The following is excerpted from an online article posted by StudyFinds
Parents who constantly monitor and control their children’s lives may be setting them up for a mental health crisis in college. New research from McGill University shows that students with overprotective parents experience dramatically higher anxiety levels when facing typical university stressors, while their peers with less controlling parents handle identical challenges with much greater ease.
The researchers found that “higher levels of stressor exposure would be associated with more anxiety symptoms during the transition to college, but that this association would be moderated by parenting experiences.” Their hypothesis proved correct, but with a concerning twist.
The results exposed a troubling interaction pattern. The study found “a significant interaction between parental overprotection and stressor exposure, such that higher parental overprotection and higher levels of recent stressor exposure were associated with more anxiety symptoms.”
Students whose parents had been highly overprotective during childhood showed steep increases in anxiety as college stressors accumulated. Each additional challenge triggered significantly more distress in these students compared to their peers with less controlling parents. The mathematical relationship was stark: students with the most overprotective backgrounds experienced anxiety levels that climbed sharply with each new stressor, while those with less controlling parents showed little change in anxiety regardless of how many challenges they faced.
Source: StudyFinds
https://studyfinds.org/why-being-helicopter-parent-could-derail-childs-college-success/