Helicopter Parenting: Does Parental Control Relate to Children Losing Control?

This study examined the relationship between drug-use in college students and the amount of parental involvement they receive. Past research has found that some aspects of parenting correlate with students’ substance use (Lamborn et al., 1991) but few, if any, have focused on helicopter parenting and substance use. Helicopter parenting is defined as parents who play a large role in an adult child's life in a developmentally inappropriate manner (Segrin et al., 2013). Based on Self-Determination Theory (Ryan et al., 2000) I hypothesized that helicopter parenting would hinder college students' autonomy and feelings of competence and the students would report higher levels of substance use. I tested my hypothesis using a questionnaire which included questions on parental involvement from the Fingerman et al. (2009) study, my own questions about parental involvement in college-students’ lives, and specific questions about drug and alcohol use. In a sample of 160 undergraduate students (108 females) at Union college I found no significant correlations between helicopter parenting scores and the extent of alcohol and marijuana use. I found a significant negative correlation between helicopter parenting scores and marijuana impact scores: participants with higher helicopter parenting scores reported marijuana having less of an impact on their academic commitments than students with low helicopter parenting scores. However, there was no significant correlation between helicopter parenting scores and alcohol impact scores. When examining female respondents separately, I found a significant correlation between helicopter parenting scores and substance use: women who received higher levels of helicopter parenting reported higher substance use. However, for males, the correlations between helicopter parenting and substance use were not significant. Although overall scores for alcohol and marijuana use did not correlate with helicopter parenting scores, the results of this study suggest that gender should be taken into account when researching helicopter parenting.