Helicopter Parenting and College Self-Efficacy Among Latino College Students: The Moderating Role of Familism

Helicopter parenting has been defined as parents who over-step in solving their college students’ problems often providing unsolicited suggestions on how to handle college experiences and intervening to save their emerging adult from difficulties. College students’ reports of higher levels of helicopter parenting behaviors have been associated with lower levels of college self-efficacy. However, most studies have been conducted with White college students. Therefore, little is known about helicopter parenting among college students from racial and ethnic minority groups, including Latinos. Cultural values, such as familism are thought to inform parenting practices. Within Latino families, familism is a value that embraces the centrality of the family and emphasizes parenting practices that include high levels of parental warmth, monitoring, and control. Previous findings have indicated that higher endorsement of familism buffered the expected negative relation of parental control to self-esteem among Mexican American college students. Therefore, when thinking about helicopter parenting in the context of a Latino emerging adult, the inclusion of familism as a moderator helps to yield a more complete understanding of helicopter parenting. The present study’s goal was aimed at better understanding helicopter parenting within a Latino cultural context by examining to what extent familism endorsement moderates the relation of helicopter parenting to college self-efficacy. This cross-sectional, quantitative study utilized archival data collected from Latino college students who rated their parents’ helicopter parenting behavior, their level of familism endorsement, and their own college self-efficacy. A hierarchical multiple regression indicated that familism did not moderate the association, such that higher or lower endorsement of familism did not make a difference in the relation of helicopter parenting to perceived college self-efficacy. However, perceived helicopter parenting behaviors by mother and highest rated helicopter parenting by mother or father were negatively associated to Latino emerging adults’ perceived college self-efficacy. Parents are still important in an emerging adult’s life. Those who engage in helicopter parenting behavior may be limiting their emerging adult’s belief as they embark on new college demands.