Overparenting in adolescents’ everyday life: Development and validation of the momentary overparenting scale

Background. While there is ample theoretical and empirical interest in overparenting, little is known about how overparenting of adolescents operates in everyday family life. This study describes the development and validation of a novel instrument to assess overparenting with Experience Sampling Methods – The Momentary Overparenting (MOP) scale. Methods. Following 143 (Belgian and Dutch) adolescents for 7 subsequent days, we measured overparenting (i.e., worry, interference, and unnecessary help), autonomy support and psychological control 5 to 6 times per day. Using multilevel structural equation modeling on 1865 parent-adolescent interactions, we investigated the scale’s psychometric properties: within-family and between-family reliability, convergent and divergent validity. Results. Overparenting was characterized by both stable differences between families (46%), as well as dynamic fluctuations within families over time (54% of the variance). The MOP could reliably assess such real-time dynamics in overparenting. Momentary assessments correlated meaningfully with established instruments for overparenting at the between-family level. Within families, adolescents experienced interactions with more overparenting as more psychologically controlling and less autonomy supportive. Between families, overparenting correlated negatively with mothers’ autonomy support and positively with mothers’ psychological control. Conclusion. Worry, interference, and unnecessary help may be important expressions of overparenting in everyday family life – which can now be reliably measured from moment-to-moment as a distinct parenting construct.