We all know that every parent worries about their kids. If you’re a parent, you may truly know that how many sleepless nights you’ve had thinking about your children.
You’ll even worry about their small issues such as what are they going to eat tomorrow, what will they do in their future, about their degree, job search, and marriage.
You are not alone, if you are an adult and your parents still worrying about your meals or whether you’re home safe.
According to a study, they’ve found that parents worry about their children when they are young when they are past their adolescent age and even well-formed adults. But, this worry differs from men to women.
The study was done by Amber J. Seidel, Ph.D., of Penn State York in Pennsylvania. She did this study because she firmly believes in the importance of the family relationships: their support and love.
“I feel that many share this value, yet I think much of the socialization in our culture focuses on family when children are younger, I seek to study topics that help us understand how family continues to be a central part of our lives throughout adulthood, and I encourage considering family-level influences in all situations.” She said for CBS News.
In the study, there are 186 heterosexual married couples with two or three adult children. The men were 58 years old and the women were close to 57.
In the study, the parents were asked to rate on a scale of 1 to 8 (1-daily, 8-once a year) the different types of support they provide to their adult children. Emotional support, companionship, discussing everyday events, practical help and financial support are the types of support.
They also had to rate the stress level of supporting their adult children, and how much time they worry about their adult children on a scale of 1 to 5 (1-not at all, 5-a great deal).
The amount of sleep the parents got at night was also investigated by the researchers and found that fathers slept about 6.69 hours on average and mothers slept for 6.66 hours.
According to the study, it was said that fathers tended to lose sleep when they were worried about the support they provided their adult children. When their wives were the ones providing their children’s support they slept more.
It was not an issue to the women’s quality of sleep. It was affected for the mothers’ sleep the stress of having to provide support to their children.
The results of the study conclude that men were troubled with the mere act of giving support and women were troubled by stressing over the support.
The reason behind this may be because of how much-involved parents are in their adult children’s lives nowadays says, Seidel. The parents have got the best chance to get closer with their children as now there’re smartphones and technology. So, they become more curious about their children and become stressed.
But these high-stress levels can cause negative issues on the parent’s physical and emotional states.
Here the problem is not that we are stressed in our lives, it is we are not able to deal with it as for Seidel. It’ll also lead to immune suppression.
But, the parents can overcome this stress by, changing their eating habits, exercising more, spending time in nature. They also need to choose the level of involvement they should have on their children’s lives.
They also need to think about whether they are giving the right things to their children.
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