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Some parents may engage in overparenting, often characterized as overprotection, to ensure their college student's academic success, yet, findings show that such parental efforts undermine performance. In the present study, we propose that there are interpersonal (parental hostility) and intrapersonal factors (depression and self-regulation) that act as mechanisms through which anxious overprotective parenting leads to diminished emerging adult academic confidence. Emerging adults (N = 967; 75.6% women; M age = 18.71, SD =.94) who were primarily in their first (60.5%) or second (35.7%) year of college completed measures of academic confidence (academic adjustment, academic efficacy, confidence in graduating), reports of mothers' and fathers' anxious overprotective parenting, perceptions of maternal and paternal hostility, depression, and self-regulation. Employing a double mediation structural equation model, results revealed that anxious maternal and paternal overprotective parenting operated through perceived parental hostility to intrapersonal processes (depression, self-regulation) in predicting academic confidence. Maternal and paternal hostility, in particular, was paramount as an interpersonal mediator through which overprotective parenting led to emerging adult intrapersonal and academic outcomes. Although cross-sectional, the current findings are suggestive of the developmental cascade model (Masten & Cicchetti, 2010), whereby diminished family dynamics are associated with internalizing symptoms and self-regulatory issues, which, in turn, are linked with lower academic achievement in children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent stay-at-home orders limited adolescents' ability to connect with friends in person, leading adolescents to rely on digital forms of communication to interact with friends. The present study (N = 168 adolescents ages 11–20, 51.40% female) examined the types of digital communication adolescents used to connect with friends during the pandemic stay-at-home orders and how each form of digital communication related to adolescents' emotional adjustment. The results showed texting to be the most common way adolescents connected with friends. Boys were more likely than girls to talk with friends through social gaming. Synchronous forms of communication (i.e., texting, video calls, and social gaming) were associated with reduced loneliness and depressive symptoms and higher flourishing. Connecting with friends by posting or responding on social media was not associated with adolescent well-being. These results suggest that forms of digital communication that allowed adolescents to talk with friends in real time were particularly important for adolescents' emotional well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adolescents' interactions with friends were severely disrupted during stay-at-home orders associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The current study (N = 144, 49% female, 80% European American) considered adolescents' perceptions of this disruption and the implications of the disruption for their emotional adjustment. Adolescents reported that not seeing friends was the most distressing consequence of the pandemic. Compared to before the pandemic, adolescents reported a large decrease in in-person interactions with friends, which was related to loneliness. There was a small increase in online interactions, which could counteract the effects of fewer in-person interactions, but only if the interactions felt socially connected. Online interactions lacking social connection were related to greater loneliness and depressive symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In line with increasing calls for within-family analyses of monitoring processes, this study examined profiles of (combined) adolescent information management strategies and parent knowledge-gathering strategies among 174 families with middle adolescents (Mage = 15.7 years; 164 mother-teen and 112 father-teen dyads). Three mother-adolescent profiles (open, intrusive, indirect) and two father-adolescent profiles (reserved, covert) emerged, with voluntary disclosure and snooping particularly differentiating profiles and fathers reporting gaining more knowledge from others. Profile membership was associated with adjustment and relationship quality both concurrently and over one year, controlling for prior levels. For mother-teen dyads, open communicators reported less behavioral control over time, intrusive communicators reported more negative interactions concurrently and greater depression and less maternal knowledge over time, and indirect communicators reported more problem behavior over time. For father-teen dyads, covert communicators reported more problem behavior concurrently and more negative interactions over time. Profile membership in mother-teen and father-teen dyads was not significantly associated. Results confirm the importance of disclosure and the problematic nature of snooping, while highlighting diverse ways that monitoring processes play out within families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Middle class mothers ( n = 169) of middle adolescents ( M = 15.69 years old) in the U.S. rated how much they want to know and responded qualitatively about what they “always” and “never” want to know about adolescents' risky prudential (e.g., drinking alcohol, using illegal drugs), personal (e.g., teens' private conversations), and multifaceted (involving overlapping prudential and personal concerns) activities. Latent growth curve modeling over one year showed that mothers wanted to know most about prudential, less about multifaceted, and least about personal activities; wanting to know declined over time for each type of activity, but less for prudential than for other activities. With teen problem behavior controlled, psychologically controlling parenting, supportive and negative interactions with teens, knowledge of adolescents' activities, and teens' age were associated with individual differences in mothers' initial ratings and trajectories of wanting to know, although results varied by domain and were moderated by teen gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]