ABSTRACT
Objectives
In today’s world, particularly mothers’ helicopter parenting behaviors toward their children have been on the rise. Despite contradictory findings in the literature, this modern parenting style was noted to have potentially adverse effects on parents, children, and parent-child relationships. In this context, examining the individual and familial factors associated with helicopter parenting was considered essential. This study sought to examine a proposed model investigating the mediating effects of maternal gatekeeping and parental burnout on the association between helicopter parenting and negative mother-child relationships.
Materials and Methods
The research was conducted with 270 married mothers (agemean=37.09; standard deviation=4.93 year) who have at least one child in primary school and reside in various cities in Türkiye. Data were collected online through the following instruments: the “Helicopter Parenting Scale,” “Maternal Gatekeeping Scale,” “Parental Burnout Assessment,” and “Parent-Child Relationship Scale.”
Results
The results of the structural equation modeling analysis indicated that the model demonstrated a good fit to the data. The findings suggested that the proposed model was supported, showing that helicopter parenting predicted negative mother-child relationships both directly and indirectly via maternal gatekeeping. Moreover, helicopter parenting also predicted negative mother-child relationships sequentially through maternal gatekeeping and parental burnout. Additionally, maternal gatekeeping predicted negative mother-child relationships both directly and indirectly via parental burnout. Parental burnout was found to have a direct predictive effect on negative mother-child relationships. Parental burnout was found to have a direct predictive effect on negative mother-child relationships.
Conclusion
The findings were examined in the context of parenting research and are anticipated to inform the design of prevention and intervention programs focused on enhancing mother-child relationships.
Keywords:
Helicopter parenting, maternal gatekeeping, parental burnout, mother-child relationship
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