Are You a Controlling Parent? Your Children Might Grow Unhappy

An individual's mental well-being in adulthood might be linked to how he or she was treated during childhood.

This was the conclusion made by researchers from University College London (UCL), who found that the type of parenting received has lifelong psychological effects on a person.

The study, according to Medical News Today (MNT), revealed that adults who experienced great "psychological control" by their parents were found to be unhappy, showing significantly low mental well-being, especially from age 60 to 64.

Additionally, the researchers even stated that the feeling experienced by said adults is like the feeling people experience when a relative or a close friend has died.

"We found that people whose parents showed warmth and responsiveness had higher life satisfaction and better mental wellbeing throughout early, middle and late adulthood," Dr. Mai Stafford, study researcher and reader in social epidemiology in the MRC Unit for Lifelong Health & Ageing at UCL, told MNT.

In order to arrive at this conclusion, the researchers evaluated 5,362 British participants, who were tracked from birth in 1946. 2,800 of the participants were placed on active follow up. Complete well-being data of 3,699 participants was obtained from the age of 13 to 15 years old, thereby reducing the total participants to around 2,000 during the period from age 60 to 64 years old.

The researchers used a 25-item questionnaire to determine the level of care received by the participants. Participants were asked to agree or disagree with statements about their parents' understanding of them as children, as well as their parents' tendency to allow or control their various actions. According to MNT, these statements aimed to assess the psychological and behavioral control of parents.

Through the study, the researchers were also able to determine the factors that individuals deemed psychologically controlling, such as forbidding children from making decisions or doing things their way, invading their privacy, and encouraging dependence rather than letting the children grow independently.

On the other hand, according to The Independent, Dr. Stafford explained that the study did not seek to blame the parents, noting that they were the ones who gave the children a stable base to explore the world. She, however, reiterated that over-controlling could "limit a child's independence and leave them less able to regulate their own behavior."

"Parents are vitally important to the mental wellbeing of future generations. Policies to reduce economic and other pressures on parents could help them to foster better relationships with their children," Dr. Stafford said via The Independent.

The findings of the study were published at The Journal of Positive Psychology.