
Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation - walterclifford
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2015/10/16/former-stanford-dean-explains-why-helicopter-parenting-is-ruining-a-generation-of-children/
======
wfo
Dean complains about helicopter parents at Stanford and yet admissions
essentially requires incoming students have helicopter parents. To get into a
school like this you need to be exclusively focused on exactly the arbitrary
criteria that will get you accepted into a school like this -- grades in the
"right" classes, enough sports to talk about it in an essay but not too much,
extracurricular and volunteer work at the "right" organizations, tutoring for
the standardized exams. No teenager has a passion for SAT prep. If you stop
pushing them and let them be human beings there are plenty of other children
of helicopter parents who will be happy to take their place in the incoming
Stanford class.

~~~
tomphoolery
Unfortunately, his position as a Dean prevents him from getting "too real" in
this article, because what he should be telling these over-stressed and over-
worked parents (and kids) is that you don't need to go to Harvard, or
Stanford, or any Ivy League school really, to get a good education.

~~~
aetherson
Her. It's literally the first line of the article. And also she's the _former_
dean.

------
ThomPete
As someone with children and living in NY, my wife and I are very aware of not
trying to push our kids in a specific direction or to interfeer too much if
they are having trouble solving something themselves.

The problem once we start coaching our kids in an early age is that we are
denying them to find a lot of subtle things out on their own.

It's very easy to think you are helping your kids to learn by removing what
seem like unnecessary obstacles and of course sometimes you are. But a lot of
the time it's those obstacles that build some sort of character in the kids
and allow them to find out things by finding out things. By being too
proactive as a parent we can take a lot of motivation away from them.

Our kids have bruises all over their body because they are allowed to do
things other kids aren't. Of course we watch over them and make sure they
don't do completely crazy things but they are capable of much more than one
might think. By allowing them to find that out they will hopefully learn that
themselves too.

Raising kids isn't a science it's an art. The art of creating a canvas for
them but not decide what they want to do with it.

I think this comic shows one of the big differences between our parents
generation and ours (I am 41)

I am always reminded of this
[http://i.imgur.com/LglSapk.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/LglSapk.jpg)

~~~
terda12
I grew up with parents who worked all the time and barely took part in their
childrens lives. We cook dinner by ourselves a majority of the time. My 10
year old brother has to mow the lawn and do his own laundry. We get yelled at
all the time like in the first column of the comics. At first I felt mad for
it but now I'm realizing the benefits. I can take care of myself so well. I
can cook, I keep my room clean, and I am on track to a great career that I
like. Not to mention my brother and I have both solo travelled to some crazy
places like Nepal, Peru, Norway.

My 21 year old friend has had his parents take a big part in his life. He has
upper middle class parents who watch his every move, sign him up for SAT
tutors, force him to take piano lessons. Has no clue how to cook, found
freshman year comp sci too hard and switched to communications and now
philosophy major, has not really gotten good at anything in life. If I majored
in Philosophy my parents would probably yell at me and not help with tuition.
Probably will depend on his dad's connections to get an office job.

On one hand having a nice, loving parent would be nice. I am not as socially
capable as some of my other friends who had loving parents. I am not as loving
or caring as them. On the other hand, my parents' harshness and indifference
helped me get used to the grittiness of real life and I'm glad for it.

~~~
balls187
What you wrote makes no logical sense. It's simply confirmation bias.

> My 21 year old friend has had his parents take a big part in his life. He
> has upper middle class parents who watch his every move, sign him up for SAT
> tutors, force him to take piano lessons. Has no clue how to cook, found
> freshman year comp sci too hard and switched to communications

Having parents who take a big part of your life has no bearing on whether or
not you'll do well at Comp Sci 101.

> Probably will depend on his dad's connections to get an office job.

After your first job out of college, subsequent jobs are found based on your
"connections." That's networking.

Also learning to cook isn't difficult. It just takes practice.

~~~
ThomPete
Most things just take practice especially being a human being.

The point — I think — is not that you become superman by being able to cook
yourself. The point is that helicopter parents are wrong in thinking that they
are doing their kids a favor by being constantly there for them.

Whatever their motives are they are not putting them in a better position in
the long run. It's more an attempt to control the destiny of their childs
future by controlling it for as long as they can.

------
supercanuck
You know what. Those parents got those kids into Stanford. Obviously
helicopter parenting is working for them.

90% of the decisions people make are based on the environments they are in.
Today's environment is extremely competitive and the margin for error is
lower. Nobody wants to be the parent of the most mentally stable Starbucks
Barista... Get them into Stanford, then they have the rest of their life to
"fail"

~~~
TelmoMenezes
> Today's environment is extremely competitive and the margin for error is
> lower.

