Parenting Under Pressure: Associations between Perceived Social Pressure and Parental Involvement among Mothers and Fathers

In many Western countries, the ideology of intensive parenting has gained prominence in the discourse of experts, policymakers, and within popular culture. This ideology emphasizes deep parental involvement in emotional, physical, and financial aspects (Lee et al., 2014). Meeting these demanding standards can exert significant pressure on parents, especially on mothers often considered as the primary caregiver. Moreover, these pressures may prompt parents to be highly, and potentially overly, involved in their children's lives. Using data from 146 parent dyads (N = 292 parents; M_age = 47.57 years) of Swiss adolescents, the study explores parental perceptions of pressure to be a perfect parent and its association with one positive (responsiveness) and two negative types of involvement (overprotection and overvaluation). Thereby, we estimated Actor-Partner Interdependence Models (APIM) to examine mutual influences between mothers and fathers. The results indicated that mothers reported experiencing significantly more pressure than fathers. We found evidence for a positive association between perceptions of pressure and parental overprotection among both parents. The results also showed that there was a significant association between feelings of pressure and overvaluation, but only among fathers. Associations between pressure and responsiveness were not significant, and no significant partner effects were observed in any of the models. In conclusion, mothers particularly face heightened pressure to be perfect parents, but both parents may adapt their parenting strategies in response to perceived pressure to be perfect as a parent. These findings highlight the potential issues associated with societal pressures on parents and their impact on parenting behavior.