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Longitudinal Links Between Parental Failure Mindsets, Helicopter Parenting, and Fixed Mindset of Intelligence in Adolescents

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Abstract

Evidence for the prospective associations among parental failure mindset, helicopter parenting, and children’s intelligence mindset is lacking. This three-wave longitudinal study (12 months apart between waves) addressed this research gap by testing whether perceived maternal helicopter parenting mediated the link between perceived maternal failure mindset and intelligence mindset. Participants included 525 Chinese adolescents (47.2% girls, Mage = 15.41 years, SD = 0.22). Random-intercept cross-lagged analysis suggests that mothers with stronger failure-is-debilitating mindsets are more likely to engage in helicopter parenting, which may in turn contribute to stronger endorsements of a fixed mindset of intelligence in their adolescent children. The relation between maternal helicopter parenting and children’s intelligence mindset appeared to be reciprocal, i.e., children’s fixed mindset may elicit more helicopter parenting over time.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

B.C. conceived of the study, participated in its design and coordination and drafted the manuscript; X.L. participated in the design of the study and performed the statistical analysis; T.C. participated in the design of the study and performed the statistical analysis. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Data Sharing and Declaration

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Boby Ho-Hong Ching.

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Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no competing interest.

Ethical Approval

Approval was obtained from the institutional research ethics committee at University of Macau (Ref.:MYRG2019-00068-FED). The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and approved by the university. The work described has not been published before, and it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else.

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Informed consent was obtained from each participant included in the study.

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Ching, B.HH., Li, X.F. & Chen, T.T. Longitudinal Links Between Parental Failure Mindsets, Helicopter Parenting, and Fixed Mindset of Intelligence in Adolescents. J. Youth Adolescence 52, 2196–2213 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-023-01815-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-023-01815-5

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