A 19-year study, in which researchers from the Virginia State University tracked 184 teens from 13 to 32 years old, found that children with dominant parents were less likely to achieve academic accomplishments, make friends, or develop emotional relationships when they grew up.
The study, published in the magazine "Child Development", on June 16, 2020, provided more evidence that raising children can have lifelong negative effects.
Psychological control
And many studies previously conducted by researchers on parents who exercise psychological control over their children, using manipulative methods such as feeling guilty or preventing and giving love, to make their children listen to them. But few of these studies looked at the long-term effects of this parenting control.
"We were really interested in seeing how long these effects lasted into adulthood," said study author Emily Loeb, a research associate at the University of Virginia. "It was interesting to see that adolescent psychological control was closely related to problems in emotional relationships and low levels of educational attainment until the early 1930s." ".
Worst asking for support
In 1998, researchers in the study brought the seventh and eighth grade students, who were approximately 13 years old, to the laboratory with their closest friends. In order to test their ability to ask for help to solve a problem that bothers them, and while every two friends talk about the problem, lab researchers note how children are participating in this discussion.
"These teenagers were already struggling at the age of 13 to seek and receive support, but these problems seem to get worse over time," Loeb says.
Likewise, children whose parents were more in control of them were less impressed than their peers and less able to think about social situations in an accurate way and take different views into account.
At the ages of 15, 16, 27, and 31, researchers re-interviewed study participants. They found that those who had more dominant fathers had completed less education than their peers, and by the time they reached the age of 32, they had little ability to cultivate emotional relationships.
Interpretation of the results
Study researchers concluded that adolescents' lack of good academic achievement may be due to the fact that their dominant parents were pushing them to exert effort and good performance in school, and without the constant payment of parents after their children grew older, children stopped caring and pursuing academic success.
The researchers also noted that children with parenting parents are more likely to view friends as a burden, rather than as a mutually beneficial relationship.
Loeb explains that, explaining that children who do not do what their parents demand are of the dominant type, that parents tend to notice them guilt and withhold affection from them. Thus, it can be imagined that when these children grow up, they will expect this same behavior from friends and emotionally connected people. In order to avoid this and fearing it, the children of the controlling parents are less demanding of support than their friends to avoid rejection or withdrawal.
Allow making choices
"It is somewhat convincing evidence that the outcome of ongoing parental control and control of children has some harmful effects," comments Boston University professor of psychology, Peter Gray, to the study results.
"We know there is evidence that over the past decades parents have more control over children's lives," says Gray. "It used to be that you sent children to play and go back home in the dark. At present, children are not allowed this kind of independence that people got in the past."
For her part, Emily Loeb advises parents to give teenagers the opportunity to make their own choices, she says that children with dominant parents tend to struggle for independence and make independent decisions later on when they grow up, and this is evidence that it is really important to allow teens to make some of their own choices .