Parent-emerging adult text interactions and emerging adult perceived parental support of autonomy

Abstract

Parents play an important role in scaffolding autonomy and independence as their children transition to adulthood. In the digital age, mobile phones allow for increased connection at this important developmental transition, but we know little about the extent to which digital connection may help (i.e., through developmentally appropriate support) or hinder (i.e., through intrusiveness or helicopter parenting) emerging adult (EA) autonomy development. We tested whether digital parent-EA interactions tapping engagement, monitoring, and responsiveness were associated with EA perceptions of parental autonomy support in a sample of 238 college students ( M age = 19.85) who contributed all text messages exchanged with their parents over 2 weeks. Results indicate that many dimensions of parent-EA text message interactions are unrelated to perceived parental autonomy support, but those that did emerge point towards a potentially maladaptive role of overparenting in associations with less perceived parental autonomy support. Results underscore that, for most EAs, parental text messaging is not likely to be perceived as autonomy inhibiting, but that for a small minority of parent-EA dyads, intense levels of digital connection with parents may be associated with perceived autonomy inhibition.