Overprotective Parenting Linked To Higher Anxiety In First Year University Students

First-year undergraduates who grew up pinch overly cautious aliases controlling parents thin to acquisition accrued worry erstwhile faced pinch stresses associated pinch nan modulation to university, researchers from McGill University and nan University of California (Los Angeles) person found.

The researchers asked 240 first-year McGill students to capable retired respective questionnaires successful nan first six weeks of nan autumn semester. The questionnaires utilized well-established scales to measurement nan parenting style they were raised with, existent worry symptoms and different types of stressors they encountered during nan modulation to university, including lodging difficulties, individual nonaccomplishment aliases moreover life-threatening situations.

The squad past looked astatine associations among those variables, focusing connected really nan narration betwixt vulnerability to stressors and existent experiences of worry correlated pinch different parental behaviours.

"We recovered that students whose parents are very protective acquisition a stronger nexus betwixt vulnerability to stressful events and feelings of anxiety," explained Lidia Panier, nan study's lead author. Panier, a PhD student successful nan Department of Psychology, is simply a personnel of nan Translational Research successful Affect and Cognition (TRAC) Lab led by Professor Anna Weinberg, nan study's elder writer and main investigator.

While cautioning that their study exemplary does not let them to reason that overprotective parenting causes worry successful children, nan researchers statement that specified a conclusion would beryllium accordant pinch nan existing assemblage of research.

Previous findings show that overprotective parenting leads to insecure attachment and poorer emotion regulation, some of which are linked to greater vulnerability to anxiety."

Lidia Panier, study's lead author

She said she believes overprotective parenting successful puerility and adolescence whitethorn not beryllium adjuvant successful school kids really to accommodate to stressful situations successful nan agelong term. At nan aforesaid time, she noted that nan overprotective parenting mightiness successful immoderate cases beryllium a consequence to a child's anxious behaviours: parents mightiness create watchful attitudes aliases controlling habits to protect a kid who often appears fearful.

"These interpretations are not mutually exclusive," explained Panier. "A bi-directional move wherever kid behaviours power parenting, which past affects kid development, is besides well-supported successful nan literature."

The interrogator said she hopes that early studies tin explain these links, arsenic good arsenic research ways to amended support young adults experiencing anxiety, particularly during cardinal transitional periods.

"It would beryllium absorbing to spot if these patterns tin alteration complete time, specified arsenic whether supportive adjacent relationships successful assemblage tin thief young adults go much resilient, moreover if they knowledgeable overprotective parenting," she said.