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Our lab recently published the first study out of our @SSHRC_CRSH funded project on first-year undergraduates' perspectives on their parents. Our question: Is *helicopter parenting* really a thing? Is it a problem?
In press at Emerging Adulthood:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2167696820901626
1/17
In press at Emerging Adulthood:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2167696820901626
1/17
...and the free-to-all version is available here:
https://carleton.ca/readylab/wp-content/uploads/Howard_et_al___2020___Emerging_Adulthood-2.pdf
2/17
https://carleton.ca/readylab/wp-content/uploads/Howard_et_al___2020___Emerging_Adulthood-2.pdf
2/17
This is an example of a topic that has a consistent presentation in the media: First millennials, and now GenZ, have been largely over-parented and they are incapable of doing things for themselves. Poor mental health, entitled attitudes are a by-product of this phenomenon.
3/17
3/17
All of this is echoed on campus by professors and administrators who corroborate the trend. Many of our colleagues can remember instances of getting phoned by a parent about their kid's grades or parents tagging along to student-only orientation events.
4/17
4/17
The thing is... there are 20,000 undergrads on my campus every year and I don't get the impression that my colleagues are running interference on thousands or even hundreds of overbearing parents. But it's also hard to argue that parents aren't more *involved* these days.
5/17
5/17
If your parents are active partners in your education, does that mean they are preventing you from growing up and solving your own problems? Not necessarily. Parents with degrees of their own may want to be a resource for their kids to pursue their dream degrees.
6/17
6/17
On the other hand, parents who are coercing their kids to pursue degrees that don't interest them may be a problem.
Autonomy support, warmth, age-appropriate involvement, and student motivation may all be part of the picture.
7/17
Autonomy support, warmth, age-appropriate involvement, and student motivation may all be part of the picture.
7/17
What we found in this study was that "helicopter parenting" (based on a 5-item measure...things like "my mom solves my problems for me") wasn't related to anything in a meaningful way. The students who did well their first semester had supportive, warm, involved parents.
8/17
8/17
The students who did less well had less supportive, warm, and involved parents. They also came to campus with more problems like lower SES and more depression symptoms.
9/17
9/17
In fact, the vast majority of students actively disagreed that their parents engaged in any "helicoptering" behaviours.
This supports my hunch that helicopter parenting is just another manifestation of the "kids these days" fallacy
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/10/eaav5916
10/17
This supports my hunch that helicopter parenting is just another manifestation of the "kids these days" fallacy
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/10/eaav5916
10/17
Our primary analysis was preregistered ( https://osf.io/gh8qb/wiki/Detailed%20Analysis%20Plan/), the first-ever preregistered pub from my lab (!) and the first in this sub-field (to my knowledge).
But, we also ran some exploratory tests to see if helicopter parenting was related to anything.
11/17
But, we also ran some exploratory tests to see if helicopter parenting was related to anything.
11/17
Not surprisingly, we got a couple of "hits" (p<.05) after teasing a bunch interactions. In this figure, the solid line shows a negative trend toward poorer academic adjustment for students who reported more helicopter parenting IF they had low intrinsic motivation.
12/17
12/17
But, this is clearly a tiny effect that's driven by a relatively small number of cases reporting any helicopter parenting above the midpoint of the measure.
This is also about the size of effects we've seen elsewhere in this literature so far.
13/17
This is also about the size of effects we've seen elsewhere in this literature so far.
13/17
Some take-home points: Being an active, involved parent when your child exits their teens is very much still a good thing. We must redefine our expectations of parent-child relationships from how they "used to be" to how they are today. Different is not (necessarily) bad.
14/17
14/17
Helicopter parenting also has a serious measurement problem. There are at least 6 instruments out there, with items ranging from "buying plane tickets home for the holidays" to "rewriting my son's essays". I'm not sure the field agrees on what it's trying to measure.
15/17
15/17
Are there some young people out there whose lives are micromanaged by their parents and who aren't getting the opportunities they need to become self-sufficient adults? Sure. But AFAICT, they are so few in number that it's really not worth all the fuss we give it.
16/17
16/17
We will be replicating the results of this paper in a second sample whose data we collected this past year, and tackling measurement issues in an honours thesis project this Fall. I wonder how The Virus will impact the first year experience for students and parents in 2020?
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