Adolescent Reports of Demanding and Responsive Features in Helicopter and Overprotective Parenting: Divergence of Correlations With Indicators of Adjustment.

INTRODUCTION: Research collecting data from parents has found that helicopter parenting (HP) and overprotective parenting (OP) of their adolescents can be reformed to identify two features: demanding and responsive overparenting (Ryan et al. 2024). The correlations of these features with other measures were also found to differ, with demanding overparenting uniquely correlated with parent reports of less positive parenting and poorer youth adjustment and with responsive overparenting correlated with more parent-reported positive parenting. We aimed to determine if these features are also found when parenting is reported by youth and to validate the features by correlating them with youth experiences of positive parenting and youth self-reports of their adjustment.

METHODS: Australian adolescents aged 16-19 years (N = 512; 34% boys, 64% girls, 2% nonbinary) completed surveys to report HP, OP, received parental support, psychological distress, decision-making, and coping efficacy. Data were analyzed with confirmatory factor analysis and partial correlations.

RESULTS: Demanding and responsive features of overparenting were confirmed. When controlling for shared variance between the features, demanding overparenting was associated with less but responsive overparenting was associated with more parental support. Demanding overparenting was associated with higher, whereas responsive overparenting was associated with lower, youth psychological distress. Correlations also differed for youth's decision-making and coping.

CONCLUSIONS: The findings are consistent with the idea that measures of intrusive parenting can be differentiated into a more coercive form-referred to as demanding overparenting-from a form that may be in response to tasks and decision-making-referred to as responsive overparenting.