Project description
When too much parental support is bad for teens
High levels of parental support are often associated with high self-esteem and social well-being. However, too much parental love and support can backfire. What happens when too much support undermines a teenager’s personal growth? While this might appear to help the child overcome anxiety or depression in the short term, over-supporting parents may actually weaken chances for long-term well-being. However, this is not always the case. To shed light on the mechanisms, the ERC project PARADOx will survey 300 Dutch families with a child between the ages of 12 and 16 for 3 years. The aim is to develop a family-specific theoretical model of parental support based on real-life data.
Objective
One-third of adolescents (12-18) experience emotional problems, such as anxiety and depression. This leads to enormous personal impact which often continues a lifetime. Support from parents is a protective factor that can increase the well-being of adolescents and reduce depression and anxiety. However, defying this currently held view, concerns are growing that support backfires in some families.
THE PARENTAL SUPPORT PARADOX. No matter how well-intended and well-received in the short run, over-supportive parenting can undermine opportunities for personal growth. This weakens long-term well-being. Who support backfires for and what the mechanisms are is unknown, because psychologists have lacked the data and analytical tools to study how parenting predicts well-being in individual family units.
DEVELOPING FAMILY-SPECIFIC METHODS. To theorize the short-term and long-term effects of parenting, my team and I will conduct one of the largest and most intensive studies of parental support and well-being. 300 Dutch families with a child, aged 12 to 16, will complete smartphone-based micro-surveys to capture parent-child interactions in daily life. Families are followed for three years, with seven follow-up surveys. As ultimate proof of theorized family-specific dynamics, we will test in an experiment (2 x n=100) if feedback on their real-life data strengthens parenting and improves child well-being.
IMPACT. Now that we can study each family’s unique daily dynamics, PARADOx will generate an entirely new family-specific theoretical model of parental support, explaining for whom and through which mechanisms support backfires. We will also target these dynamics with prevention, to transform support from a potential cause of emotional problems to a protective factor. The project will develop new concepts for personalized parenting advice for this purpose. Moreover we will deliver a toolbox of methods to study family-specific dynamics, which is disseminated across d
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
3062 PA Rotterdam
Netherlands