D).

Gagnon and colleagues used data from 262 youth with T1D (M = 13.83 years, SD = 2.01, range = 10–18) enrolled in a medical specialty camp in the U.S. (Georgia). Such camps provide youth with a supportive community that helps them build knowledge and skills to enable their more independent management of their chronic illness. 60% of participating campers identified as female, 39% as male, and 1% as nonbinary. 64% of participants identified as White, 17% as Black/African American, 9% as multi-racial, 5% as Hispanic or Latino, and 2% as Asian. Youth reported the frequency of checking their continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) data and the frequency with which their parents checked their CGM data while they were at camp. Youth also reported on their parents’ overparenting behavior, including excessive control, excessive support, and excessive problem solving, and their parents’ autonomy-granting behavior.

Study findings revealed both expected and unexpected associations among youth maturation, overparenting, and CGM checking frequency. Older campers, and those with more medical specialty camp experience, reported lower rates of overparenting. In addition, youth with greater time since their T1D diagnosis reported that they themselves and their parents checked their CGMs less often. Youth who checked their own CGMs more often reported greater parental autonomy granting. In contrast to the authors’ hypotheses, higher youth-reported overparenting was related to greater youth-reported autonomy granting. Results highlight the complexity of conceptualizing overparenting, particularly in the context of youth chronic illness. Overparenting behaviors may be perceived by parents or youth as expected or necessary for children living with a chronic illness, and therefore may not be associated with other aspects of parenting behavior—or youth outcomes—in expected ways.

The final two papers in this special issue highlight methodological innovations (i.e., experience sampling, coding of real text messages exchanged between parents and children) to examine how adolescents and emerging adults experience overparenting in their daily lives, thereby lending greater precision and ecological validity to the study of overparenting.

Luijk et al

Most existing overparenting research is at the between-family level, such that differences in typical levels of overparenting between families are examined in relation to differences between families in some aspect of adolescent or emerging adult development. Moreover, little overparenting research considers how overparenting may fluctuate over time. Therefore, how children experience and perceive overparenting in their everyday lives, and how overparenting varies over time, remain relatively unknown.

To examine changes in overparenting within a family over time, Luijk and colleagues developed the Momentary Overprotection Scale (MOP). The MOP utilizes experience sampling methods to assess changes in perceived overparenting multiple times a day. The sample included 143 Belgian (n = 71) and Dutch (n = 72) adolescents. The average age of the overall sample was 15.8 years (SD = 1.8, range = 11–18), 64% were female (33% male, 3% did not indicate their gender or did not identify as male or female), and about half of the adolescents followed a higher educational track (an approximation of social and intellectual standing). Participants were instructed to complete five or six micro-questionnaires a day for seven consecutive days through a smartphone app. The final version of the MOP consisted of three items that asked the adolescent to report parental perceived interference, unnecessary worry, and unnecessary help.

Multilevel confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the MOP showed good psychometric properties (i.e., reliability, convergent validity, divergent validity) at the within- and between-family levels. Higher MOP scores were also associated with lower perceived momentary autonomy support and higher perceived momentary psychological control. This study contributes to the current literature by using a sample of adolescents and experience sampling methods to evaluate a unique momentary overparenting scale. Through momentary assessments such as the one developed by Luijk and colleagues, overparenting can now be measured as a real-time dynamic process, rather than only as a stable style. In future research, tracking fluctuations in overparenting over time may highlight important antecedents and consequences of overparenting and how within-family changes in overparenting contribute to adolescent well-being and development.

Brown et al

Technological innovations that allow for instant communication between parents and children, such as text messaging, may be important for parents and children to connect across a distance as children become emerging adults and transition to college. However, such instant communication may enable some parents to engage in greater overparenting, thereby compromising their emerging adult’s autonomy. The role of technology such as text messaging in overparenting has been studied rarely. Notably, the child’s perception of the parent’s communications may be paramount; frequent digital connection between emerging adults and their parents could be perceived as intrusive and overcontrolling but could alternatively be perceived as helpful and supportive.

Taking a highly innovative and ecologically valid approach to studying overparenting, Brown and colleagues used real text-messaging data from a sample of 238 college students at a Southeastern U.S. university. Participants were on average 19.85 years old (SD = 1.39), and 61% identified as female and 39% identified as male. In addition, 57% identified as White, 21% as Black, 7% as Hispanic/Latinx, 5% as Asian, 3% as Multiracial, and 1% as American Indian or Alaska Native. The modal level of parental education was a college degree. These students agreed to surrender all their text messages from the last 2 weeks, and the researchers coded the dyadic text exchanges between each student and their mother and/or father during the previous two-week period. The codes captured engagement, monitoring, and responsiveness on the part of parents, as well as disclosure and support-seeking on the part of emerging adult children. College students also reported on their perceptions of parental autonomy support.

Results of structural equation modeling analyses showed that most dimensions of parent-child text-message communication, including frequency, were unrelated to emerging adults’ perceptions of parental autonomy support. However, emerging adults perceived their parents as less supportive of their autonomy when they experienced more maternal advice provision and greater father control via text message. Notably, results emphasize that overparenting is a dyadic phenomenon—emerging adults who sought more support from and engaged in more digital disclosures with their mothers via text messages perceived their mothers as less supportive of their autonomy. Interestingly, fathers’ support provision appeared to be perceived differently than mothers’; when fathers provided more support via text message, emerging adults perceived them as more supportive of their autonomy. Sensitivity analyses indicated that the deleterious effects of overparenting on emerging adults’ perceptions of parental autonomy support were concentrated among parent-child dyads with the highest frequency of communication via text message. In sum, results suggest that for most emerging adults, even relatively frequent text messaging may not be perceived as overparenting in and of itself, but for a minority of emerging adults, intense text-messaging with parents could be problematic for autonomy development.