Researchers Give Helicopter Parenting Another Whirl

Soon after recovering from a media swarm surrounding a study they published last June, UMW Associate Professors of Psychology Holly Hollomon Schiffrin ’94 and Miriam Liss made headlines again. Time.com, Forbes.com, and The Chronicle of Higher Education clamored after the pair when their original research on intensive parenting ran in the Journal of Child and Family Studies. That project, co-authored with then-undergraduate student Kathryn Rizzo ’12, revealed that overinvolved parenting – sometimes called “helicopter parenting” – can negatively affect a mother’s health. Schiffrin and Liss continued to research the phenomenon, shifting their focus to college students. In an online survey, nearly 300 participants ages 18 to 23 agreed or disagreed with statements like “My mother monitors my diet,” “My mother does my laundry when I come home,” and “My mother had a say in what major I chose.” The results, published in February in the Journal of Child and Family Studies, showed … [Read more...]