Too Much of a Good Thing: Perceived Overparenting and Wellbeing of Chinese Adolescents in Hong Kong

Janet T.Y. Leung ()
Additional contact information
Janet T.Y. Leung: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Child Indicators Research, 2020, vol. 13, issue 5, No 15, 1809 pages

Abstract: Abstract Overparenting refers to a developmentally inappropriate parenting style that parents over-involve into the lives of their children and overprotect them from challenges and obstacles. Based on a sample of 1735 secondary school students in Hong Kong, the relationship between perceived overparenting and adolescent wellbeing (indexed by life satisfaction, anxiety and depression) was examined. The moderating effects of adolescent gender, family structure and parent-child conflict were also assessed. The results indicated that while paternal overparenting was positively linked to adolescents’ life satisfaction, maternal overparenting was positively associated with anxiety and depression of adolescents. Furthermore, it was found that father-child conflict moderated the associations of paternal overparenting with adolescent anxiety and depression respectively. At lower levels of father-child conflict, paternal overparenting was negatively associated with both adolescent anxiety and depression, but the relationship was non-significant at higher levels of father-child conflict. Moreover, maternal overparenting was positively associated with life satisfaction and negatively related to depression for adolescents growing up in non-intact families (i.e., divorced, separated and widowed families, and those families with second marriage). In intact families, maternal overparenting did not relate to adolescent life satisfaction, but was positively associated with adolescent depression. The findings provide empirical evidence on the relationships between overparenting and wellbeing of Chinese adolescents, and suggest how family structure and dynamics alter the relationships, which offer important insights on how such emergent parenting style may have impacts on adolescent psychological wellbeing.

Keywords: Overparenting; Adolescent wellbeing; Parent-child conflict; Chinese; Life satisfaction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12187-020-09720-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:chinre:v:13:y:2020:i:5:d:10.1007_s12187-020-09720-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... f-life/journal/12187

DOI: 10.1007/s12187-020-09720-0

Access Statistics for this article

Child Indicators Research is currently edited by Asher Ben-Arieh

More articles in Child Indicators Research from Springer, The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().