Journal of Social and Personal Relationships

In this study, we examined the relationship between helicopter parenting and first-semester students’ (N = 211) adjustment to college. It was hypothesized that first-semester students who report higher amounts of helicopter parenting would also report higher levels of basic psychological need frustration and lower levels of educational, relational, and psychological functioning. Results of a structural regression model suggested that helicopter parenting had negative indirect associations with educational, relational, and psychological functioning through competence frustration. Helicopter parenting also had a negative indirect association with psychological functioning through autonomy frustration. No significant indirect associations were found through relatedness frustration. Findings from our study highlight the particular importance of both autonomy and competence needs as potential mechanisms through which helicopter parenting might negatively impact students’ optimal functioning and well-being during their transition to college.

Some parents may engage in overparenting, often characterized as overprotection, to ensure their college student’s academic success, yet, findings show that such parental efforts undermine performance. In the present study, we propose that there are interpersonal (parental hostility) and intrapersonal factors (depression and self-regulation) that act as mechanisms through which anxious overprotective parenting leads to diminished emerging adult academic confidence. Emerging adults (N = 967; 75.6% women; M _age = 18.71, SD = .94) who were primarily in their first (60.5%) or second (35.7%) year of college completed measures of academic confidence (academic adjustment, academic efficacy, confidence in graduating), reports of mothers’ and fathers’ anxious overprotective parenting, perceptions of maternal and paternal hostility, depression, and self-regulation. Employing a double mediation structural equation model, results revealed that anxious maternal and paternal overprotective parenting operated through perceived parental hostility to intrapersonal processes (depression, self-regulation) in predicting academic confidence. Maternal and paternal hostility, in particular, was paramount as an interpersonal mediator through which overprotective parenting led to emerging adult intrapersonal and academic outcomes. Although cross-sectional, the current findings are suggestive of the developmental cascade model (Masten & Cicchetti, 2010), whereby diminished family dynamics are associated with internalizing symptoms and self-regulatory issues, which, in turn, are linked with lower academic achievement in children.

The present study sought to examine the underlying mechanisms through which overprotective parenting relates to social anxiety symptoms in adolescents. Specifically, we tested whether the adolescents’ emotion regulation strategies of dysregulation, suppression, and integration, played an intervening role in the association between perceived maternal and paternal overprotection and social anxiety symptoms in adolescents. A sample of 278 Swiss adolescents filled out questionnaires assessing perceived overprotective parenting, social anxiety symptoms and emotion regulation. Results indicated that perceived overprotective parenting was significantly associated with adolescents’ social anxiety symptoms. Furthermore, structural equation modeling analyses indicated that emotional dysregulation, in particular, intervenes in the association between both maternal and paternal overprotection and social anxiety. These findings highlight emotion regulation difficulties as a potential mechanism underlying the association between parental overprotection and social anxiety, suggesting that adolescents’ maladaptive emotion regulation strategies as well as overprotecting parenting could be targeted when treating social anxiety symptoms.

Informed by the goodness-of-fit model, goal theories, and literature on support gaps, this study examines the associations between congruence/discrepancies in parent-adolescent expectations of the adolescent’s educational and career goals and adolescents’ perceived overparenting. Data were collected through a survey of 122 parent-adolescent dyads from four high schools in the U.S. Results from second-order polynomial regression with response surface analysis indicated that parental high educational or career goal expectation alone was not necessarily related to adolescents’ perception of overparenting. Rather, adolescents’ perception of overparenting depended on the congruence/discrepancies in parents’ and adolescents’ expectations. Compared to parent-adolescent congruence in high or low expectations, either direction of expectation discrepancies—either parents’ expectation exceeds adolescents’ expectation, or adolescents’ expectation exceeds their parents—was more likely to be associated with adolescents’ perception of overparenting. Parenting intervention and educational programs should acknowledge that discrepancies in parents’ and adolescents’ educational and career goals could potentially contribute to parental overparenting. Fostering communication and negotiation of goal expectations between parents and adolescents may help reduce the practice of overparenting.

Developmentally inappropriate and excessive parenting can manifest at higher levels in children with Type 1 diabetes (T1D). A child’s age, level of T1D training, and time since T1D diagnosis have been associated with higher levels of developmentally excessive parenting (i.e., overparenting), lower rates of autonomy granting, and lower rates of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). Utilizing a structural equation model, the present study examined these associations with data collected from a medical specialty camp (MSC) serving 262 youth with T1D. Respondents primarily identified as female (59.5%), were an average 13.83 years old, and had attended the MSC for an average of 3.72 years. Respondents had an average of 5.95 years since T1D diagnosis, an average of 2.62 years utilizing a CGM, reported checking their CGM data an average of 12.75 times per day, and an average of 12.02 parent CGM checks per day. As youth age increased, rates of overparenting decreased. Similarly, youth with more MSC experience reported lower rates of overparenting. Contrary to the study hypotheses, overparenting had a positive effect on autonomy granting. Finally, a negative relation was found between years with T1D and average CGM checks, consistent with the broader T1D literature where adherence to diabetes management tends to decline in parallel with youth experience level managing T1D.

Background. While there is ample theoretical and empirical interest in overparenting, little is known about how overparenting of adolescents operates in everyday family life. This study describes the development and validation of a novel instrument to assess overparenting with Experience Sampling Methods – The Momentary Overparenting (MOP) scale. Methods. Following 143 (Belgian and Dutch) adolescents for 7 subsequent days, we measured overparenting (i.e., worry, interference, and unnecessary help), autonomy support and psychological control 5 to 6 times per day. Using multilevel structural equation modeling on 1865 parent-adolescent interactions, we investigated the scale’s psychometric properties: within-family and between-family reliability, convergent and divergent validity. Results. Overparenting was characterized by both stable differences between families (46%), as well as dynamic fluctuations within families over time (54% of the variance). The MOP could reliably assess such real-time dynamics in overparenting. Momentary assessments correlated meaningfully with established instruments for overparenting at the between-family level. Within families, adolescents experienced interactions with more overparenting as more psychologically controlling and less autonomy supportive. Between families, overparenting correlated negatively with mothers’ autonomy support and positively with mothers’ psychological control. Conclusion. Worry, interference, and unnecessary help may be important expressions of overparenting in everyday family life – which can now be reliably measured from moment-to-moment as a distinct parenting construct.

Parents play an important role in scaffolding autonomy and independence as their children transition to adulthood. In the digital age, mobile phones allow for increased connection at this important developmental transition, but we know little about the extent to which digital connection may help (i.e., through developmentally appropriate support) or hinder (i.e., through intrusiveness or helicopter parenting) emerging adult (EA) autonomy development. We tested whether digital parent-EA interactions tapping engagement, monitoring, and responsiveness were associated with EA perceptions of parental autonomy support in a sample of 238 college students (M _age = 19.85) who contributed all text messages exchanged with their parents over 2 weeks. Results indicate that many dimensions of parent-EA text message interactions are unrelated to perceived parental autonomy support, but those that did emerge point towards a potentially maladaptive role of overparenting in associations with less perceived parental autonomy support. Results underscore that, for most EAs, parental text messaging is not likely to be perceived as autonomy inhibiting, but that for a small minority of parent-EA dyads, intense levels of digital connection with parents may be associated with perceived autonomy inhibition.