The margin for error is enormous, compared to previous generations. The
probability that a mistake in life will lead you to die of starvation or cold
is smaller than ever.

What I think is happening is that global communication is leading to increased
status neurosis. Before, you could compare your kids to the neighbors'. Now
you can compare them with everyone's kids, filtered through the lens of social
media.

~~~
seiji
Margin of error: go to Stanford, make the right connections, become a
billionaire in 8 years versus go to a state school and work for the
billionaires while making 1/5000th to 1/150000th as much as they do, yet
you're doing all the work that makes them richer.

~~~
cthalupa
Stanford has 27 billionaire alumni. At any given time, there are ~15,000
students studying at Stanford.

Getting the top 10 schools for creating billionaires, it accounts for 206
total. (Though this number also includes Cambridge, and I'm not sure if the 11
billionaire alumni from there are part of the same 500ish US billionaires)

Out of the 500ish billionaires in the US, nearly 100 of them have no degree at
all.

So, these top schools produce about double the amount of billionaires that
zero degrees do, and roughly the same number as the rest of the schools
combined.

This is such a relatively small sample size and there are so many factors in
play here that it would be silly to draw any sort of strong conclusion from
this, but even going with shoddy science on this and playing fast and loose,
we can see that while, yes, you do gain an advantage in the 'become a
billionaire' game, it's still a ridiculously insignificant chance, and the
population of billionaires without a degree or with a degree from a school not
known for producing billionaires is still higher.

All of this to say: There ain't no easy path to billionairehood besides being
born one, and getting in to Stanford or any other school does not increase
your chances of becoming one to a statistically significant number.

~~~
seiji
_nearly 100 of them have no degree at all._

Because many of them dropped/stopped out of Stanford after being accepted.

You can ask the same of NYC. How many supreme court justices are from NYC
versus Idaho? Location matters. Location changes you. Peers change you.

 _relatively small sample size_

Outliers can't be analyzed using aggregate methods. Powerlawpeople.

~~~
cthalupa
>Because many of them dropped/stopped out of Stanford after being accepted.

Really? There's obviously a few well known cases of this, but I doubt you're
looking at any hard data when you make this claim.

>Outliers can't be analyzed using aggregate methods. Powerlawpeople.

Sure you can. When you're comparing 500 billionaires, they're no longer the
outliers in the data set. They're the norm for the data set.

------
chrisgd
I believe there are two different things at work here. One is being an active
parent and the other is helping your child develop grit[1] and I don't think
they are mutually exclusive.

At what age can I let my child walk to school by himself? It all depends on
the child, neighborhood, and other characteristics. But if my son never walks
to school by himself (elementary and middle), that doesn't mean he is going to
fail in the face of adversity.

Grit is about not saying "good job" all the time and instead saying thing like
"you worked hard". You need to teach your children to embrace failure as the
best way to learn.

I see this in myself. I walked to school by myself, wasn't really helicopter
parented, but found school very easy and breezed through everything and was
never challenged. When I faced real challenges, I had a hard time learning how
to overcome them.

I don't know what kind of parent I will end up being, my son is only 3, but I
can see myself being very involved in his life and decisions and making sure
he is safe. It will be hard to balance between being involved and being a
helicopter, but I think helping him embrace failure is the greatest thing I
can do.

[1]
[http://mindsetonline.com/abouttheauthor/](http://mindsetonline.com/abouttheauthor/)
\- It is ironic that the leading researcher in this field is at Stanford.

~~~
japhyr
The conversation about grit needs to be balanced by a careful critique of the
work we're asking students to engage with. If a school has a great climate and
academic rigor, then by all means develop resilience and grit in students. But
if a school is giving largely meaningless busywork, that needs to be addressed
before telling students to work hard.

Here's a great critique of the current conversation about grit:

\-
[http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_fer...](http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2015/10/response_is_grit_an_asset_or_an_excuse.html)

~~~
chrisgd
Great, thanks for sharing.

