Emerging adulthood (18–29 years old) is a period of life characterized by change, uncertainty, and exploration in many areas [1]. It has emerged as a result of increasing time before young people enter the workforce, marry, or become parents [2]. Many aspects of emerging adulthood can be seen in young Chinese people, especially those in higher education [3–5]. For example, China's gross college enrollment rate was 12.5% in 2000 but 54.4% in 2020 [6, 7]. The half-year turnover rate of university graduates was 33% in 2018 [8]. In 2019, more people (34.6%) got married between the ages of 25 and 29 than in any other age group [9]. Due to prolonged singleness, instability, and exploration, this period in life can be confusing for young people, making them more vulnerable to socio-emotional maladjustment and low life satisfaction [10]. Given the instability of emerging adulthood, parents continue to play an essential role when their children enter college.
It may be especially true for Chinese students seeking a university education. Many Chinese parents remain involved in their children's lives, such as academic and relational pursuits, although their children are living apart from them as they attend university. Parental involvement has the potential to be beneficial or harmful. Parental involvement, for example, in the form of warmth and support, has been positively linked to emerging adults' well-being [11]. However, overparenting, particularly in the form of helicopter parenting, has been found to threaten young people's academic and emotional well-being [12], even leading to becoming a "boomerang child" or "NEET"(i.e., not in education, employment, or training) [13]. However, the majority of research into the relationship between helicopter parenting and university students' well-being has been conducted with Western samples. More research is needed to determine whether helicopter parenting is a risk factor for well-being in China. As a result, the overall goal of this study was to look into the direct and indirect links between helicopter parenting and Chinese university students' adjustment.
Helicopter Parenting and Emerging Adults' Adjustment
Helicopter parenting refers to parents doing for their children what they can and should be doing for themselves [14]. In other words, helicopter parents engage excessively in the lives of their emerging-adult children (e.g., school work, personal relationships, and career preparation) by seeking to fix any difficulties or obstacles that their children may face [15]. According to separation-individuation theory, adolescence signals the start of a psychological change away from parental dependency and toward a sense of self that is different and independent from parents [16]. During family differentiation, parents must assist their children in balancing their demand for individuality with their need to remain emotionally linked to their family during the transition from adolescence to adulthood [17]. Individuals who attain this mix of independence and emotional links with families (i.e., differentiation) have better mental health, well-being, and social adaption [18]. When parents get too involved in or meddle with their children's lives, the boundaries between individuality and connectivity become so blurred that children are unable to separate from the family, resulting in emotional, cognitive, and behavioral issues later in life [19, 20].
Helicopter parenting appears to have a harmful influence on the lives of college students as a form of overparenting. First, it may hurt college students' academic performance [21, 22]. Padilla-Walker and Nelson [22] found that helicopter parenting was negatively correlated with students' school engagement in a survey of 438 American college students aged 18 to 29 and their parents. Second, helicopter parenting may affect college students' social adaptation [23–25]. According to Darlow [23], who recruited 294 psychology undergraduates from a public university in the United States, overparenting detrimentally influenced students' social relationships with peers and teachers. Third, helicopter parenting may threaten college students' emotional well-being [26–29]. In studies conducted with undergraduate students in the United States, helicopter parenting showed positive correlations with indices of emotional distress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms [27, 30, 31]. Studies in Turkey [32] and Ireland [33] have similarly identified relations between helicopter parenting and anxiety and depression. The substantial body of evidence from countries rooted in individualism suggests helicopter parenting is a risk factor for college students' academic, social, and emotional well-being.
However, research undertaken with participants from Asian cultural backgrounds shows that helicopter parenting may benefit emerging adults' well-being. Kwon [34] qualitatively interviewed 40 Korean American college students. Most respondents believed helicopter parenting harmed their personal growth but acknowledged that their parents' well-intentioned involvement aided their academic success and future career development. Lee and Kang [35] also looked into 562 unmarried emerging adults in South Korea, with 54.3 percent being college students. Participants who were overparented reported being more intimate with their parents and having higher life satisfaction. The researchers argued that it was due to the value of collectivist culture, which emphasizes parental and child interdependence. Although the limited work in Asian countries that reflect collectivistic values suggests that helicopter parenting might function differently, the picture just is not clear as there is also work showing that fathers' use of helicopter parenting in South Korea was negatively associated to college students' academic outcomes [36], and overparenting in Hong Kong was strongly associated with both egocentrism and positive developmental outcomes among Chinese adolescents [37]. The conflicting findings underscore just how much more work is needed, especially in China, where the work on helicopter parenting is scarce.
Several factors highlight the importance of conducting further research in China. For example, the Confucius principle of filial piety is particularly prevalent in China. Parental beliefs and behaviors perceived as a threat to individuation in Western cultures may be perceived more positively in more collectivist cultures [38]. However, while collectivist cultures emphasize the close connections between parents and children, they also value individual independence and autonomy when children grow up. Thus, the presence of parental control during a time of individuation (i.e., emerging adulthood) may present a conflict for young people in a culture where honoring parents is valued. For example, controlling parenting (e.g., psychological control) negatively impacted young Chinese people with high filial piety [39]. Taken together, it is possible that, regardless of culture, if parents interfere or control the lives of their emerging-adult children, it will hinder their children's adaptation and development [30, 40, 41]. Indeed, the internal conflict between devotion to parents and striving for independence as emerging adults [39] may make helicopter parenting particularly problematic for Chinese university students.
