Called “The Helicopter Parents” by frustrated business owners and college counselors, they are those who have been intimately involved in every aspect of their child’s life from birth and expect this relationship to continue into adulthood. Now, as their Gen Y children head off to college and work, these parents are becoming the bane of the existence of college professors and business owners.
Like all parents, helicopter parents want their children to succeed. In their parenting style, however, success does not come by learning from failure but rather through intervention. Helicopter parents are extremely involved in their children’s lives and take great pride in overseeing their day to day activities.
Add to this the availability of instant communication through technology and the result is a generation that is used to being in constant contact with their parents for monitoring and guidance.
Is Helicopter Parenting Detrimental?
The question then becomes, is this generation incapable of living without guidance? Have helicopter parents actually harmed their child's chances of success? Those who are dealing with these parents seem to think so.
Antecedents are rampant in colleges and entry level business of parents who do their children’s homework, meet with teachers to insist on better grades, interrupt job interviews or demand explanations from human resources managers on evaluations.
Mary Ann Manos addresses the damage helicopter parents could be doing to their child’s future in her article “Helicopter Parents: Empathetic or Pathetic? When Best Intentions for Adult Children Go Awry at School and on the Job” in the Phi Kappa Phi Forum. “The 'adult child' job applicants can be assured opportunities quickly evaporate when they bring mom and dad in tow to the interview. Employers don't want to have to deal with parents,” she says.
The Impact of Helicopter Parenting
Sociologists are concerned that this style of parenting prevents the child from ever achieving true adulthood. “The Crash of the Helicopter Parent,” published in the January 2010 Trends E-Magazine, stated that when psychological benchmarks were measured in 1960, 65% of males and 77% of females had achieved adulthood. However, only 31% of males and 46% of females had achieved adulthood in 2000.
Does this mean these parents could be inadvertently stunting the emotional growth of their children? In its most simple terms, helicopter parenting means protecting children from all things, including failure. But by never allowing the child the chance to fail, he never learns to regroup and correct mistakes.
Instead, the child learns to rely on the parent for success. In constant contact with the parent, the child does not make decisions of his own but rather defers to parental authority.
As with any sociological dilemma, the results of helicopter parenting may not be seen for many years. In the meantime, parents who feel they need to intervene for their children, whether it is in college or at work, may want to rethink the lengths they are willing to go to. Parents of younger children may need to be reminded that failure and mistakes, on their own, are not necessarily negative and may even improve chances for success in the future.
The risks of ignoring the question of helicopter parenting may be found years in the future with a generation of adults who cannot make decisions on their own without some kind of guidance.
In the words of David Wolpe, in the February 2007 article “Helicopter Parents, Beware” in The New York Jewish Week, “Always spread a net beneath your child and she will never learn to fall. If she never learns to fall, then one day when you are not there to pick her up, she will not know how to raise herself.”
Kelly Sharp - Kelly Sharp holds a Master's degree in Education and a Bachelor's degree in Communication, and has been involved in training in a variety ...
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