------
m_fayer
The idea that "today's youth" are more fragile than the youth of yore seems to
be a growing meme. I do believe that there is a rise in mental health issues
among young adults, but there are many potentially interacting causes. I
haven't read the book in question, but I hope that anyone who tackles this
subject addresses all the possibly relevant social phenomena before pinning it
all on one root cause. Some things I hope would be factored in are:

\- The tightening economic climate and increasing difficulty of staying in the
middle class. Especially when it relates to the panoply of difficulties young
people face: student debt, high cost of housing, the gateway of unpaid
internships, the declining number of professions that can support a middle
class existence, the clustering of opportunity in a few high-cost urban areas
to the detriment of the rest.

\- All the new systemic and political sources of anxiety - climate change,
destabilizing politics in North America and Europe, mass migration, ambiguous
wars, extremism, etc.

\- Increasing diagnosis of mental health issues and occasional pathologization
of everyday troubles.

\- Decreasing stigma of mental health issues resulting in more young people
seeking help.

\- Weakening of existing family structures and modes of monogamous
relationships, along with the appearance of a multitude of new family and
relationship structures.

\- "Helicopter parenting".

\- The decline of the "traditional job" and all the security that came with
it.

\- All the various information overloads, distractions, and paradoxes of
choice that come with the internet.

I'm sure there are plenty of things that could be added to this list. But
generally, I think we are exiting a period of relative postwar stability and
returning to a more chaotic status quo. But now a majority of people of all
socioeconomic brackets yearn for a middle-class existence, and without the
support of old rigid-but-secure (for some) social structures. The millennials-
and-forward generations are going to manifest the stress of all these things
in many, frequently-unexpected ways. Pinning it all on "helicopter parenting,"
IMO, is cruel and facile.

EDIT: Formatting.

~~~
veryes
> The tightening economic climate and increasing difficulty of staying in the
> middle class... > But now a majority of people of all socioeconomic brackets
> yearn for a middle-class existence...

There is no middle class. This framing is itself toxic.

There are only people who have to work for a living (i.e. the working class),
and people for whom paid labor is optional due to accumulated capital of
various forms (for simplicity, let's call them the rich.)

Focusing on distinctions between substrata of the working class mainly
benefits the rich.

~~~
m_fayer
Although it's certainly subjective, I don't think what we call the middle
class is such a fine-grained entity, and I do think the distinction between
"working class" and "middle class" is useful.

I would define "working class" as people who are resigned to whatever paid
labor they can find on pain of hunger and homelessness. Anyone in this class
wants to get out of it.

The middle class, on the other hand, expect to get to pick the labor they
perform, and in return expect a comfortable and secure existence as well as a
good amount of leisure time and luxury to be attainable through their labor.
Many in the middle class hold no ambition to climb still further, but are
desperate to not fall out of it.

The distinction is useful for shaping policy - we want to help as many people
as possible into the middle class and out of the working class (as defined
above), and then do everything possible to keep them there.

