Moderating the Helicopter Parenting – Adjustment Link: Examining Unique Roles of Relationship Quality and Attributed Motives

• In Event: Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Helicopter parenting (HP) involves developmentally inappropriate levels of parental assistance and autonomy limiting and is associated with multiple forms of maladjustment in emerging adults (Leung & Busiol, 2016). However, links between HP and maladjustment appear attenuated in the presence of a warm parent-child relationship and amplified in the presence of parental hostility or psychological control (Nelson et al., 2015; Padilla-Walker et al., 2019). Likewise, HP shows weaker links with maladjustment when emerging adults perceive it as positively motivated (Flak et al., 2020). Parent-child relationship quality and attributed motives for HP, while likely related (Fincham et al., 1998), may also uniquely moderate links between HP and maladjustment; the former serves as general context while the latter is a direct attribution about parents’ reasons for engaging in HP. The current study compared the moderating role of positive and negative relational context and attributed motives on links between HP and emerging adult internalizing problems and general self-efficacy.

Participants were 971 college students (Mage = 18.71, SD =.94, 75% women, 60% White) from three disparate U.S. locations. Students separately rated their mothers’ and fathers’ warmth and hostility using the Relationship Interaction Scale (Melby et al., 1993) and their mother’s and fathers’ HP using Luebbe et al.’s (2016) Multidimensional HP scale. Students also indicated the extent to which they believed each of their parents engaged in Luebbe et al.’ (2016) four subtypes of HP for positive (e.g., wants to make my life easier) and negative (e.g., worries I can’t handle things) reasons. Final motives were combined across subtypes. Students additional reported their depressive and anxious symptoms using two DASS-21 subscales (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995). All measures showed excellent reliability (αs = .84 - .93).

Four fully identified path models, with MLR estimation of missing data and participants clustered within collection site, were run using Mplus 8.4 (Muthen & Muthen, 1998-2017). Each path model regressed student depression, anxiety, and self-efficacy on students’ reports of either mothers’ or fathers’ HP, warmth or hostility, positive or negative perceived HP motives, and interactions of motives and relationship quality with HP. Overall maternal HP and perceived motives showed stronger associations with adjustment than did paternal HP and perceived motives, and only maternal warmth and positive motives interacted with HP (see Table 1). Maternal warmth attenuated associations between HP and more depression and anxiety whereas positive motives attenuated associations between HP and lower self-efficacy (see Figure 1).

Findings demonstrate that relationship context may be more relevant to the way HP undermines affective adjustment whereas beliefs about the reason mothers engage in HP may be more relevant for self-cognitions. They also highlight the importance of separately considering mothers’ and fathers’ HP and imply that association between fathers’ HP and adjustment may be less sensitive to relational context or attributions.

Authors

• Wendy M Rote, University of South Florida
  Presenting Author

• Meredith A McGinley, University of Wisconsin - Parkside
  Non-Presenting Author

• Mary B Eberly Lewis, Oakland University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yulia Drung, University of South Florida
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jessica Stevenson, University of South Florida
  Non-Presenting Author