Children of helicopter parents tend to live shorter lives: study

Parents, pay attention. A new study has found that children of overprotective parents tend to have a shorter lifespan.

Men who didn’t have much autonomy growing up face a 12% increased risk of dying before they turn 80, according to an analysis of English Longitudinal Study of Aging data.

The study, recently published in Scientific Reports, determined women with an overprotective father have a 22% increased risk of dying before 80.

But on the flip side, girls who received great care from their mothers may have the risk decrease by 14%, researchers at the Federal University of São Carlos in Brazil and University College London found. Interestingly, the study showed that men who lived with only one parent as a boy had a 179% higher risk of dying before 80.

In gathering their findings, researchers analyzed data from 941 participants in the age study. The 445 women and 496 men were born in the 1950s or 1960s and died between 2007 and 2018.

“The most interesting thing about our study is that we were able to show in numbers what has been discussed about parenting for many years,” study co-author Tiago da Silva Alexandre, a professor of gerontology at the Federal University of São Carlos, said in a statement.

He continued: “Caring and loving relationships with your father and mother during childhood have repercussions for the rest of your life. In particular, our findings show how they affect longevity.”

Researchers scrutinized answers participants had given in a questionnaire that surveyed family structure, head of household’s job and the relationship they shared with their parents as children, especially when it came to “care” and “protection.”

They looked for links between the categories to estimate the effects of parental relationships on survival rates.

The authors noted that even though the study focused on baby boomers, they theorized the results may be similar for recent generations.

“Children need parental care and support, but not intrusion, which deprives the child of autonomy,” study co-author Aline Fernanda de Souza Canelada said.

“Research in psychology shows that this kind of relationship is also weak, because the child is afraid of the parent, and leads to various problems, including unhealthy habits, with some studies showing an increased risk of alcohol and drug abuse, as well as mental health difficulties such as stress, which correlates closely with reduced longevity.”