Examining overparenting, socioeconomic status, and parental out-of-school time experience: Does socioeconomic status and out-of-school-time experience matter?

Overparenting represents a group of well-intended parental behaviors taken to an excessive degree, often resulting in negative socio-emotional outcomes for overparented children. Research examining overparenting and related constructs is quickly developing, but basic constructs remain underexplored, especially among adolescents. In this study, seven hypothesized relations between socioeconomic status (SES), overparenting, parental prior out-of-school-time experience, parental encouragement, and parental anxiety are examined through a structural equation model (SEM) among a sample of 201 parents of youth (aged 11.52 years, SD = 2.44) attending a residential summer camp. Counter to the study hypotheses, the results indicated parents prior out-of-school-time experience had no direct effect on rates of parental anxiety or overparenting but did positively influence parental encouragement levels. As hypothesized parental anxiety had a positive direct effect on overparenting score, but counter to the study hypotheses, overparenting had a positive direct effect on parental encouragement score. Lastly, and contrary to the final two study hypotheses, SES had a negative direct effect on parental anxiety score and a non-significant effect on overparenting score.