Rise In Parental Expectations Linked To Mental Health Issues In College Students: Study

An increase in parental expectations and criticism is linked to damaging mental health consequences among college students, according to a recent study. The research findings were published in the journal 'Physiological Bulletin'.

Researchers analysed data from over 20,000 American, British and Canadian college students. They pointed out that the young generation's perceptions of the expectations of parents and criticism have arisen over the past 32 years and were linked to an increase in their perfectionism.

"Perfectionism contributes to various psychological conditions including depression, self-harm, anxiety and eating disorders," said Thomas Curran, study's lead researcher and an assistant professor of psychological and behavioural science at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Co-author of the study Andrew P. Hill, a professor of sport and exercise psychology at York St John University, stated that "the pressure to conform to perfect ideals has never been greater and might be the basis for an impending public health issue."

Perfectionists Become More Neurotic

Perfectionism often becomes a lifelong trait and earlier research has found that perfectionists become more neurotic and less conscientious as they become older. In addition, perfectionism can perpetuate through generations, with perfectionist parents raising perfectionist children, ANI reported.

Previously, Curran and Hill had found that three types of perfectionism were rising among youth in the US, UK and Canada. They suspected that one cause could be that parents are becoming more controlling and anxious.

The first meta-analysis has included 21 studies with data from over 7,000 college students. Criticism and parental expectations had moderate associations with self-oriented and other-oriented perfectionism and a large association with socially prescribed perfectionism.

Self-oriented perfectionism involves perfectionist standards about the self. Other-oriented perfectionism is perfectionism turned outward, where someone expects others to be perfectionists. Socially prescribed perfectionism is the perception that other people and society require perfection. The three types of perfectionism overlap and can exacerbate the effects of each other in negative ways.

Parental Expectation Has Larger Impact

Parental expectations had a more significant impact than parental criticism on self-oriented and other-oriented perfectionism, so parental expectations may be more damaging than parental criticism.

"Parental expectations have a high cost when perceived as excessive," Curran said. "Young people internalise those expectations and depend on them for their self-esteem. When they fail to meet them, as they invariably will, they will be critical of themselves for not matching up. They strive to be perfect to compensate," he added.

Self-oriented perfectionism was greater for American college students than for British or Canadian students, possibly because of more intense academic competition in the US.

"These trends could help explain rising mental health problems in young adults and suggest it will only worsen in the future," Hill said. "It is normal for parents to be concerned about their kids, but this anxiety is being interpreted as pressure to be perfect," he added.

The second meta-analysis has included 84 studies conducted between 1989 and 2021 with 23,975 college students. Parental expectations, criticism, and combined parental pressure increased during those 32 years, with parental expectations rising at the fastest rate. "The rate of increase in young individuals' perceptions of their parents' expectations is remarkable," up an average of 40 per cent compared to 1989, Curran stated.

The studies were conducted in the US, Canada and the United Kingdom, so the findings cannot be generalised to other cultures. The research is correlational, so it cannot prove that growing parental expectations or criticism caused an increase in perfectionism among college students, only that there is a link between them.

However, according to the authors, the research suggests troublesome changes over time. "So what are parents supposed to do? They are not to blame as they are reacting anxiously to a hyper-competitive environment with ferocious academic pressures, runaway inequality and technological innovations, including social media that propagate unrealistic ideals of how we should appear and perform," Curran added.

"Parents are placing excessive expectations on their kids because they think that society demands it or their children will fall down the social ladder," he pointed out. "It's ultimately not about parents recalibrating their expectations. It's about society — our education system, our economy and supposed meritocracy — recognising that the pressures we are putting on the young generation and their families are unnecessarily overwhelming," the researcher said.

Parents can help their kids navigate societal pressures in a healthy manner by teaching them that imperfection or failure is a normal and natural part of life, Curran said. "Focusing on learning and development, not test marks or social media, helps youth develop healthy self-esteem, which does not depend on others' validation or external metrics," he concluded.

Also Read: 'Meat Politics Enters Campuses': Two Student Groups Clash In JNU Over Eating Non-Veg Food On Ram Navami