------
gotothrowaway
Universities love to complain about needing to react to what parents are
saying, but this seems like something they bring on themselves. With such
expensive tuition, a student's choice of college often cannot be made
independently, and parents feel like they are buying their right to hassle
higher educators. I would love to see a world where students truly decide on
their own university and the ability for parents to affect the day-to-day of a
university is drastically reduced. To me, this is the most interesting aspect
of the push for free college.

~~~
austenallred
I don't think it has as much to do with parents paying for college as it does
the fact that it's an almost-requirement to have a parent paving the way for
the vast majority of kids to make it into a Stanford. Normal human beings
don't exhibit the level of dedication required, but parents know they can set
their kids up for life if they remove a lot of the obstacles. It's not
surprising to me that pattern doesn't stop.

------
Mikeb85
This is the result of the society the US built.

To get a 'good' job, you need to have attended the 'right' school. To get
'good' investors as an entrepreneur, you need to know the 'right' people
(which is also influenced strongly by where you went to school).

To get into the 'right' school, you need to optimize for that result. If
you're working full-time and trying to pay your own way, good luck. Kids that
have 'helicopter' parents who have the means to support them and encourage (or
force) them are already a leg up on the poorer competition.

All of these factors of course just serve to entrench the upper classes, and
reduce social mobility (which, while it exists, it's very difficult to move
up). Poorer students have much less time and money to do the 'right' things,
and while there are always outliers, they don't determine the direction of
society.

We could always build a more egalitarian society (basic income, free health
care and post-secondary education), but equality doesn't always appeal to our
perception of 'fairness'. And the benefits of equality (a happier, less
stressful society) aren't something that we can necessarily quantify,
especially when it's 'our' taxes that pay for it.

Anyhow, my point is, this trend will continue, because it's nothing more than
a reaction to institutions already in place.

------
learning_still
I grew up in the kind of area that specializes in what this article is talking
about. I had a lot of friends in high school who were forced into honors and
AP classes by their parents. Who were forced to do anything and everything to
set themselves up for college. Who would stay up til 1am on a Tuesday just to
make sure they got all of their homework done and had studied properly. I can
tell you that "helicopter" parenting has not ruined any children and it never
will. What it's done is it's pushed children into schools where they don't
belong. Meanwhile it's pushed a lot of smart kids out. What this dean has
experienced isn't kids becoming less self-sufficient, but instead less self-
sufficient kids getting into college because the kids who are pushed by their
parents have a higher likelihood of getting in.

------
dalke
The term "helicopter parent" is more than a generation old. Here are some
examples:

1994 - "Helicopter parents" make excuses for their children, rescue them from
the consequences of putting off their chores, ... -
[https://books.google.com/books?id=kXkT2dXGjtYC&q=helicopter+...](https://books.google.com/books?id=kXkT2dXGjtYC&q=helicopter+parents&dq=helicopter+parents&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y)

1991 - "'Those helicopter parent of mine' ... Translation: a nosy grownup who
is always hovering around" \-
[https://books.google.com/books?id=AfQDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA6&dq=hel...](https://books.google.com/books?id=AfQDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA6&dq=helicopter+parents&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=helicopter%20parents&f=false)

Ahh, the Wikipedia entry traces the metaphor to the late 1960s -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent)
.

Of course _the underlying concept is even older_. The grousers of yore just
used different phrases. Here are Google Book Search snippets predating 1970
for search "expect everything to be handed to them on a silver platter":
[https://www.google.com/search?q=expect+everything+to+be+hand...](https://www.google.com/search?q=expect+everything+to+be+handed+to+them+on+a+silver+platter&biw=1382&bih=695&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A1%2F1%2F1900%2Ccd_max%3A1970&tbm=bks)

This includes from a 1960 PTA magazine:

> 'I've known a lot of kids who were treated like little heroes. Afterward,
> they expected everything to be handed them on a silver platter— and it
> wasn't. They couldn't adjust.' "Beyond any doubt, the boys in Williamsport
> last week were treated as ...

A Boys' Life article from July 1937 at
[https://books.google.com/books?id=agt7vyGWtXoC&pg=PA14&dq=ex...](https://books.google.com/books?id=agt7vyGWtXoC&pg=PA14&dq=expect+everything+to+be+handed+to+them+on+a+silver+platter&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=expect%20everything%20to%20be%20handed%20to%20them%20on%20a%20silver%20platter&f=false)

> We want to teach them not just to sit back and expect things to be handed to
> them on a silver platter but with confidence, based on their training, to go
> out and get what they want. We need to stiffen a moral flabbiness that has
> been affecting our youth.

Life Magazine, March 29, 1949 at
[https://books.google.com/books?id=b00EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA6&dq=exp...](https://books.google.com/books?id=b00EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA6&dq=expect+everything+to+be+handed+to+them+on+a+silver+platter&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=expect%20everything%20to%20be%20handed%20to%20them%20on%20a%20silver%20platter&f=false)
:

> We have reared a bunch of weaklings in our young marrieds of today. Too much
> has been handed to them on a silver platter without their having had to work
> for it, and they lack the intestinal fortitude to meet life as a challenge.

------
6d0debc071
It seems a bit rich for the Dean of an educational institution that demanded,
during her tenure and after, the sort of qualifications and CVs that encourage
this behaviour to protest it. If you don't want it around, stop providing the
incentive for it.

~~~
hubridnoxx
Of course it's not quite so binary. The dean wants a strong applicant pool as
well as to dissuade helicopter parenting. I don't believe it's a contradictory
stance she's taking.

~~~
tetraodonpuffer
if "strong" applicant is defined by things that are not possible unless they
have an helicopter parent it is fairly binary...

What teen would be able to have the breadth and variety of experiences that
seem to be required nowadays to stand out in a university application unless
they have a set of parents that make them possible?

