The answer, research suggests, is that our help has to be responsive to the recipient’s circumstances: it must balance their need for support with their need for competence. We should restrain our urge to help unless the recipient truly needs it, and even then, we should calibrate it to complement rather than substitute for the recipient’s efforts.

The good news is that people seem to be adept at understanding when others need help, as shown in a fascinating observational study of barroom brawls. This study, led by the sociologist Michael J. Parks of Penn State and published online in March in the journal Aggressive Behavior, showed that bystanders are especially likely to intervene to end the brawl to the extent that the brawlers are intoxicated. That is, observers stepped in to help precisely when that help was most needed.

Although appropriating recipients’ self-control efforts can be essential when their self-control is compromised, as when they are drunk, a better approach in most situations is to calibrate one’s help to complement the recipient’s own efforts. In a 2007 study published in the Journal of Personal Social Psychology, the Carnegie Mellon psychologist Brooke Feeney videotaped married couples as they discussed one partner’s personal goals, like switching jobs or developing a new hobby. When the spouses of these goal pursuers were receptive to being relied upon (as judged by trained coders) but did not impose their help, the goal pursuers behaved more independently in the pursuit of their goal and, most important, were more likely to achieve it over the next six months.

In short, although much remains to be investigated, the findings thus far suggest that providing help is most effective under a few conditions: when the recipient clearly needs it, when our help complements rather than replaces the recipient’s own efforts, and when it makes recipients feel that we’re comfortable having them depend on us.

So yes, by all means, parents, help your children. But don’t let your action replace their action. Support, don’t substitute. Your children will be more likely to achieve their goals — and, who knows, you might even find some time to get your own social life back on track.