Harassing your daughter about finishing up her homework may not thrill her at the time, but she’ll thank you later in life. According to a study conducted by the University of Essex in England, she will probably be more successful than the kids of less pushy moms.
From 2004 to 2010, researchers followed the lives of 15,500 girls between the ages 13 and 14, and they found that the girls with moms, who set high standards for them growing up were more likely to go on to college and earn higher wages.
Get tough with a teenage daughter and she’s likely to slam her bedroom door in protest. But console yourself that it’s worth it in the end – because being a pushy parent is the best way to prepare her for success.
The University of Essex study said, the benefit of pushy parents was most marked among the least academic teenagers, who often have no friends or teachers willing to encourage them.
Researcher Ericka Rascon-Ramirez said, in many cases we succeeded in doing what we believed was more convenient for us, even when this was against our parents will. But no matter how hard we tried to avoid our parents’ recommendations, it is likely that they ended up influencing, in a more subtle manner, choices that we had considered extremely personal. What our parents expected about our school choices was, very likely, a major determinant of our decisions about conceiving a child or not during our teenage years.