Parent-child relationship quality and emotional adjustment among college students: The role of parental financial support

Abstract

Many emerging adults experience increases in well-being as they exit adolescence, but college students are at particular risk for emotional adjustment problems, including depression and anxiety. Although receiving financial support from parents may reduce stress and aid emotional adjustment, not all parents are able to provide financial support. Maintaining high-quality relationships with parents may be particularly important for emotional adjustment in these instances. The present study examined whether the quality of parent-emerging adult relationships differed depending on level of parental financial support, and whether parental financial support moderated associations between relationship quality and emotional adjustment. Participants were 260 college students who completed questionnaires during their first and fourth year of college about the quality of their relationships with mothers and fathers, depressive and anxiety symptoms, and parental financial support. On average, parent-child relationships were high-quality, especially when parents provided more financial support. Furthermore, high-quality relationships with parents were related to fewer depressive and anxiety symptoms 3 years later for female students, especially when they received less financial support. However, high-quality relationships along with greater financial support was related to increased anxiety among male students. Results may help colleges and universities developing parent programming understand the nuanced implications of parental support for student mental health.

Prevalence of and Factors Associated With Depressive Symptoms Among College Students in Wuhan, China During the Normalization Stage of COVID-19 Prevention and Control

“…Even though the company of parents was a primary support source during the pandemic, which played an important role in reducing the risk of depressive symptoms among students (31,52), the quality of company might have had a further impact on their mental health (53). We found that less support from family and disharmonious relationships with parents were risk factors for depressive symptoms among students, which was in line with previous findings (12,54,55). The results provided us with some insight into preventing depressive symptoms among college students during a pandemic event.…”

Application of data mining technology in college mental health education

“…Then, in the behavior association analysis module, combined with the clustering results and the original student data, combined the student behavior characteristics, and used the association rule mining technology to analyze, extract the frequent patterns between different behaviors, and find the association relationship between different behaviors. Then, the results of the student division module and the behavior association analysis module are displayed in the application layer through visualization technology for users to observe and analyze ( Lindell et al, 2021 ; Berman et al, 2022 ).…”

“I Definitely Wouldn’t Have Been Able to Make it Through College Without My Dad’s Money”: American College Students’ Reflections Regarding Caregiver Financial Support

“…An absence of parents' monetary contributions may be due to an overall lack of available income, or simply because a parent believes the student should be financially independent. This presence or absence of financial support has an impact on parent-student relationships, as college students who report receiving more financial support from parents also report more positive relationships with parents (Lindell et al, 2020).…”