Helicopter Parenting Versus Autonomy Supportive Parenting? A Latent Class Analysis of Parenting Among Emerging Adults and Their Psychological and Relational Well-Being

Abstract

We aim to identify typologies of parenting among emerging adults and describe how parenting typologies are related to their life satisfaction, self-efficacy, and parent-child relationship. Using a three-step latent class approach, we analyzed 472 mother-child and 426 father-child relations. We recruited the students from a private university in Upstate New York. We confirmed four parenting classes among emerging adult mothers and fathers: helicopter parenting, autonomy supportive parenting, uninvolved parenting, and parenting that combined characteristics of helicopter parenting and autonomy supportive parenting. We found that emerging adults whose parents were in the autonomy supportive parenting class reported higher scores on life satisfaction, self-efficacy, and their relationship with their parents than those in the helicopter parenting and uninvolved parenting classes. In addition, we found that emerging adults in the combined parenting class reported higher scores for life satisfaction and their relationship with their parents than those in the autonomy supportive parenting class.

The Mediating Role of Perfectionism and the Need for Social Approval in the Effect of Helicopter Parenting on Psychological Well-Being in Emerging Adults

“…Some research results have shown that there are emerging adults who view helicopter parents as emotionally supportive and express satisfaction with their lives (Fingerman et al, 2012 ;Padilla-Walker & Nelson, 2012). However, most of the studies have focused on the decreasing well-being of emerging adults of helicopter parenting (Hwang & Jung, 2022;Schiffrin et al, 2019;Yam & Kumcagiz, 2021) and life satisfaction (Gençdoğan & Gülbahçe, 2021;Schiffrin. et al, 2014;Yam & Kumcagiz, 2021) revealed that they are related.…”

Are filial eldercare norms related to intergenerational solidarity with older parents? A typological developmental approach.

“…To estimate latent classes of intergenerational solidarity, we dichotomized all solidarity variables for the following reasons. First, previous studies have suggested that categorical indicators create better class separation in interpretation than do ordinal or continuous indicators (Hwang & Jung, 2021; Vasilenko, 2021). Second, when ordinal variables are strongly skewed (e.g., associational and functional solidarity), dichotomous transformations are likely to provide better specification of parameter estimates (DeCoster et al, 2009; Macia & Wickham, 2019).…”

Profiles of Parenting Autonomy Support and Control: A person-Centered Approach in Students’ Adjustment to the Transition to Middle School

“…They show that students with parents who offered the lowest autonomy to children with a moderate level of control had higher levels of mathematics achievement than their peers had. Hwang and Jung (2021) used an identical analytic approach and identified four patterns of parenting combining different levels of helicopter parenting and autonomy supportive parenting among emerging adults. Emerging adults belonging to the pattern combining low helicopter parenting/high autonomy supportive reported higher self-efficacy and parent-child relationship than those belonging to the other patterns.…”

“…Although other studies used as we did the paradigm of support for autonomy/psychological controlling practices to cluster parenting profiles, the parenting dimensions considered were usually different. They sometimes focus on the communication in the family (Romm & Metzger, 2021), emotional warmth, monitoring of child and reaction in face of child' anxiety (Beato et al, 2016), or authoritative and authoritarian parenting styles (McKinney et al, 2018), etc. In other studies participants were emerging adults, thus much older than are our participants (Howard et al, 2020;Hwang & Jung, 2021;McKinney et al, 2018), and participants' perceptions of their father and mother were combined to define profiles. Finally, parental control, the display of love, care and warmth embody different meanings and they are performed differently in the cultural contexts of Western countries and those of East Asian countries (Shi & Tan, 2020).…”