Abstract
Although parental overprotection is theorized to have lasting negative effects throughout a child’s life, there is limited empirical evidence available on its long-term significance on adolescent well-being. This preregistered, three-wave longitudinal study investigated the association of maternal and paternal perceived overprotection in early adolescence with the development of (mal)adaptive psychological, academic, and social functioning throughout adolescence. Data (N = 2229; 50.7% girls) from the longitudinal TRacking Adolescents’ Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS) in the Netherlands were used (Mage T1 = 11.11, T2 = 13.57, T3 = 16.28). At T1, adolescents reported on their mothers’ and fathers’ overprotection. From T1 to T3 adolescents and teachers reported about internalizing problems, academic achievement, prosocial, and antisocial behavior. The results showed concurrent associations between higher levels of perceived overprotection and higher levels of internalizing problems, antisocial behaviors, and (after controlling for parental warmth and rejection) lower levels of academic achievement. Perceived overprotection was positively associated with decreased internalizing problems over time. This longitudinal association disappeared after controlling for baseline levels of internalizing problems, suggesting that this result was less robust than expected. Mothers and fathers did not differ in their associations between perceived overprotection and (mal)adaptive functioning. The findings showed that perceived overprotection is mainly concurrently associated with (mal)adaptive adolescent functioning. Future research recommendations are discussed in terms of stability and bidirectional relations.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1010-1023 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Journal of Youth and Adolescence |
| Volume | 52 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - May 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2023, The Author(s).
Funding
This research is part of the TRacking Adolescents’ Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS). Participating centers of TRAILS include various departments of the University Medical Center and University of Groningen, the University of Utrecht, the Radboud University Medical Center, and the Parnassia Psychiatric Institute, all in the Netherlands. TRAILS has been financially supported by various grants from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), ZonMW, GB-MaGW, the Dutch Ministry of Justice, the European Science Foundation, the European Research Council, BBMRI-NL, and the participating universities. The authors are grateful to all adolescents, parents, and teachers who participated in the study or worked on the project to make this study possible. The authors thank the reviewers and editors whose comments helped improve this manuscript. I.A. coordinated, conceived, and designed the study, performed the statistical analyses, wrote and edited the manuscript; N.L. conceived and designed the study, and helped in drafting and editing the manuscript; L.K. participated in the design of the study and statistical analyses, and helped in drafting and editing the manuscript; G.S. participated in the design of the study and methodology, and helped in drafting and editing the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. This research is part of the TRacking Adolescents’ Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS). Participating centers of TRAILS include various departments of the University Medical Center and University of Groningen, the University of Utrecht, the Radboud University Medical Center, and the Parnassia Psychiatric Institute, all in the Netherlands. TRAILS has been financially supported by various grants from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), ZonMW, GB-MaGW, the Dutch Ministry of Justice, the European Science Foundation, the European Research Council, BBMRI-NL, and the participating universities. Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the dataset is considered pseudonymized rather than anonymized, and regarded as personal data. When participants were invited to the study more than 20 years ago, they were not asked to give informed consent to make their personal data publicly available in pseudonymized form. Hence, legal and ethical restrictions prevent the authors from making data from the TRAILS Study publicly available. Data are available upon request from the TRAILS data manager ([email protected]). Detailed information about the participation agreements with TRAILS participants is available from the ethics committee; Central Committee on Research Involving Human subjects (CCMO; [email protected]). For more information about accessing data from the TRAILS Study, see https://www.trails.nl/en/hoofdmenu/data/data-use. The study and analytical design, and hypotheses were preregistered at osf (https://osf.io/r65ns/?view_only=02eb52d59001476ab61fcf63041fd9eb). Preregistered analyses included the main and additional analyses to answer RQ1 and RQ2 and sensitivity analyses with covariates warmth and rejection. Analyses which were not preregistered were the supplementary sensitivity analyses with internalizing problems to assess possible regression to the mean, and additional analyses to address adolescent sex differences and the internalizing problems subscales. Syntaxes can be found through the preregistration link.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| BBMRI-NL | |
| Research and Documentation Centre (WODC) of the Dutch Ministry of Justice | |
| Parnassia Psychiatric Institute | |
| European Research Council | |
| European Science Foundation, | |
| ZonMw | |
| Universiteit Utrecht | |
| Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek | |
| Radboud Universitair Medisch Centrum |
Keywords
- (Mal)Adaptive Functioning
- Adolescence
- Longitudinal
- Parental Gender
- Parental Perceived Overprotection