Effects of overprotective parenting on young adults

Overprotective parenting is definitely done with the purest intentions. When someone has a child, they want to make sure that they are protected from harm to grow into capable, resilient, and self-confident adults.

Unfortunately, though, quite the opposite effects are created in children of overprotective parents, that follow them well into adulthood. In fact, overprotective parenting does more harm than good, and this will be the focus of today’s post.

Overprotective parents want to ensure that their children will not be physically or emotionally hurt. They want to protect their children from harm, pain, unhappiness, negative experiences, rejection, failure, and disappointments.

They attempt to do this by providing constant surveillance and restrictions, wanting to control their children’s environment and actions as well as who they choose to spend their time with, being overinvolved in their children’s daily life and decisions, encouraging safety and dependence over autonomy and exploration, always knowing what’s best for their child and emphasizing this to them at every occasion.

Their purpose is to overall protect them from anything that could jeopardize their well-being. That’s why they often build a golden cage for their children; it keeps them safe from harm, but it is a cage nonetheless. As a result, later on in adulthood, these children may be reluctant to spread their own wings and fly.

When these children become adults, they still have to face the “cruel world” but lack the life skills to effectively do so, because they were kept within a glass bowl all along.

Overprotective parenting has created a lot of negative impacts on adult children. Adult children from overprotective households have low self-esteem and self-worth and may lack the resilience and confidence that are essential to face the world. Children who are constantly being monitored and protected, do not have the opportunity to prove to themselves that they can accomplish great deeds by themselves.

Fear and anxiety are projected and transmitted onto the child, who in turn internalizes it and learns to be anxious and fearful of anything unknown out of their comfort zone, too.

Overprotective parents encourage children to avoid fearful situations, instead of confronting them, which is a definite way to overcome fears and build self-esteem. 

Even worse, they might eagerly step in to assist their children in any situation that they may need help with, but this results in the child being reluctant to deal with situations by themselves, and expecting that someone will always be coming to their rescue.

When you grow up shielded and protected from all evil out there, and most decisions being made for you rather than by you, two things inevitably happen:

🅰️ You assume things must really be terrible in the real world.

🅱️ You believe you probably can’t manage anyway, otherwise, why would your parents be so protective? 

In this way, young adult grows up with a deep sense of doubt and shame about anything they do. You may be overly sensitive and hypervigilant to criticism and disapproval, second-guessing yourself and strictly judging yourself whenever you think you did or said something wrong.

When you learn that the way to feel worthy is through discipline and obedience, the gradual sense of autonomy and independence can likely feel foreign to you because there is a fundamental conflict between independence and the attitude that has been reinforced to you all your life. That can result in underlying feelings of guilt at the attempt of any independent decision or action, as if it’s not really supposed to be this way.

overprotective parenting may lead to difficulty in being authentic and honest towards yourself and others in adult life.

When the main concern for a long time has been gaining the approval of parents and being disciplined to restrictions and rules:

You either had to be very obedient and resigned from gaining any autonomy or You had to learn how to occasionally lie and present a different image than your true Self to others, to keep gaining gratification and pursue what you wanted at the same time.

This constant validation-seeking may have led to an inability to express yourself fearlessly, out of fear of not being accepted and loved otherwise.

Unfortunately, this could mean that you may find it challenging to truly be yourself in adult life because the opinion of others is so vital to you. You may find yourself unable to express what you really think and generally be obstructed by living life authentically and with honesty and integrity towards yourself and others.

It may feel as if you are often in pretend mode, to gain the best outcomes from the outside world. However when you don’t live life as your own authentic self, the harm is primarily done to you; you may be often disappointed, and accumulate resentment and frustration towards yourself, while you come across as passive. 

Others may be able to discern that you are not really open and honest, which can result in them keeping a distance from you, something that can contribute to you feeling lonely and misunderstood.

In conclusion:

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Overprotective parenting undoubtedly has some quite devastating effects for the individual on multiple levels: emotional growth, the development of a healthy identity and sense of self, self-esteem, subsequent social interactions and relationships, and more, as we established today.

Overprotective parents overstep the emotional boundaries of their children by wanting to exert control over them, out of “genuine love”.

Yet it is theorized that emotional hunger, and not genuine love, guides the actions of such parents, since love is about encouraging growth, and overprotectiveness hinders emotional growth on many different levels.

If you are a parent and find yourself acting overprotective, it’s very important to monitor your behavior and attempt to adopt a more authoritative parenting style instead, to minimize potential negative consequences for your child in the future.

If you are the adult child of overprotective parents, know these effects are not irreversible. Indeed, a lot of inner work may be required so that you experience yourself as a resilient, confident, and competent adult, but this is your life and it's high time you take it into your own hands. 

No matter what was instilled in you earlier, know that:

🔹You can do it!

🔹You can overcome every fear!

🔹You can face the storms of life!