Things parents do that could make their children worse off as they grow up

6 problematic things parents do that can make their children insecure, withdrawn, drug-dependent, or otherwise worse off as they grow up

By Allana Akhtar, Business Insider

• Parenting behaviors - from being over-involved to constantly stressed out to emotionally abusive- can have lasting impacts from childhood all the way up to adulthood.
• Abusive parenting during childhood may lead to a greater likelihood to developing age-related diseases.
• Over-involved parenting also may lead to feelings of entitlement and less self-efficacy when you get older.

For better or worse, how your parents behaved when you grew up has had - and likely will have - a lasting impact on who you are today.

Clinical and research psychologists have studied how adults suffer from parenting for decades. Whether your mom or dad was over-involved in your life or whether they were neglectful, there are negative consequences to certain types of parental behavior.

Yet while young children emulate their parents early on, adolescents and adults who recognize negative behavior can manage the influence your parents had on you, according to Carl Pickhardt, psychologist and author of Who Stole My Child?: Parenting through the Four Stages of Adolescence.

"Parents are hugely influential for who [their children] are and how they act," Pickhardt told Business Insider. "However, what mediates that effect is the decision by the child to want to decide to follow that example or to differentiate from that."

Here are 6 ways your parents' behavior growing up may have had a negative impact on who you are today.

Having abusive parents can lead to higher stress and likelihood of developing age-related diseases like cardiovascular disease.

Growing up with physically abusive parents as a child can have lingering adverse effects on your long-term physical health, according to a 2013 study out of the University of California-Los Angeles.

Researchers analyzed survey responses from 756 subjects, and found those with high levels of childhood stress had a greater chance of developing multi-system health risks like high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and diabetes.

The research suggests high amounts of stress during your childhood leads to difficulty controlling stress into your adulthood, which in turn allows for the adverse health effects.

"Our findings highlight the extent to which these early childhood experiences are associated with evidence of increased biological risks across nearly all of the body's major regulatory systems," Teresa Seeman, author of the study and professor of epidemiology at UCLA, said in a release.

If your parent was drug-dependent, you may have ended up having to take care of them as a child — which can cause problems with having fun as an adult.

Growing up with alcohol or drug dependent parents can lead children to take on the caretaking role early in life, Mark B Borg, Jr., a NYC-based clinical psychologist and a psychoanalyst, told Business Insider.

In turn, kids may lose out on a childhood to take care of their parents. As they themselves get older, this could lead to trouble having fun or letting their guard down, according to Portland Lifestyle Counseling.

Or, depressed parents may lead children to act like they're happy. This can lead to a hesitation to open up emotionally in adulthood.

If children recognize their parents are unhappy, they start performing in a way they know can cheer their mom or dad up, Borg said. Children grow used to taking care of their parents in the form of performing behaviors they know will please their parents, but might not be what they want to do.

In adulthood, you continue performing for other people instead of being vulnerable and open with their emotions.

"You're basically preforming to make your parents feel better so they can be more active and parent you," Borg said. "What they wind up doing inadvertently as adults is they wind up being unable to take in what other people have to offer. The caretaking works against being vulnerable."

Over-involved "helicopter" parenting during childhood has been linked to anxiety problems in adolescence — and even the abuse of pain pills.

"Helicopter" parenting describes adults who take an over-active role in their child's lives through not allowing them to play unsupervised and spending too much time with them.

After growing up, children of helicopter parents have a higher likelihood of developing depression and anxiety, as well as recreationally using prescription pain pills. The results come from a 2011 study which sampled 317 college students on the impact their parents had on their mental health.

Researchers also found adult children of helicopter parents may be more self conscious and less open to new ideas.

Over-involved parenting also may lead to feelings of entitlement and less self-efficacy when you get older.

In a 2012 study analyzing 339 groups of parents and their young adult children, researchers looked at causes of self-efficacy - or confidence you can do something - and entitlement.

Researchers found that when parents emphasized control when their children grew up, young adults reported having lower levels of self-efficacy, yet greater feelings of entitlement.

When parents had open communication and adequately set up rules, young adults felt higher levels of family satisfaction than those with controlling parents.

Stressed out or emotionally abusive parents lead to children with higher levels of "defenses" to shield them from experiencing pain. These traits carry on into adulthood and lead to trouble nurturing their own children.

Stressed parents who lash out can scare their children. To cope, kids develop "defenses" against strong feelings of fear or sadness to adapt to their environment, according to Lisa Firestone, psychologist and author of "Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice: A Revolutionary Program to Counter Negative Thoughts and Live Free from Imagined Limitations."

While these defenses work as emotional barriers to feeling pain when you're young, they can lead to trouble opening up emotionally with others - including your own kids - into adulthood.

"These early adaptations may have served us well when we were young, but they can hurt us as adults, particularly as parents," Firestone wrote in Psychology Today.