I have a lot of coworkers who are bigger self-starters than I am despite growing up with far more type-A parents than I did. Even to the point of there being stereotypes about the people who can't relax cause their parents drove them so hard for some Asian immigrant groups.

So I think a claim that "controlling parents" -> "adrift young adults" would be hard to support.

Kids need to learn from mistakes, but if not monitored, you can hit the opposite end where the lesson isn't learned because there are no real consequences. For instance, goofing off in high school won't give you consequences until you graduate high school at the earliest, and possibly not until you graduate collect (still goofing off) and suddenly hit a wall in terms of what you can get employment-wise.