From School To Workplace:A Longitudinal Study Of The Impact Of Overparenting On The Career Development Of Emerging Adult Children

In recent years,the study of the impact of parental overparenting on the development of emerging adult children,a group of people who have passed adolescence but not yet entered full adulthood,has attracted more and more scholars’ attention,but the research on its impact on children’s career development is still very limited.To this end,this thesis adopts the method of longitudinal quantitative study to track for half a year the 2022 fresh graduates who have just entered the workplace,aiming to answer the following questions:(1)Will sociocultural factors influence participants’ emerging adulthood developmental features and their career identity exploration process and their perceived overparenting?(2)Will the developmental features of EA children affect their career exploration process?(3)Will the career exploration of EA children affect the development of their career identity?(4)What is the relationship between EA’s developmental features and their career identity?(5)Does parental overparenting play a moderating role in the relation between their EA children’s career exploration and career identity development?This thesis is a longitudinal quantitative study that lasted for more than half a year,collecting data in the form of online questionnaires from domestic college’s,bachelor’s and master’s degree holders who graduated in 2022.For each round of data collection,626,405,357 and 301 valid questionnaires were collected respectively.Questionnaire questions include homemade demographic information questions,as well as the EA Developmental Features Scale,the Career Exploration Scale,the Career Identity Scale,and the Overparenting Scale developed by previous scholars.Based on the data analysis of SPSS 27.0 and Process 4.1,the main findings of this thesis are as follows:(1)Intergroup variations exist in the career identity exploration process of emerging adults;(2)EA developmental features can positively predict their career exploration;(3)EA’s career exploration can positively predict the development of their career identity;(4)The EA developmental features do not directly affect the subsequent development of career identity,and career exploration plays a complete mediating role in it;(5)Paternal overparenting plays a positive moderating role in the relation between the career exploration and career identity development,but this finding is not applicable to maternal overparenting.The highlight of this study is to examine the emerging adult population at the early stage of their career development,focusing on their transition from school to workplace and the role of parenting in this process.This study finds the positive role of paternal overparenting in the early career construction of their children,and enriches the domestic research literature on fatherhood.At the same time,this study re-examines the relation between overparenting and the development of EA children in the Chinese context,and thus contributes to the understanding of the effect of this important family factor from a non-Western perspective.