Objectives This study aimed to identify the impact the parental attachment of 4-year college students has on their dysfunctional career thoughts through social support and emotional intelligence to provide primary data that can be used for education and counseling for college students' career choice and preparation.
 Methods In order to verify the research question, an online survey was conducted on students currently attending universities in Korea by selecting a total of 17 regions, including Seoul, Sejong, Jeonnam, Ulsan, and Jeju. A total of 300 questionnaires were used for the final analysis, and a structural equation model was used to investigate the relationship among latent variables and to verify the significance of model goodness of fit, and single- and dou-ble-mediated effects.
 Results First, a single-mediated impact of social support was identified in terms of the relationship between pa-rental attachment and emotional intelligence, while emotional intelligence was determined as a single-mediated effect for social support and dysfunctional career thoughts. Second, the fully double-mediated effect of social support and emotional intelligence was identified in parental attachment and dysfunctional career thoughts.
 Conclusions This demonstrates that in the short term, interventions focusing on social support and emotional in-telligence rather than parental attachment are expected to have a direct and short-term effect. In a fundamental aspect, this means that counseling strategies and interventions are needed to help recognize and understand cli-ent problems, considering mediation for parental attachment.