Overparenting is associated with perfectionism in parents of young adults.

Abstract

Overparenting involves the enactment of developmentally inappropriate parenting behaviors, most commonly to late adolescents and young adults who are otherwise capable of managing the tasks and challenges that confront them. Although previous research has documented an abundance of what appears to be deleterious consequences of these parenting practices for young adults, there is a pressing need for more insight into why parents enact this practice. The present research is designed to test the prediction that overparenting is associated with parental perfectionism. Study 1 involved 302 parents of young adult children, and Study 2 included 290 young adultparent dyads. In both studies, parents completed reports of overparenting and perfectionism. In Study 2, young adult children also completed reports of helicopter parenting, anxious parenting, and parental conditional regard. The results revealed a strong and consistent positive association between parental perfectionism and overparenting. Study 2 also indicated that overparenting is associated with child perceptions of helicopter parenting and anxious parenting, but not with parental conditional regard.

The Development and Validation of the Overparenting Scale – Short Form

“…Four secondary data sets were used to shorten the overparenting scale: DEV1 ( n = 653; Segrin et al, 2013), DEV2 ( n = 477; Segrin et al, 2015), DEV3 ( n = 302; Segrin et al, 2020 study 1), and DEV4 ( n = 290; Segrin et al, 2020 study 2). Two additional data sets were collected for this study to cross-validate the short form: VAL1 ( n = 256) and VAL2 ( n = 402).…”

“…The concept of overparenting, colloquially referred to as “helicopter parenting,” has received increasing research attention over the past 15 years in the literature on emerging adulthood (e.g., Munich & Munich, 2009; Nelson, 2010; Segrin et al, 2020). Overparenting refers to the application of developmentally inappropriate parenting to offspring who are otherwise capable of doing for themselves what their parents do for them (Segrin et al, 2012).…”

“…The overparenting scale (Segrin et al, 2012) is one of the uncommon measures of overparenting in that it assesses the construct from the vantage point of parents with items such as “I try to solve problems for my child before s/he even experiences them” and “When my child gets anxious I will say things to calm him/her down.” This scale has proven useful to the study of overparenting and the definition of its nomological network (e.g., Jiao & Segrin, 2021b; Rousseau & Scharf, 2018; Segrin et al, 2020). However, one of the limitations of the instrument is that its length (34 items) generates considerable respondent burden (e.g., Galesic & Bosnjak, 2009).…”

Quand le parent veut trop bien faire : état de la littérature sur le phénomène de surprotection parentale

“…En effet, les résultats de l'étude de Coplan et al (2009) indiquent que parmi les 285 mères interrogées, celles caractérisées par un niveau de névrosisme élevé avaient plus tendance à se montrer surprotectrices avec leurs enfants âgés d'environ 6 ans selon une échelle élaborée par les chercheurs. Cette attitude surprotectrice se retrouverait également chez les parents particulièrement perfectionnistes (Segrin et al, 2020). De même, plusieurs études ont mis en évidence la place de l'anxiété dans la surprotection parentale (p.ex., Clarke et al, 2013 ;Segrin et al, 2013).…”

Practical advice for mentoring and supporting faculty colleagues in STEM fields: Views from mentor and mentee perspectives

“…A flip side of providing active mentoring is the potential for "over-mentoring". Similar to overparenting (9), over-mentoring comes with good intentions and stems from the heart felt desire to ensure that junior colleagues do not fail or repeat mistakes of the past. It is important to ask yourself as a mentor how much advice is sufficient to empower a junior faculty to step into the lane without paralyzing them.…”