The Shadow of Overcontrol
Excessive control over children and adolescents is often reflected in a low tolerance for uncertainty, unrealistic expectations, or rigid rules. Such behavior can produce dependent children or, on the contrary, aggressive minors who rebel against the norms.
The need for parental control often stems from a fear that something bad might happen to their children.
The Influence of Parenting Styles
The parenting that parents provide to their children influences to the point of shaping their personality and outlining their behavior and affective relationships in their adult life. “All reference figures are part of the attachment style given to a child,” says Patricia Zori, a clinical psychologist specializing in attachment and trauma at the Centro de Psicología Retiro in Madrid. For this expert, all people reproduce the affective bond they had in childhood with their parents. “Parenting can be a multifactorial mix; you can have one figure, father or mother, who controls, but be the other more permissive, therefore, that anxious attachment can be counteracted,” she explains. “However, if the parenting of imposition predominates, it may be because both parents have had negative experiences or because they have been transmitted to them in their childhood, a stage where they felt insecure and now perceive the world as a threatening and hostile place,” she continues.
And it is that the personality of both parents will largely shape the parenting style they will give to their children throughout their lives. The American Psychological Association (APA) identifies four main types of parenting, including the authoritarian and controlling style, in which parents tend to be demanding, severe, inflexible, and seek to control their children’s behavior. The other three types are: authoritative parents, those who are affectionate but at the same time set limits; permissive parents, who are also affectionate but more relaxed and do not tend to demand much of the child; and finally, passive parents, who tend to be indifferent, inaccessible and, sometimes, even absent.
The Fear of the Unknown
“When raising children, we put a lot of what we are, we tend to want to repeat what has been good for us, and save our children from those things that have been bad,” says Paloma Díez, a clinical psychologist specializing in child and adolescent psychology. For Díez, personality is formed by experiences and usually influences parenting style. But does this mean that if a woman or a man is anxious or controlling, she will be a bad mother or a bad father? “Of course not,” she insists, “in general, parents are good, they do the best they can.” In this sense, Zori agrees that it is inevitable to make mistakes, and that it is human to feel fear and transmit it to children. “It’s something uncontrollable, although watching them all the time generates overprotection and makes children dependent,” she adds. However, it is important to know that almost all experiences can be repaired. “If you apologize to a child and tell them, ‘I’m sorry, what I just did is not right,’ the child will understand and that situation will be resolved,” she continues.
The Controlling Mother
In the specific case of mothers, the Journal of Family Studies published in 2022 the report Maternal control and the internalization and externalization of childhood symptoms in the neighborhood safety context. In it, controlling mothers are defined as parents who interfere in almost every aspect of their child’s life. In addition, it adds that they are women who criticize any choice that the child tries to make independently, have high and unattainable standards, their rules are rigid, and, in addition, they show a lack of empathy and respect. The study adds that they also punish severely, manipulate with gifts and use shame and guilt in parenting. “Although you have a mother who, for emotional reasons, fosters a more anxious, even neglectful, parenting style in the child, there can always be another figure in the environment that rescues and complements education,” says Zori.
The Consequences of Control
“Educating involves a lot of balance and achieving it varies greatly from one woman to another or from one man to another,” says Díez. This expert describes controlling parents, who are included in the authoritarian parenting style, as anxious: “Frequently this need for dominance comes from a lack of tolerance for uncertainty and a lot of fear that something bad will happen to their children.” A fear that, according to the psychologist, has different consequences: “Either it generates overly dependent and fearful children, who are unable to do things alone without first receiving the approval of their parents, or, on the other hand, they can become aggressive, they rebel against the excess of control, they are perfectionists, they do not tolerate error and they are very liars.”
Finding a Balance
That is why the child psychologist Úrsula Perona highlights the importance of conscious parenting. In the book 9 rules for a conscious education, published in May 2023, coordinated by Perona and written by a group of child psychologists, it is explained how to become aware of the child’s age, their needs, their developmental stage and their particularities according to each type of personality and temperament is crucial “so as not to project our frustrations or deficiencies”. The book also emphasizes the idea that each child is independent, has their own learning and must and has come to make their own way, so parents must help them in this process and not hinder or limit it.
Díez explains that being a controlling mother or father can be molded with effort and perseverance, before reaching a psychotherapy process, if it were necessary in extremis: “The first thing is to recognize and detect the problem and, from there, begin to establish clear, healthy and firm limits.” In addition, she points out that children who grow up in this type of parenting can begin to take their own measures when they reach adolescence: “Some will face this trait of their mothers or fathers through aggression. While, if they are accompanied by good reference figures, friends, teachers or psychologists, they will be able to do so through assertiveness.” This psychologist clarifies that in this way they will be able to set limits for their parents in an appropriate way, expressing how they feel about controlling behaviors and always with empathy towards them. For her part, Zori emphasizes that the important thing is that there is good communication: “You have to give them a good emotional translation, that is, explain to them why things are, that they know what and why they feel fear or insecurity.”