London: Parents are pushy and scream from the sidelines or hover backstage because they want their children to reach their own thwarted dreams, the first experiments on the long-held belief suggest.
The research provides the first empirical evidence that parents sometimes want their child to fulfill their unfulfilled ambitions.
For example, parents who themselves faced rejection from a medical school, would like their children to become a doctor.
The experiments showed that pushy parents seem to share a common trait and they view their children as part of themselves.
The researchers asked 73 parents of children aged 8 to 15 in the Netherlands to complete a questionnaire to determine to what extent they view their kids as separate people.
Half of the parents were asked to write about ambitions they hadn`t achieved, and the other half wrote about acquaintances` ambitions.
All the parents were then asked how strongly they agreed with statements such as, `I hope my child will reach goals that I wasn`t able to reach.`
Those who viewed their children as most closely linked to themselves, were more likely to hope that their children fulfilled their own dream s.
ANI
