OVERPARENTING AND MENTORING ON THE SELF-EFFICACY AND WELLBEING OF SINGAPOREAN EMERGING ADULTS

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the effects of overparenting and college mentoring on the wellbeing of Singaporean emerging adults, as well as investigate possible mediation pathways through self-efficacy. For overparenting, both maternal and paternal overparenting were examined. For wellbeing, both hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing were also examined. Participants were 494 Singaporean emerging adults between the ages of 18 to 28. Hayes’ (2013) PROCESS macro was used to examine the statistical significance of the proposed simple mediation models. The results confirm the findings of past studies that overparenting leads to adverse consequences on emerging adult wellbeing, while college mentoring improved emerging adult wellbeing. The results also provide new insight on the differential effects of maternal and paternal overparenting on the two orientations of wellbeing, where there were significant direct effects of both overparenting on hedonic but not eudaimonic wellbeing, effects on hedonic wellbeing were partially mediated by self-efficacy for both types of overparenting and maternal overparenting’s effect on eudaimonic wellbeing was fully mediated by self-efficacy. Significant direct and indirect effects were also found between mentoring and the two orientations of wellbeing, mediated by self-efficacy. The study contributes to the limited literature on overparenting and mentoring among emerging adults, and informs future interventions aimed at optimising emerging adult wellbeing.