~~~
idiot900
A very small number of teens do, which is fine with them.

------
Multiplayer
As a parent of 3 boys, the biggest challenge today are personal electronics.
Every parent I know has immense challenges setting guidelines on screen time.
In this new tablet/smartphone era we are really in new and unfamiliar
territory. Yes, we had our nintendos and our handhelds. Yes we had tv. No we
didn't have networked devices in our pockets and incredibly addictive games
like clash of clans, etc.

I don't know what it all means - I just know it's a big factor of discontent
in most families I see.

Helicoptering of course has it's issues - but I think it's secondary to this
new tidal wave of screen time.

------
mikejholly
"Lythcott-Haims said many parents ask how they can unilaterally deescalate in
what feels like a college-admissions arms race. How can they relax about
getting their child into Harvard if every other parent is going full speed
ahead?"

Uh, I think there are other schools ... and by the way they all use the same
textbooks. Maybe the problem is American credentialism?

------
ChuckMcM
Perhaps obviously I resonant with her message, not letting your kids stand on
their own, gives them weak legs. But as a parent I am viscerally aware of how
hard it is to watch your child make bad choices.

From the parents perspective looking backwards through time they "see" how
something today will have huge repurcussions later. Nobody can stand by and
watch their child turn down a dark alley filled with hazards.

So what to do? Find ways to teach your kids failure is the step toward success
early in life. Let them work out things for themselves, talk with them about
how they went about it. And most importantly _start early._ As kids get older
their ability to completely screw up their life goes up exponentially.

I don't think anyone who is not a parent can internalize how hard it is to do.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _From the parents perspective looking backwards through time they "see" how
> something today will have huge repurcussions later. Nobody can stand by and
> watch their child turn down a dark alley filled with hazards._

> _As kids get older their ability to completely screw up their life goes up
> exponentially._

If one reconciles those two points one can see that a lot of what parents
obsess about is without any real consequences. An example of utterly
irrelevant worry is breaking an arm as a kid - it will hurt for a while, but
you'll be fine. Nothing one can't recover from. As you note, it's important to
let a kid fail and learn from that failure.

------
tokenadult
I know at least one recent graduate of Stanford University who is an exception
to this generalization. He is a childhood friend of my oldest son's, and
graduated with Stanford class of 2013. If the general observation at Stanford
is that Stanford students are highly dependent on their parents and unable to
take care of themselves (as it may be, for all I know), then all I can say is
that Stanford has an unusual intake of admitted students. For information on
"a generation of children," I'd ask college officials at community colleges
and military officers who deal with new recruits, as well as big employers of
first-time employees. (What employer employs a lot of first-time members of
the labor force these days? McDonald's? Some other kind of employer?).

This article sparked a lot of discussion among my friends on Facebook, where I
shared it after reading the article from the submission here. A friend there
commented, "I am so tired of colleges and universities whining about the
students _they chose_ to admit. Maybe they need to take a look at their
admissions policies." Yes, I think college admission officers, especially at
the most selective colleges, have to grow up and take their own responsibility
for the incentives that their admission requirements set up. I note as a
teacher at a private school that students today can certainly have issues of
overdependence on others as they face life challenges. That has probably
existed in all previous generations of students. The way to change the
incentives, of course, is for admission officers to figure out reliable
signals of life independence as they decide whom to admit. Parents will get
that message loud and clear if admission officers figure out the reliable
signals. Meanwhile, it is always permitted for parents (although sometimes
difficult for parents to achieve) to encourage young people to develop self-
reliance and independence as they grow up. That is what I have attempted to do
as I homeschooled my four children, two of whom are now quite self-reliant
adults, and two of whom are now very responsible adolescents who are well
regarded by other adults who know them.

------
11thEarlOfMar
Just went through the whole application & admissions process with my older
daughter. It was horrible. It's a mess. It's sinister in the way it affected
our family.

Pursuing a high school diploma should start with an exploration of:

\- "What am I good at, really?"

\- "What do I love, really?"

\- "What matters to me, really?"

But what we saw all through high school was simply:

\- "What can I do today that will improve my chances of getting into Harvard?"

