Harmful or Helpful?: Helicopter Parenting Among Latina/o Emerging Adults
Abstract
When young adults enter college, parents sometimes have difficulties relinquishing control over their child. Parents might continue to be overinvolved and oversolicitous in their child’s life while in college, which is referred to as helicopter parenting (HP). HP tends to be developmentally inappropriate for college students, who often seek autonomy and independence during this time of emerging adulthood. Controlling parenting in general has been linked to the impostor phenomenon, or impostorism, which involves distressed feelings of being intellectually fraudulent despite being highly capable. However, from the perspective of Latina/o emerging adults (those between 18 and 25 years old), parental control tends to be more normalized and positively perceived compared to emerging adults in more individualistic cultures. Latina/o emerging adults’ sense of familism (i.e., obligation and prioritizing of family relationships) may buffer the negative outcomes related to HP because of shared family values between the parent and child. Thus, we hypothesized that the association between HP and impostorism would be moderated by familism in Latina/o emerging adults. That is, the association between HP and impostorism would be weaker for Latina/o emerging adults with greater endorsement of familism than those with lower endorsement. A hierarchical multiple regression was conducted to test this hypothesis.
Faculty Sponsors
Dr. Aya Shigeto
Project Type
Event
Location
Alvin Shermany Library
Start Date
4-5-2019 1:00 PM
End Date
4-5-2019 5:00 PM
Harmful or Helpful?: Helicopter Parenting Among Latina/o Emerging Adults
Alvin Shermany Library
When young adults enter college, parents sometimes have difficulties relinquishing control over their child. Parents might continue to be overinvolved and oversolicitous in their child’s life while in college, which is referred to as helicopter parenting (HP). HP tends to be developmentally inappropriate for college students, who often seek autonomy and independence during this time of emerging adulthood. Controlling parenting in general has been linked to the impostor phenomenon, or impostorism, which involves distressed feelings of being intellectually fraudulent despite being highly capable. However, from the perspective of Latina/o emerging adults (those between 18 and 25 years old), parental control tends to be more normalized and positively perceived compared to emerging adults in more individualistic cultures. Latina/o emerging adults’ sense of familism (i.e., obligation and prioritizing of family relationships) may buffer the negative outcomes related to HP because of shared family values between the parent and child. Thus, we hypothesized that the association between HP and impostorism would be moderated by familism in Latina/o emerging adults. That is, the association between HP and impostorism would be weaker for Latina/o emerging adults with greater endorsement of familism than those with lower endorsement. A hierarchical multiple regression was conducted to test this hypothesis.
