Abstract
Adolescents’ and parents’ similar and/or divergent perceptions of parental behaviors may be associated with youth-parent relationship quality. This study examined adolescents’ and mothers’ perceptions of helicopter parenting, and whether (dis)agreements between these views were associated with perceived conflict and support. Participants were 349 late adolescents (MT1age = 18.20; 39.8% male) and their mothers (MT1age = 49.10) in Hong Kong who completed four assessments over one year. Results suggested that youth-mother agreements regarding helicopter parenting were positively associated with both conflict and support. Additionally, discrepancies between their reports were positively related to adolescent-reported conflict. These findings highlight the importance of examining multiple perspectives when studying helicopter parenting dynamics, and suggest both positive and negative aspects of these practices in Chinese families.
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Acknowledgements
Ka Ching (Charlotte) Yu served as a Research Assistant for this project. The authors thank Anthony R. Abordo for assistance with scale translations. The data and material analyzed for the current report is not publicly available but may be requested from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Funding
The work described in this article was fully supported by a General Research Fund grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project CUHK 14620219), awarded to Dr. Skyler T. Hawk.
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Y.W. conceived the study, performed the statistical analysis, wrote and edited the manuscript; S.T.H. coordinated, conceived, and designed the study, participated in interpretations of the data, and participated in drafting and editing the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Ethical approval for this study was obtained from the institutional review board of the corresponding author’s university (SBRE-18-366).
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Wang, Y., Hawk, S.T. Adolescent-Mother Agreements and Discrepancies in Reports of Helicopter Parenting: Associations with Perceived Conflict and Support. J. Youth Adolescence 52, 2480–2493 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-023-01831-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-023-01831-5