Another reason to be particularly concerned about the role of helicopter parenting in the lives of emerging adults in China is due to the family structure that is common in China. Specifically, many families in China have only one child due to the one-child policy. Furthermore, many families in China now have higher financial resources as the economy has developed. Thus, with more resources and fewer children to focus on, many Chinese parents remain very involved in the lives of their only emerging-adult child with some becoming overly involved.
For example, an increasing number of Chinese parents accompany their children to university when they begin their studies. Some even rent or buy an apartment near the campus to stay with their emerging-adult children until graduation [42]. These parental behaviors have triggered a sizeable social discussion about the prevalence and implications of these types of overparenting [43]. Despite the rise in these types of parents' hovering behaviors, their impact within the Chinese cultural context has received relatively little empirical attention.
Taken together, the cultural (i.e., filial piety, collectivistic values) and demographic (fewer children, increased economic resources, and overly-involved parents) factors in China provide the conceptual context for studying the role that helicopter parenting may play in the lives of emerging Chinese adults. Therefore, the first goal of this study was to investigate the direct relations between helicopter parenting and Chinese university students' adjustment (e.g., school engagement, peer attachment, mental health) in their initial periods on campus.
Mediation of Autonomy
As well as exploring for direct associations between helicopter parenting and young people's adjustment, it would be necessary to examine how helicopter parenting may influence indices of adjustment indirectly. Drawing upon self-determination theory, people are motivated to grow and change by three innate and universal psychological needs- competence, connection, and autonomy. In fulfilling these needs, individuals develop a sense that they can determine their behaviors and experience rather than be influenced or controlled by outside forces [44, 45]. Autonomy is an essential psychological need that must be fulfilled in order to enhance self-motivation and mental health [44, 45]. Indeed, the fulfillment of the need for autonomy in adolescents and emerging adults has been linked to indices of their adjustment, including academic adjustment [46], higher levels of self-control [47], and lower levels of negative emotions [48].
Given the importance of autonomy, helicopter parenting may be problematic because it creates an environment that restricts the development of autonomy in young people [28]. They are eager to gain more autonomy in decision-making in emerging adulthood [1]. Indeed, studies have shown that helicopter parenting reduces the autonomy of emerging adults [25, 49–51] and that the reduction in autonomy is what decreases emerging adults' well-being. For example, Schiffrin [52], employing 446 college students aged 18–25, found that paternal and maternal helicopter parenting negatively affected participants' well-being (i.e., anxiety, depression, and life satisfaction) by decreasing participants' autonomy, especially for females. Similarly, Cook [53] surveyed 637 American college students aged 18–25 and found that students' psychological needs, including autonomy, significantly mediated the relationships between helicopter parenting and their depressive symptoms and relationship competence. Taken together, if parents are overly involved in the lives of young people as they matriculate at the university (i.e., participate in or interfere with their children's campus life, press their children to comply with their standards irrespective of the children's needs and values), young people may experience difficulties in adapting to the university because of their disrupted autonomy.
Although there is emerging evidence [52, 53] to support the notion that autonomy may mediate the relationship between helicopter parenting and emerging adults' mental health and social adaptation, few studies have examined the potential mediating role of autonomy in the relationship between helicopter parenting and emerging adults' adjustment in the Chinese context. Therefore, the second goal of this study was to examine the potential mediating role of autonomy in the relationship between helicopter parenting and Chinese university students' adjustment, which included not only mental health and peer attachment but also academic engagement.
Moderation of the Sense of Entitlement
In addition to factors that might mediate the association between helicopter parenting and adjustment, there may also be factors that moderate the relationship between helicopter parenting and adjustment [24]. In China, one potential moderator may be the extent to which young people believe they deserve attention and resources. A sense of entitlement refers to the feeling that one deserves more and is entitled to more than others, including more attention, resources, and the right to positive outcomes. If one possesses a sense of entitlement it may play a rather significant role in one's life as it is appears to be a stable and pervasive sense across most social contexts rather than simply a response to one singular special event [54, 55]. It is regarded as a critical component of narcissism [56, 57]. People with a higher sense of entitlement believe they deserve to have their needs and wishes satisfied regardless of their performance. They are entitled to receive more valuable resources or benefits than others, such as higher salaries or special treatment [58]. In a study examining college students' sense of academic entitlement, which refers to one's sense of entitlement in the academic domain (e.g., believing they should get better grades than commensurate with their effort, believing they should get special treatment from teachers and schools), students with higher levels of academic entitlement experienced lower psychological well-being and poorer relationships with others [59].
It may be that young people come to develop a sense of entitlement when they have been the main focus of their parents' attention through their upbringing. Indeed, because of the small number of children in Chinese families (often only one child), some young Chinese people may come to expect all of their parents' focus, attention, and resources. Hence, it may be imperative to examine entitlement within the Chinese context. Specifically, because individuals with a high sense of entitlement believe they deserve attention and resources, they may perceive helicopter parenting differently than those with a lower sense of entitlement. Emerging adults with high levels of entitlement may believe that their parents could and should help them solve problems or provide support and that they also have the right to propose the request to their parents [51, 60]. In other words, emerging adults with high levels of entitlement may regard helicopter parenting as parental support. The sense protects their autonomy to some degree from the infringement of parental interference. However, for emerging adults with a low sense of entitlement, helicopter parenting may be perceived as an encroachment on their autonomy that might lead to a low level of environmental mastery [59]. In sum, the sense of entitlement may be protective in the relationship between helicopter parenting and emerging adults' autonomy. Thus, the third goal of this study was to investigate the potential moderating effect of the sense of entitlement on the relationship between helicopter parenting and emerging adults' autonomy.