Eleanor Mawson

• BSc Psychology (Hons) with a Professional Placement
• Helicopter parenting: Creating a validated scale to assess the relationship between protective parenting and academic resilience

In both academia and industry, there have been growing concerns over the mental toughness of students and graduates.  University well-being services find counselling services stretched with cases of student anxiety; whereas employers find recent graduates struggle to deal with conflict at work.  Past research has focused on the links between early attachment, emotional childhood neglect, and mental toughness.  However, to date there has been less research on how sheltering young people may result in decreased ability to cope, e.g. when experiencing failure for the first time.  This phenomena is referred to as ‘helicopter parenting’, as both parents, and society in general, attempt to protect young people from negative environmental stimuli – an issue that may be exacerbated in high socioeconomic groups.  The present research will create the first validated multidimensional measure of helicopter parenting, and test the scale in an academic context, in order to predict mental toughness in university students.

Funding source: Newcastle University

Supervisor: Dr Trevor James