
The Bad News About Helicopter Parenting: It Works - hippich
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/helicopter-parents-economy.html
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Loughla
I don't believe that I define helicopter parents the same as the author of
that piece.

Helicopter parent in that article: Someone who is involved in their kids'
lives but still allows the child some amount of autonomy (see authoritative
parenting section).

Helicopter parent in my experience: Exists solely to REMOVE obstacles to a
child's success.

The way that was written, a helicopter parent is just a parent that structures
a child's time. It's more than that, isn't it? Did I read that wrong?

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pj_mukh
"The most effective parents, according to the authors, are “authoritative.”
They use reasoning to persuade kids to do things that are good for them.
Instead of strict obedience, they emphasize adaptability, problem-solving and
independence — skills that will help their offspring in future workplaces that
we can’t even imagine yet."

Aside: Knowing nothing about theoretical parenting styles, this doesn't sound
"authoritative". Authoritative <anything> wouldn't give you sound reasoning.
Authoritative sounds like strict obedience, given that they are practically
synonyms but the article says the opposite.

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pjc50
No, that's authoritarian, which the article contrasts.

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nitrogen
I'm sure the field has its own jargon and that's fine, but for a lay audience
it seems like "persuasive" or "rationally supportive" or "educating" would be
more clear than "authoritative".

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Loughla
Is authoritarian and authoritative exclusively educational psychology and
child development jargon alone? I'm honestly asking because I work and am
steeped in education.

It seems to me that anyone educated would be able to draw a line between
authoritarian and authoritative just based on context clues from society
(that's not meant to be as condescending as it might sound). Am I wrong?

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akovaski
> Is authoritarian and authoritative exclusively [...] jargon alone?

I'd say so, doing an internet search for "authoritarian vs authoritative"
yields almost exclusively parenting articles.

In general, I think authoritarian is used for "you must do what I tell you"
rule (governments, due the vocab word authoritarianism), and authoritative is
used for "this is for sure the right way" objects and concepts (papers,
sources, statements). The definition I have for authoritarian lines up with
the parenting style, but authoritative does not line up so well.

My opinion from the outside is that it is not clear. They share the same root
word from which their meanings derive; I'd assume they were talking about the
same parenting style if it wasn't directly pointed out. If you applied these
adjectives to Software Development or some other field, I would be hard-
pressed to determine a clear distinction.

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daveFNbuck
Halfway through this article, they switch from helicopter parenting to
authoritative parenting. Authoritative parenting is not helicopter parenting.
It's one of the three types of parenting listed in intro-level child
psychology textbooks, along with authoritarian and permissive. It's the only
good one of the three. It's not news that kids who receive the good kind of
parenting have an advantage.

I'm not sure that "intensive parenting style" means helicopter parenting
either, but I don't think people are generally arguing that helicopter
parenting hurts kids' academic performance in high school. The worry is that
they'll be deficient in other ways both immediately and later in life.

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Loughla
>but I don't think people are generally arguing that helicopter parenting
hurts kids' academic performance in high school

That was one thing about this article that I missed. Literally nothing I've
seen talks about how helicopter parenting has a negative effect on academics,
just on the social and emotional aspects of a child. Which is the literal
opposite of what this article talks about.

I firmly believe they used the term helicopter parenting to make a click-baity
headline to drive views. I hate it.

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_coveredInBees
It's a pretty poorly written article to be honest. I don't see how the author
clubs in "authoritative" parenting style under "helicopter parenting" because
it is pretty much the opposite.

From the article:

> The most effective parents, according to the authors, are “authoritative.”
> They use reasoning to persuade kids to do things that are good for them.
> Instead of strict obedience, they emphasize adaptability, problem-solving
> and independence — skills that will help their offspring in future
> workplaces that we can’t even imagine yet.

