There is a particular ache in parenting adult children: They are old enough to vote, drive and ignore your excellent advice, yet sometimes not quite old enough to stop making decisions that make you want to stare at the ceiling and reconsider every permissive moment since preschool.
The job has changed, but the love has not.
Psychologists call this season “emerging adulthood,” a stretch of life, often from the late teens through the 20s, marked by freedom, instability and uneven progress. Temple University psychologist Laurence Steinberg has noted that the path to adulthood now takes longer than it once did, and that many parents and grown children are trying to build a new relationship while the old one is still rattling around in the trunk.
That helps explain why so many parents feel confused. We were trained for bedtime, broccoli and booster seats. Nobody really prepared us for a 22-year-old with a fully formed opinion, a half-formed plan and a habit of making choices that leave the family group text one message away from combustion.
The research is surprisingly clear on one point. Love helps, but over-control does not. In a 2016 study in the Journal of Child and Family Studies, Kayla Reed and colleagues found that helicopter parenting was linked indirectly to worse outcomes for emerging adults through lower self-efficacy, while autonomy-supportive parenting was linked to better life satisfaction and physical health. A newer review in Youth likewise found that parents still matter a great deal in this stage, but the healthiest approach balances warmth, expectations and autonomy support.