Humans are prone to wanting the wrong things, and especially so when
misperceptions lead us to believe they are the right things. I don't know how
to ultimately fix the college-chasing-helicopter-parenting-test-prepping-
personality-skewing of today's admissions process, but I've started by
reinforcing to my younger daughter that what matters is her, not the the
university she goes to.

------
Overtonwindow
I don't know if this is more about helicopter parenting, as some of the
comments might suggest, but coddling kids, and keeping them away from anything
which might make them feel bad, uncomfortable, etc. I feel like universities
are removing discourse and uncomfortable topics to the detriment of students.
College should not be daycare, where everything is padded, safe, and you're
protected from anything which might make you uncomfortable. It should be the
place where you face those uncomfortable topics, ideas, and people, so you can
learn to deal with it in the real world...

------
ck2
While it is easy to mock helicopter parents, it also dawns on me that there
are literally twice the number of kids today competing for the same placements
first in school and then jobs as say 20 years ago.

------
bhouston
I would like to see objective numbers. I know it feels good to think that
individuals who make it into Ivy League because of helicopter parents are
somehow undeserving or damaged or whatever.

But I am pretty sure that getting into an Ivy League leads to statistically
better live time earnings and more career success (in part because of the
connections.)

I would like to see some objective numbers rather than a story that resonates
because it jives with how we want to feel about those with success.

------
leroy_masochist
I agreed with most of Dean Lythcott-Haims' ideas except the following one:

> perhaps top-tier schools could agree to limit the number of such schools
> that each student may apply to, she said.

This would put financial aid candidates at a disadvantage, limiting any given
HS senior's ability to collect scholarship offers and use them as leverage in
getting the best possible deal at the best school they get into.

------
cJ0th
I dunno. Whilst I don't endorse the idea of helicopter parenting I think it is
hard to judge how it affects kids. Helicopter parenting could have been fatal
for some one like Richard Branson. But most people are not Richard Branson.
That kid who is going to be a middle manager will have a hard time competing
with his fellow students when there is no parent helping him to the same
extend as other parents do help their kids That is, s/he has to work harder as
everyone else. Up to a degree that might be considered character building but
at one point we might have syllabi that are involuntarily designed for
students with helicopter parents so that grades are more normally distributed
again. The student who is on his/her own will note make it.

------
nerdwaller
My wife and I just had our first baby and were having a similar discussion, re
letting our kid fail to learn to succeed and not being helicopters.

Historically speaking, most of the really successful people now aren't
successful because they went to an Ivy League school (though maybe those
connections help), they succeed because they TRY despite the chance of failure
and learn from the failures (and smaller mistakes) to not repeat them.

------
sabujp
So how many students get into Stanford with the attestation that their
parent's didn't helicopter parent them? I challenge every student to put as
their first sentence on their essays, "I am not the product of helicopter
parenting." followed by a list of all their accomplishments, goals, and dreams
and see if it gets them into $top_school.

------
lazyant
The criteria for entering top universities causes this behavior, just do like
[citation needed] proposed: set a public set of pass/fail requirements for
admissions, then do a lottery from the candidate pool that passed the
criteria.

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
I first heard complaints about 'helicopter parents' a full twenty years ago.

------
lemevi
Parents doing their best to help their children, thinking if they didn't work
so hard to help their children end up being criticized for being good parents.
Got it.

------
api
In many cases failure to helicopter parent is a crime. If a minor under, say,
14 or 15 is caught without an adult their parents can be cited for neglect.

------
zkhalique
This ia a bit like making sure you don't get sick until your 20s and not
letting your immune system develop robust responses to disease agents.

------
dilap
A self-correcting problem, since the next generation of kids will be left to
fend for themselves by their helpless, helicoptered parents. :)

~~~
seiji
Yeah, there was a time when parents didn't even necessarily default to liking
their children. Children were just additional labor for the family business,
not the parent's hopes and dreams and failed aspirations and regrets walking
around outside their body.

------
awl130
please don't post these asinine articles here. there is not even an attempt to
furnish data to back up any of its claims, including: (a) are parents today
more involved in student's lives? where's the data besides anecdotal? (b) are
children today less prepared for life? where's the data? and (c) are these
causal?

~~~
walterclifford
> please don't post these asinine articles here

HN's guidelines state _Please don 't submit comments complaining that a
submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think a story is spam or off-
topic, flag it by clicking on its "flag" link. (Not all users will see this;
there is a karma threshold.)_
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
6stringmerc
So I fit right between Generation X and Y, depending on which timeframe
reference used. I mention this as context because it feels as though I've had
a first-hand view of public and private education trends. Also, a chance to
see how the parents of friends and other students behaved.