That's hardly helicoptering. That's just positive parenting that isn't
completely hands-off.

~~~
chosenbreed37
> It's a pretty poorly written article to be honest. I don't see how the
> author clubs in "authoritative" parenting style under "helicopter parenting"
> because it is pretty much the opposite.

I struggled to follow it. I thought it was just me :-)

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yters
The bad news about linkbait headlines: they work.

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aerophilic
A clarification point, because I had to double check this multiple times: they
use two words (authoritative and authoritarian) frequently, and while they
look nearly identical, they are completely different.

In one, you act more of a “resource”, a trusted resource to ask questions,
give guidance. In the other, you are the “boss” and you have to listen to what
they say exactly, and are punished if you don’t.

It isn’t surprising which method gives “more tools” to the child.

However, I think it would have helped readability if they chose different
wording, just due to the visual similarity between the words. Perhaps it’s the
difference between a coach vs a dictator?

Anyway, wanted to clear up the words for any folks that were unclear, it is
worth paying extra attention to the exact spelling on this one.

Edit: had to fix spelling, as it “corrected” me as well =p

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psweber
That headline is pretty misleading. The tagline is a little better.

> New research shows that hyper-involved parenting is the route to kids’
> success in today’s unequal world.

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taeric
This is equivalent to micromanagement. If you have a good micromanager, it
works more than folks like to give it credit. We just typically call those
managers, not micromanagers. :)

So, I assert we have known for a long time that something like "helicopter
parenting" works. We just use that term for the over involved parents. What
this page calls "excesses".

"Done right" we just call it good parenting. And, it turns out, that is damned
hard. And it is all too easy to talk about the failures. All the while not
understanding exactly why they failed. (Though, I also assert that talking
about successes with the same ignorance is a great way to sell books.)

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darkmighty
A conclusion I've been reaching as I've grown older is that motivation is one
of the most difficult and important things for any individual to learn. Once
you have a clear objective, achieving things isn't so problematic -- having
clear, realistic, well thought out things you want to achieve is much harder.
Even failure is much more tolerable to me when I've failed knowing I were
pursuing the right thing; failing when you don't even know what you want is
much more painful. That's why taste is probably one of the best skills to
develop in your child, letting him make decisions for himself and assessing
the consequence of those for himself (instead of mandating anything --
although every now and then kids need stimuli or being slightly forced to try
new things).

So high-involvement parenting to me is only good insofar as it helps those
things, not if it sets everything you must do and how to do it.

Taste is not something you can't teach either, imo. There isn't anything
necessarily more right or wrong about your tastes than the tastes children
would pick up from friends and teachers. But I think you should make sure to
clarify and expose your tastes instead of mandating (or even hiding) them; and
understand your child is unique and your tastes may not fit her in every way.

All this of course lines up pretty well with the definition of "authoritative
parenting" in the article, which is valuing 'adaptability, problem-solving and
independence'.

"He who has a why can bear almost any how"...

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owenversteeg
Yes, the article is shitty. But I'm surprised there aren't more people
discussing the headline.

The simplest reason why not to helicopter parent, in my opinion, is that it
doesn't produce people I'd like to be around. With exceptions, of course, but
by and large true. Helicopter-parented kids who follow their parents'
carefully set path just feel... artificial, to me.

~~~
Loughla
They lack resilience in my experience. I've worked in higher education for
most of my adult life (except for that stint out of grad school in retail, and
most of those lessons apply also), and I can spot someone with
overbearing/helicopter parents in the first conversation.

They genuinely don't know what to do when they meet a challenge. They may be
smart, they may be creative thinkers and problem solvers in a million
different ways. But when there is a problem in their life, like a girlfriend
breaking up with them, or a course not transferring between schools, or
something like that, they just shut off. They either throw tantrums publicly,
or, more likely, drop out and never show back up on campus.

That's the problem with helicopter parents. They raise kids with 0 resiliency.
I have literally no research to back this up, but I believe it's connected to
the uptick in teenage suicides in my area. Kids are raised to have no
resiliency, so at the first 'major' issue (and everything is major to
teenagers), they just throw their hands up because it IS the worst thing
they've ever encountered.

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pjc50
Interesting side discussion in this about the difference between
"authoritarian" and "authoritative": it works, but only if you convince kids
to go along with it rather than force them into it.

It also argues that the high parental involvement is the result of high
percieved inequality; it becomes more important to get your kid higher up the
ladder.

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SolaceQuantum
I don't know if it's the result of percieved inequality; the article seemed to
state it is a result of actual inequality. It also said that successful
helicopter parents merely exacerbate inequality.

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alkibiades
1\. Having parents will always help you end up more successful than not having
them. And since a large percentage of people don’t then of course helicopter
parenting is better than average.

2\. It may help you get into harvard but you may also end up depressed or
helpless etc. see that a lot in the valley. kids with tiger parents that are
successful but want to kill them selves

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kens
It's not a new result that authoritative parenting is better than
authoritarian or permissive. This was first studied by psychologist Diana
Baumrind in 1966! The NYT article seems to take a couple new studies that
confirm this and slap on the "helicopter parenting" label. I hate to call it
clickbait, but...

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Glyptodon
I don't get how "authoritative" parenting (which they label as emphasizing
"adaptability, problem-solving and independence") is at all the same as
helicopter-parent style overbearing control and micromanagement.

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deadmetheny
>Opinion >completely unnecessary dig at Trump in the last paragraph

Yeah, sure, ok.

It's also interesting to note that this really only indicates that it works
insofar that children of helicopter parents are academically successful - does
that translate to the children being professionally successful, or happy about
their upbringing?

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ARandomerDude
> So why wouldn’t everyone just become an authoritative parent? Religious
> people...Donald Trump...

Ah, now I know why it's an opinion piece. The author thinks if you love Jesus,
you're a sub-optimal parenting, Donald Trump loving, equality hater.

So much for tolerance.

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mberning
If it works why do we constantly hear about recent generations not doing as
well as their parents financially or career wise?

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irb
I think there are a great many variables that might contribute to the
differing fortunes of young people now versus those thirty years ago.
Parenting style is only one of them, and not necessarily a major one.

