Helicopter parenting, emotional avoidant coping, mental health, and homophobic stigmatization among emerging adult offspring of lesbian parents

An Investigation of Helicopter Parenting and Interpersonal Conflict in a Competitive College Climate

With declining birth rates, and decreasing family sizes being witnessed around the world, helicopter parenting-characterized by high warmth, high control, and low empowerment-is becoming increasingly common among parents. Parenting styles exert long-term effects on individuals' cognition and behavior, not only in early childhood, but also in adulthood: therefore, within this context, this study explored the underlying influence mechanism of helicopter parenting style on interpersonal conflict, through a survey of 505 Chinese college students. Using multiwave data, our analysis uncovered the mediating roles of psychological entitlement and fear of missing out, as well as the moderating role of a competitive climate. In particular, we found that helicopter parenting enhances interpersonal conflict among college students, by strengthening psychological entitlement and fear of missing out. In addition, the indirect effect of fear of missing out is stronger than that of psychological entitlement. We also found that a competitive climate positively moderates the indirect effect of helicopter parenting on interpersonal conflict among college students through psychological entitlement and fear of missing out, indicating that the negative effects of helicopter parenting are more pronounced in a high competitive climate. These results provide a novel theoretical account of how early parenting styles affect an adult's cognition and behavior. Practically, these results suggest that parents should limit the use of helicopter parenting, and that, while loving and caring for their child, they should allow their child appropriate autonomy. On the other hand, children should strive for positive self-improvement and harmonious peer relationships, to alleviate the negative influence of helicopter parenting.

Long-Term Effects of Family Resilience on the Subjective Well-Being of Offspring in the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study

The current study used a family resilience approach to investigate why some offspring of sexual minority parents thrive despite homophobic stigmatization while others do not. Specifically, the study explored the role of two specific family functioning mechanisms (i.e., during adolescence, disclosure of offspring's personal life to their parents, and family compatibility) in the association between experienced homophobic stigmatization at age 17 and subjective well-being at age 25, among 71 offspring (37 females and 34 males, all cisgender) of the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS). The results showed that, overall, the offspring reported healthy subjective well-being as emerging adults. However, among NLLFS offspring with less family compatibility as adolescents, homophobic stigmatization was related to higher scores on negative affect when they were emerging adults. Psychological counseling that supports adolescent-parent communication may help prevent the negative effect of homophobic stigmatization on the subjective well-being of offspring with sexual minority parents.