Broadening the Narrative of Helicopter Parenting
A special issue of Social Sciences (ISSN 2076-0760). This special issue belongs to the section "Family Studies".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 June 2023) | Viewed by 339
Special Issue Editors
Interests: parenting; parent-child relationships; adolescent autonomy development; family decision-making; overparenting; information management; inductive discipline and parental psychological control
Interests: privacy, disclosure, and secrecy in close relationships; emotion communication, emotion regulation, and empathy; social networking behavior and media use; adolescence and sexual development
Interests: developmental psychology; adolescent prosocial and moral development; interpersonal and relational correlates of adolescent prosocial behavior; the nature and dynamics of parent and adolescent relationships with a particular emphasis on prosocial behavior; the development of prosocial morality among adolescents; side interest in attachment and parent separation anxiety from adolescents during the transition to college
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Research on helicopter parenting, or parenting that provides youth with developmentally inappropriate levels of oversight and assistance, has proliferated within the last decade. This work has largely presented a narrative that helicopter parenting is a problematic practice that undermines youth autonomy and self-efficacy, ultimately contributing to poorer adjustment across multiple domains. This narrative mainly stems from research narrowly focused on emerging adulthood, however, and employing limited variability in the design, methodology, and context. Such research also has largely ignored questions of the developmental process, failing to sufficiently integrate prior work on similar concepts (e.g., overprotective or intrusive parenting) in earlier developmental periods.
The goal of this Special Issue is to expand the current narrative beyond cross-sectional correlates of helicopter parenting for the average college student in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) nations. Specifically, we seek methodologically diverse papers that explore individual and contextual differences in when or for whom helicopter parenting behaviors are functional, dysfunctional, or have negligible impacts. We also seek papers that identify aspects of helicopter parenting that are more or less adaptive and where the threshold lies between acceptable and problematic levels of parental oversight and assistance.
Examples of papers that fit this call might do any of the following:
- Apply methodologies other than cross-sectional survey designs (e.g., longitudinal, experimental, observational, person-centered, vignette, mixed methods);
- Integrate age ranges outside of emerging adulthood or examine how helicopter parenting differs by youth age;
- Examine how parents’ use of helicopter practices, youth interpretations of such practices, or associations between helicopter parenting and youth adjustment vary by culture or context;
- Explore individual differences in perceptions, interpretations, or correlates of helicopter parenting.
Please note: theoretically and methodologically rigorous papers that present null findings WILL be considered.
Dr. Wendy Rote
Dr. Skyler Hawk
Dr. Mary B. Eberly Lewis
Dr. Meredith McGinley
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- helicopter parenting
- overparenting
- overprotective or intrusive parenting
- youth parenting
- youth interpretation
