Longitudinal Associations Between Overparenting and Emerging Adults' Psychological Maladjustment: The Mediating Role of Coping Strategies

Abstract

ABSTRACT Introduction Mental health challenges are increasingly prevalent among college‐attending emerging adults. Although overparenting has been consistently linked to psychological maladjustment, the longitudinal processes underlying this link are unclear. Given coping's central role in navigating the developmental stressors of emerging adulthood, this study examined whether coping mediated the link between overparenting and maladjustment. Methods Participants were 483 Chinese college‐attending emerging adults (69.2% female; M age = 20.21, SD = 1.33) who participated in surveys across three waves in 2020, 2022, and 2023. Maternal and paternal overparenting pathways were tested separately. Results Controlling for family income and baseline maladjustment, maternal overparenting predicted greater psychological maladjustment via reduced problem‐focused coping; its indirect effect through avoidant coping approached significance. Paternal overparenting was associated with greater avoidant and emotion‐focused coping, but specific indirect effects were nonsignificant. The overall indirect effect across the three coping strategies was significant in both maternal and paternal models. Conclusions Increased maladaptive coping and reduced adaptive coping could explain overparenting's adverse effect on emerging adults' psychological adjustment. Parents' well‐intended overinvolvement may compromise child's coping during the transition to adulthood. Implications Preventive intervention for emerging adults' psychological adjustment may be strengthened by targeting both individual coping skills and the family experiences in which these skills develop, for example, by supplementing universal campus‐based coping programs with selective interventions for families with high overparenting.