Is there some logic and basis for this person's perspective? Yeah, I'm sure
there are plenty of anecdotes from her career - but I also categorize Stanford
as an outlier of access. As in, to get in typically (but not always) entails
much parental investment and, well, access to resources. Could a person who
worked at a troubled youth center tell stories of a lack of parental
involvement or outright neglect? Probably.

Both are significant issues regarding the health and future of society in the
US: each group needs to find a place in the working world. If neither is
prepared, then what will happen to the traditional relationship between
employer and employee? Can new hires adapt, or will they commit career
suicide?

To me, "helicopter parenting" is an indicator of the selfishness that pervades
a select cohort of parents. Successful. Relatively affluent. A sense of
entitlement that comes from not having to do without as a baseline, and
furthermore, is used to being able to bend the will of those with less power.
How did I come up with this perspective? I've worked for them.

This cohort is full of Senior Vice Presidents and Managing Directors. They
work for "important companies" doing "important things" and therefore feel
they are, well, quite important! Even when I was in charge of projects, their
projects and in turn them, I was frequently rebuffed, ignored, or otherwise
minimized by certain personalities. Those who had a different mentality?
Gracious, collaborative, and, no lie, would sometimes send thank-you notes in
gratitude. For many years, the self-centered outlook has been rewarded, and
framing it as such in a child development process is consistent with the
behavior noted in the article.

It's one thing to have high standards. It's another thing to be so afraid of
failure or short-comings that the worry gets manifested in mental health
issues. Looking good on paper is actually quite easy to do with the right
means. Becoming a well-rounded individual with hobbies and stories of learning
from life by working, getting perspective, and occasionally screwing up -
hopefully not on the scale of jail - isn't easily quantified in a "how to
raise a kid in the modern US" book...cough _Tiger Mom_ cough...there's no
manual except the one each family writes for themselves. That might sound
wishy-washy, but it's a reasonable outlook when considering the haves, the
have nots, and those who "overcome" their environment, whether over-interested
or completely disinterested upbringings.

------
usmeteora
As someone who went to a top ranked school in Engineering , I have an
interesting anecdote that reveals perhaps a disturbing trend my friends and I
have noticed in these engineering schools as we talk to more and more peers
about it, which I think is important because this issue impacts more areas
than just how these kids do in college, it effects every area of their life.

Me and some of my other female Engineering friends, just got out of long term
relationships with boys we went to college with in Engineering, and while
anecdotally its a coincidence that in this case I'm speaking from the
perspective of three females (because the genders could be reversed with
potentially the same problems), after much discussion we've realized the
biggest issue with our exes is that their mothers practically ran their lives,
even at the age of ...25.

Two of us came from a poor background with uneducated parents, so getting into
a good college was completely of my own motivation and that characteristic of
mine continued to play out and earn myself a role of success in life, and hers
as well. The other had a mother that came from a very poor background with
uneducated parents but paid her way through college and become a high end
Executive on Wallstreet, and pushed her daughter to have the same ambition she
did.

All three of our ex boyfriends however came from multigenerational inherited
affluent wealth with stories about their grandparents creating legacies at
fancy boarding schools and their parents played a role in everything they did.
While this did print them a resume to get into a good college (and they were
also smart and did actually perform well in school but that's ALL they had to
do, was show up to classes chosen for them and do well). Once they got there,
academically they were unmotivated and did poorly in classes while playing
video games. When they graduated all three of them had "no idea" what they
wanted to do post college. They all got ok jobs making entry level salaries
but have sat in those positions for going on 5 years, miserable.

Meanwhile the three of us females were, in college: doing graduate research,
taking grad classes, working part time jobs and had both started, taught
ourselves investing etc etc. and now going on 5 years post college we are all
age 26: one is the director of Marketing for a top ranked Bank, One of the
cofounder of a trending tech startup, and I work in Engineering for a
nonprofit in energy resources setting precedents in the Supreme court and free
market economics for challenging resource monopolies and making energy
resources more competitive, and all have surpassed our ex boyfriends salaries
years ago....

