Browsing by Subject "Emerging adulthood"

Emerging adulthood, specifically the transition to college, is often marked by changing social networks, increased responsibility, and separation from the parental home environment. Educators, researchers, and those dedicated to the healthy development of young people are invested in understating how and why social support is important for students’ adjustment, wellbeing, and their ability to cope with the daily stressors that accompany this notable transition. In particular, parents are believed to be a key source of both perceived (stable) and enacted (immediate) support. Strong parental relationships predict students’ overall achievement and adjustment in the first year of college. Less is known about how parental relationships may impact students’ daily wellbeing and whether parents can provide helpful enacted support through daily communication. With the rapid ubiquitous rise in mobile technologies, students and their parents are now communicating more frequently during this transition; however, very little is known about whether daily virtual parental communication can help students cope with daily stressors. This study contributes to the existing literature by 1) describing students’ daily in-person and virtual communication with parents during the beginning of college, 2) examining whether students' daily virtual parental communication is associated with their same-day wellbeing, 3) testing whether daily virtual communication (i.e., enacted support) buffers daily responses to stressors, 4) examining the specificity of parental support (versus other sources of support), and 5) exploring whether the strength of students’ parental relationships (i.e., perceived support) is associated with students’ ‘reactivity’ to daily stressors. This dissertation consists of three studies that used daily assessments (i.e., ecological momentary assessments: EMA) and experimental manipulation to understand the momentary interplay between exposure to stressors, parent-child virtual communication, and students’ wellbeing during the transition to college.

Study 1, a 7-day EMA study of 136 first and second year college students, found that texting with a parent moderated the same-day associations between daily stressors and affect. Although daily parental virtual communication was not directly associated with same-day affect, on days when students reported a stressor and texted with a parent, they had lower negative and higher positive affect compared to stressor days when they did not text with a parent. Extending research by Gross (2009), Study 2 used an experimental paradigm in which 101 first year college students completed a virtual social exclusion stressor task (i.e., Cyberball) and then were assigned to text a parent, text a stranger, or play a solitary computer game. Students who ‘reached out’ via text message to parents or strangers demonstrated faster recovery in self-esteem following the experimentally induced stressor compared to students assigned to the no contact control. Study 3 followed the same 101 first year students with a 10-day EMA study. On days when students reported a stressor and called/texted with their parents (versus days without virtual parental contact), they reported lower negative affect and slept longer that night, as monitored objectively with a wearable wristband. Analyses testing for specificity across the three studies found that only virtual communication with parents or romantic partners, but not other texting patterns (number of texts or contacts) or partners (texting with acquaintances, siblings, roommates, or friends), moderated the daily associations between stressors and wellbeing. In addition, students with higher reported maternal relationship quality were less ‘reactive’ to stressors, such that in both experimental and naturalistic settings students with lower (versus higher) maternal relationship quality had steeper increases in negative affect when they experienced a stressor. Overall, the three studies found converging evidence that daily virtual communications with parents may aid students in dealing with daily stressors, especially for reducing negative affect. Possible explanations, ideas for future research, and implications are discussed.

Traditionally seen as a time for increasing independence and autonomy, the college experience is often the first major, long-term physical separation from parents (Chickering, 1969; Chickering & Reisser, 1993). For previous generations, living away from home provided conditions for autonomy development partially based on infrequent contact with parents. In contrast, the rapid evolution of communication technology in the recent past allows today's generation of college students to connect to their parents instantly and frequently through a variety of electronic means including cellular phone calls, text messages, emails, video chats, and social media. The current study used self-report data from 180 residential college students at a mid-sized private institution in the southeastern United States to explore parent-child communication patterns as they relate to parenting styles and the development of emotional autonomy and adjustment to college. Emotional autonomy was measured with items from the Emotional Autonomy Scale (EAS; Steinberg & Silverberg, 1986). Following Beyers, Goossens, Van Calster, & Duriez (2005), a separation scale (derived from the EAS subscales of parental deidealization, nondependence on parents, and individuation) was used as a measure of emotional autonomy. Two scales from the Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire (Baker & Siryk, 1989) measured students' academic and social adjustment to college.

Results indicated that, in a given week, students reported an average contact frequency (with both parents combined) of 10.92 cell phone calls, 49.88 text messages, and 6.04 email exchanges. Contact was initiated by students and parents at roughly the same rates, and females had more contact with parents than males, in general. Facebook was more popular than Twitter and Instagram for connecting with parents through social media, and the majority of students felt either neutral or positive about being "Facebook friends" with their parents. Overall, students reported high satisfaction with both the frequency and the quality of communication with their parents. Greater levels of parental closeness significantly predicted higher satisfaction with the parent-child Facebook friendship.

The relationships between the traditional parenting styles of permissive, authoritative, and authoritarian parenting (Baumrind, 1991) were investigated in relation to communication patterns, autonomy, and adjustment. Helicopter parenting was also included as a predictor variable, though it is considered separate from the traditional parenting styles (Padilla-Walker & Nelson, 2012). Results of hierarchical regression analyses indicated that parents' higher scores on authoritarian parenting and helicopter parenting predicted more frequent cell phone contact with parents. Parental closeness also emerged as a significant, positive predictor of frequency of cell phone and total communication. Students who talked on their cell phones more frequently overall (not including parental contacts) tended to talk to their parents more often on the phone, and the same went for texting, as well.

Helicopter parenting also predicted lower emotional autonomy, which was in line with the only previous study of helicopter parenting in emerging adulthood (Padilla-Walker & Nelson, 2012). Surprisingly, authoritative and permissive parenting significantly predicted lower emotional autonomy, while authoritarian parenting was related to greater autonomy. Analyses investigating frequency of cell phone contact with parents as a moderator of this relationship indicated that more frequent phone conversations predicted decreased autonomy when parents were more authoritative. High levels of authoritarian parenting, on the other hand, resulted in higher levels of autonomy regardless of how often students talked on the phone with parents, while high contact with less authoritarian parents predicted decreased autonomy. Frequency of cell phone contact with parents was unrelated to academic and social adjustment to college. Findings are discussed in light of previous research and situated within a framework proposing that technological advances in communication have contributed to lengthening the path to adulthood.