When you were a teenager, did your mom just drive you nuts?
Well, prepare to let her make you crazy one last time, because she's about to say, "I told you so!"
As always, she's right. At long last, science has proven what moms everywhere have long suspected: Women with moms who nag are more likely to be successful.
Moms, as we all know, are some of the toughest people around, so it shouldn't be surprising that their forceful, Mama-knows-best approach to parenting reaps significant results.
Having a don't-mess-with-me mom is especially impactful when it comes to raising girls into bright, brave women.
Boys benefit from having strong moms too, but for girls, having a powerful female figure in your life can have a dramatic effect on your own self-image.
Maybe that's because boys have superheroes and spies to look up to, while most of the role models offered to young girls are impossibly thin models in bikinis.
Movies and books are providing more awesome ladies every day, but in the meantime, there's a huge opportunity for ordinary, strong women to step in and offer their daughters fulfilling goals.
Scroll through below to learn more.
[H/T: Scary Mommy]
It's no easy task to be the strict mom who is always keeping her kids on the straight and narrow.
If you've ever been in this position (or if you've been a teenager), you know that moms with a lot of rules are about 1,000 percent more likely to have a door rudely slammed in their face.
Console yourself with the knowledge that your teen might be a terror now, but Mother really does know best.
The study, out of the University of Essex in the U.K., indicates that young women are much less likely to lag behind their peers if their parents, particularly their moms, have high expectations.
Even more importantly, it's not enough for Mom to simply expect achievement; the message won't sink in unless she reminds her daughter regularly.
In other words, constantly reminding your daughter that she needs to work on her college essay or pull up her math grades might irritate her, but it's good for her.
Moms have traditionally borne the brunt of the parenting responsibilities.
That has slowly started to change as dads take on more domestic roles and become more active in terms of direct parenting.
Dads have a profound effect on their kids, but any kid can tell you, it's not a good idea to ignore Mom when she asks you to do something.
Sure, we've all temporarily ignored Mom's sage wisdom, but in our experience, it usually comes around to bite us in the butt.
Because kids tend to have a healthy respect for their mother's authority, her advice and wishes are likely to bear a lot of weight, even if we don't realize that we're taking them into consideration.
"In many cases we succeeded in doing what we believed was more convenient for us, even when this was against our parents’ will," says Ericka Rascon-Ramirez, the lead researcher on the study. "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."
In fact, parents, especially moms, had a big impact on whether or not their daughters made stumbles or missteps during their teen years.
In particular, the study found that the daughters of parents with high expectations were about four percent less likely to become pregnant as teenagers.
They also found that girls who had less scholarly friend groups were more likely to succeed with pushy parents, while girls with highly academic social circles might not need as much of a push from their folks.
In other words, it's just like Mom always said: "I know what's best for you."
Even girls that actively rebel against their moms are probably internalizing at least some of her hard-earned wisdom.
Are you a nagging mom? Did your mom nag you? Let us know in the comments below!
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