Nowadays parents and the media increasingly hear about intensive parenting (IP), which involves parents spending a great deal of time, energy, and emotional labor on raising their children. Its use may be detrimental, but parents are still motivated to follow the trend. However, the mechanisms driving mothers to be intensive have not been thoroughly investigated.

The current study aims to identify drivers of mothers’ IP by investigating links between internal (maternal guilt) and external (work-family imbalance) factors and IP use. The work-family imbalance hypothesis (pre-registered study; https://osf.io/rg6f5) posited that maternal guilt about parenting would mediate associations between work-family conflict and intensive parenting use.

Two samples of Polish mothers with children aged 6 to 12 years old participated in the study (total n = 606) by completing a set of scales including the novel Intensive Parenting Behaviors (IBP) scale (Lubiewska et al., in prep), the Guilt about Parenting scale (GAPS; Haslam et al., 2020), and the work-family conflict subscale (Netemeyer et al., 1996).

Results, thus far, reveal that maternal guilt significantly mediated associations between work-family conflict and several subscales in the IBP scale theoretically relevant to hyperactivated caregiving. The hyperactivating caregiving subscales include, among others, maternal proactivity/protection and prioritizing the child.

This study begins to untangle the intensive parenting construct’s links to maternal guilt and work-family imbalance. Results emphasize the need for future research that accounts for maternal characteristics in parenting, the sociocultural context, and the importance of studying maternal ill-being in regards to parenting.

Parenting plays a key role in adolescent well-being, but how parenting promotes wellbeing is likely different for each family. The current study examined the effectiveness of tailored parenting advice on improving parenting and adolescent well-being.

A 100-day diary RCT study was conducted with three subgroups of parents and one of their adolescents (12-17 years, 53.3% female). The control group (N = 321 parents) received no parenting advice. After 50 days, parents in the general experimental group (N = 107) received a report on general parenting dynamics of an “average” family and parenting tips. The personalized experimental group (N = 110) received a tailored report displaying their self-reported parenting and were given a choice between multiple parenting tips each time they received a tip. Parents in both experimental groups received self-determination-based parenting tips three days a week for six weeks (18 in total). All adolescents and parents reported daily on perceived need-supportive parenting (warmth, autonomy support, structure) and adolescent well-being (positive/negative affect).

Data collection (https://osf.io/zfcmd/?view_only=d33029036c154278910d030b76c30281) will conclude in April 2025, followed by preregistered analyses. On average thus far, adolescents completed 57.9% and parents 69.9% of diaries. Comparing the three groups with ANCOVA statistics will lead to initial results on whether brief parenting tips and a personalized report was successful in strengthening need-supportive parenting and adolescent well-being.

Findings may guide the development of practical parenting advice and assess the feasibility of embedding accessible tips into intensive longitudinal studies.

Parents’ feelings of responsibility can lead to what has been called intensive, overprotective, controlling, or helicopter parenting (OP; Dinsmore & Pugh, 2021), which can undermine youth’s optimal development of autonomy during adolescence (Soenens et al., 2019; Yap et al., 2014; Van Petegem et al., 2022). Building on our past research finding that there are both responsive and demanding features of OP (Ryan et al., 2024), we investigated whether these two features are filtered through youth’s perceptions of their received OP to explain their autonomous functioning. Australian parent-youth (16-19 years) dyads (N = 385) completed surveys containing multiple measures of OP (Chevrier et al., 2023; Jiao & Segrin, 2022; Odenweller et al., 2014) and positive parenting behaviors (e.g., acceptance). To measure autonomous functioning, youth reported their typical decision-making practices (DM; rational, dependent, avoidant, and spontaneous) and coping self-efficacy. We controlled for youth’s general psychological distress. Parent and youth reports of demanding and responsive OP were correlated, r = .31 and .23 respectively, both p < .001. In a path model controlling for youth’s psychological adjustment, parent-reported positive parenting (b = .16, p < .01) and support for self-direction (b = -.25, p < .001) were positively and negatively associated, respectively, with youth's perception of responsive OP, whereas parental advice (b = -.19, p < .01) and self-direction (b = -.15, p < .01) were negatively associated with youth's perception of demanding OP. Almost all associations of parent-reported parenting with youth's autonomous functioning were indirect via youth's perceptions of parenting, with the most widespread associations involving positive parenting behaviors rather than OP. Yet, there were indirect associations of responsive OP with youth’s dependent DM and of parents’ support for self-direction with youth’s less dependent and avoidant DM. Youth higher in distress reported more negative parenting and less autonomy across all measures.

The popular media commonly suggest that overparenting - characterized by behaviors such as interference, excessive worry, and unnecessary help - leads to anxious generations of youth. However, scientific evidence supporting this claim remains limited, as most research has focused on cross-sectional, stable between-family associations. This study takes a dynamic within-family approach to explore the real-time effects of perceived overparenting on adolescents' affective well-being. We also test the alternative hypothesis that overparenting behaviors may be elicited by adolescents' negative feelings.

For 7 days, 143 adolescents (Mage=15.8, range=11-18, 64% girls, 92% Dutch or Belgian) reported 5-6 semi-random times per day on perceived overparenting (interference, excessive worry, unnecessary help; ω_within = .67) and their positive (happy, joyful; r_within = .67) and negative affect (angry, scared, sad; ω_within = .71). Items were rated on a Visual Analogue Scale (0(not at all) to 100 (very much)). We obtained 1,390 observations on perceived overparenting of primary caregiver (82% mother) and adolescent affect.

Both perceived overparenting and adolescents’ affect fluctuated from moment to moment within families (i.e., 3 hours later; ICCs=36-61). Preregistered Dynamic Structural Equation Modeling (DSEM) analyses revealed that parents engaged in more overparenting during moments their adolescent felt worse. Limited evidence was found that overparenting impacted adolescents' affect, with the exception of the exploratory finding that adolescents felt more scared after the parent provided ‘unneeded help’. Stronger evidence was found for the alternative hypothesis that adolescent negative affect was followed by more overparenting.

Our findings indicate that everyday moments of overparenting are typically experienced negatively by adolescents, with their negative emotions eliciting overparenting. While much of the literature focuses on the negative consequences of overparenting, this study suggests that it may not affect adolescents' everyday emotions. However, exploratory findings hint that specifically "unneeded help" may trigger feelings of anxiety in adolescents.