Helicopter Parenting not Good for College-Goers

Maintaining a healthy and friendly relationship between parents and offspring is crucial for the child's healthy development and overall success in life. Emphasizing this point, a new study found that parents who involve too much in their children's life, generally known as helicopter parents, put their children at a higher risk of depression, thus making them less satisfied with their life.

For the study, Holly Schiffrin and colleagues from the University of Mary Washington in the United States included nearly 300 American undergraduate students, aged between 18 and 23 years. All the youngsters participated in an online survey and answered questions related to their mothers' parenting behavior and views on their self-sufficiency, capabilities and ability to mingle with people.

Researchers noted that over-involvement in a child's life, what parents often justify as support, actually affects the overall quality of their life.

"You expect parents with younger kids to be very involved but the problem is that these children are old enough to look after themselves and their parents are not backing off," Schiffrin, an associate professor of psychology, told Reuters. "To find parents so closely involved with their college lives, contacting their tutors and running their schedules, is something new and on the increase. It does not allow independence and the chance to learn from mistakes."

The study has been published in Springer's Journal of Child and Family Studies.

Previous studies have shown the negative impact of over-parenting.  In August 2012, a team of researchers from the Centre for Emotional Health at Macquarie University found children of helicopter parents were at a higher risk of developing anxiety later in life.

In September 2012, a study published in the Journal of Adolescence showed that helicopter parents or parents with a tendency to over-involve or overprotect their children, actually make them less engaged in school, also making them skip class or submit assignments late.