All three of us one night discovered that not only had we all done our
boyfriends resumes in college and updated them since college, all three of
them asked us to do it for them, because their parents were sick of doing them
as they had created them for their college admissions as well.
Hmm...interesting...

Our exes were sitting at home in dead end jobs they admittedly hated, but
couldn't stop playing Halo to update their resume unless their mothers called
them and told them to do so, or their dads offered to look around for an
opening in their respective companies. It boggles our mind but more
importantly..

this same lackadaisical "wait for somebody else to swoop in and solve this
problem for me" attitude became a problem in our interpersonal relationships.
All of them had a hard time expressing their emotions or even being in touch
with them, or knowing what they wanted or even verbalizing their own
perceptions of problems because all of those things? someone had been doing
that for them their whole lives.

This left all of usfrustrated with emotionally disconnected exes sitting at
home not even knowing how to work on their own problems, much less adequately
address issues in a relationship that involves two independent humans. All
three of them kept running back to their estate to take time "off" and pout
whenever a problem occurred at work or personally and hide from their problems
while their mothers doted on them.

It also caused us to decrease our sympathy for them over time because they had
everything handed to them yet still had excuses about why they hated their
jobs and life so much. But we came from a world where excuses were not a
luxury we had if we wanted not even a successful life but an even slightly
comfortable one.

Meanwhile, we are traveling the world, doing well in our careers and also
trying to figure out how to verbalize their perspective and then ask them if
what we said was what they were feeling. Like, we had to present multiple
choice options for them because they had no voice of their own.

Needless to say, these relationships did not work out. Everyone has issues and
we were willing to admit to our own and take constructive feedback, but there
was no constructive feedback, because they had never had to do that in their
lives.

The most heartbreaking part was, in their careers and in their personal lives,
they wanted a good career and they didn't want us to leave them, but they had
burned their bridges and were left clueless on how to go about to their next
phase of life. It was sad but we did not have time to raise children as 25 yr
old females busting our tails in the tech environment. There's a reason we
don't have kids right now, because we don't have time.

We each loved them dearly but we needed emotional equality and people who
supported our ambitions and also had their own.

I'm not sure if these issues were also paired to be more likely outcomes with
their personality types, or what the true root cause is, as I'm an Engineer,
not a psychologist, but being able to talk to someone else going through the
same thing, we saw some eerily similiar trends, and it always related back to
their parents effectively babying them in areas of their life, that were
embarassing from the perspective of highly independent and motivated people we
had to be to effectively reach the same socioeconomic status they were born
into.

Moral of the story: While having an Engineer Degree is important for
Engineering (but not so much coding if at all)

the MORE important factors in success are 1\. Knowing what you want and going
after it

2\. Being self motivated

3\. Being able to clearly communicate your position whether its emotions,
needs, or negociating a raise or why you feel you are up for the challenge of
a new job position, etc

4\. independent ability to not only a. identify b. define, but c. solve
problems on your own

Sorry helicoptor parents but your missing the point. As someone else said
earlier (whom I completely disagree with) he said "helicoptor parenting is
working, get them into stanford and then they have the rest of their lives to
fail"

woops, college is not the ends to a means, its a means to an end and if the
means is handed to them, then they will not be able to fish in the real world
by themselves. Teach them how to fish.

------
iovrthoughtthis
Classic PR.

~~~
minikites
PR for what/who?

~~~
iovrthoughtthis
"Lythcott-Haims argues in her book “How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the
Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success.”"

Here are some similar articles in suitably similar publications:

[http://time.com/3910020/the-over-parenting-trap-how-to-
avoid...](http://time.com/3910020/the-over-parenting-trap-how-to-avoid-
checklisted-childhoods-and-raise-adults/)

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-
lythcotthaims/helicopter...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-
lythcotthaims/helicopter-parenting-is-a-trap_b_7586656.html)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/books/review/how-to-
raise-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/books/review/how-to-raise-an-
adult-by-julie-lythcott-haims.html)

[http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-prj-how-
to...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-prj-how-to-raise-an-
adult-julie-lythcott-haims-20150611-story.html)

It reads like PR, focusing on one author and their opinion (expressed in a
recently released book) rather than a spectrum of writers / researchers. This
is unfortunate given the historical references to 'helicopter parenting' and
other writing that has covered the issue.

I'm not saying it wasn't an informative and interesting read, on the contrary,
it was. I was merely pointing out the PR nature of the article.

