According to this article, studies have shown that helicopter parenting is correlated with increasing college-age depression. (http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2015/07/helicopter_parenting_is_increasingly_correlated_with_college_age_depression.html)
I’ve read that college-age depression is on the rise. Could this be the reason?
What about retirement age depression, what caused that I like to know.
Hm, this wouldn’t be a surprise. Helicoptering is an attempt to give a boost to the student in order to cover up deficiencies they may have. Very likely, it probably creates additional ones.
Once the student gets out of range of the heavy lifters, they start to feel the true weight of real life. I can see how that could drag some of them down.
I have been fighting depression for over a decade and I have free range parents. I am a successful young adult and my life never fell apart, but that is a completely separate issue from my anxiety and depression.
With that said, nothing about this article surprises me. If your kids can’t even wake up on their own when they’re in high school, how on earth are you going to send them off to college and expect them to be fully functioning adults? If they’ve never made a real decision about anything, how can they be expected to do that overnight?
This article was depressing.
I’m suspicious of anything that’s based on trends in the number of cases of mental illness because I wonder whether there has been a true increase or simply an increase in diagnosis.
When I was in college, I knew plenty of people (including myself) who had issues that would probably be diagnosed as anxiety disorders or depression today, but we didn’t seek help because we were mostly functional. In those days, we tended to think of mental illness as a drastic and disabling thing. So if you weren’t disabled, you weren’t mentally ill, right?
Today, I think there’s a greater awareness that mental illness, like physical illness, can come in different degrees of severity, and that diagnosis and treatment can be beneficial for people who are functional but suffering. But that’s a fairly new idea.
Maybe, but isn’t it similar in analogy when a little child falls down and scrapes their knee. If ever ytime that happens and the mother over reacts then each little incident becomes a really big deal There’s a fine line between coddling someone and over reacting to every minor issue and literally training a child that every little thing is a “big deal” and raising a young person to have a healthy attitude about minor issues and an ability to recover and carry on. It’s entirely possible that the incidence of depression and anxiety, as Marian says, is a result of relabeling or awareness, but it’s also entirely possible that indeed kids are over-parented to the point that as adults they are simply are less capable of dealing with life’s little issues in a healthy way.
I agree that part of the increase statistically is due to increased awareness and diagnosis. If you read books from the late 60’s such as “The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition” by Roszak and others, there is plenty of discussion on youthful alienation and “anomie.” The discussion was more sociological than clinical back then, but they were describing what is now termed “depression.”
Why not think of other causes for depression in young people? Why is every “psychological” problem blamed on parents? Autism and schizophrenia used to be blamed on mothers. As romani said, even the children of “free-range parents” can suffer depression.
First and foremost, true clinical depression is biochemical and often genetic in nature. It is an illness. This article talks about “psychological” problems. What does this mean? Psychiatric such as clinical depression, bipolar 1, psychosis? Borderline personality? Attachment disorders? Emotional problems? Bad habits? This is a huge pot full of many different ingredients, and the authors have thrown them all in w/out distinguishing them.
I want to state very clearly that I do not believe any parenting style causes biochemical, clinical depression.
The motivations for doing studies need to be taken into account. We could think of many other factors that could be studied, but probably won’t be, for reasons that are more political than scientific.
-increasing stresses in public schools in the recent decade or so, with increasing academics at an early age, long school days for 4 and 5 year-olds, endless testing pressures, little time for creativity, hours of homework, and pressure from schools (as well as parents) to get into good colleges (this even affects real estate values!)
-lack of free play for young children, lack of creative challenges for older kids (including old-fashioned boredom)
- ubiquitous technology and screens. Our local principal told me that in his opinion, technology was behind the huge rise in emotional distress for his students, particularly online bulllying. But there are also subtle effects from being online all the time, and this is the norm. Doing nothing is soothing: when do kids get to do nothing, without a screen?
-the high cost of education and difficulty in getting established as an adult, lack of clarity in what to do after graduation, the new stage of “emerging adulthood”
- the effects of both parents working (this is politically incorrect, I know, but day care leads to some of the regimentation mentioned above). The timing of the current increase in depression would coincide with the increase in working parents in the mid-80's. (Not saying this is true, but I am saying it will never be looked at.)
Again this article mixed apples and oranges. A kid who doesn’t get him or herself up in the morning, or e-mails a paper to a parent, or majors in engineering to please parents, may have some problems w/autonomy, but they certainly aren’t psychiatric. Parents may create habits of dependence or striving that young adults may or may not grow out of.
That is a different situation than a young person who is truly depressed, glassy-eyed, unable to concentrate or sleep. Or the young person who wakes up one morning overfull of energy and feeling connected to God, or thinks stoplights are giving messages.
I think the word “depression” is overused and misunderstood and articles like this really don’t help. Depression is a life-threatening illness and the days of parent-blaming were over a long time ago. Medications can help and talk therapy with a psychiatrist is no longer even covered by insurance.
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It shouldn’t be politically incorrect to mention it. The fact that kids today spend a very large amount of time in structured settings is an important change from the experiences of previous generations. And just like spending most of our lives sitting in front of screens, it may have effects that were not anticipated.
Which came first, the depression or the “helicoptering”? When you’re depressed you don’t feel like getting up and doing anything, so I can understand the need for these parents to wake their teens up for high school.
I don’t care for the term “helicoptering.” I’ve heard it used condescendingly many times over the years (by coleaders of various groups) to describe parents who simply wanted to do the same thing we were doing (camping with our kids, going on field trips, etc.). It’s a term used by people to exert not so subtle pressure on people who are raising their kids differently than the speaker thinks they should. I consider it a form of bullying. The most vocal generally had more control issues than any of the parents they complained about, so the other parents didn’t take them very seriously anyway.
There is a difference between doing things with your child and helicoptering them. We were often chaperones, sports, academic club and band supporters, yet the whole time, the kids were expected to make their own way.
That’s very different from the Mom who bakes cookies for the Band bake sale in an effort to get their kid from 3rd chair to 2nd chair or the “spirit supporters” whose goal is to get their kid play time.
Look! A rabbit!
From the article:
Correlation isn’t causation.
Just saw this article (someone posted it on Facebook). I’ll read it later. Its making me depressed.
Is it a real phenomenon? I don’t know. I’m doubtful, as it seems write-ups in newspapers and magazines mention a small handful of writers, namely, Deresewicz, Wendy Mogel, and Madeline Levine, all of whom (presumably) earn money through selling books and talking to audiences.
It could be a very localized phenomenon, however, seen mostly in elite colleges. That’s where the intelligent, “overly parented” might end up in droves. In which case, elite colleges come in for a share of the blame. Perhaps one step towards less pressure for youth would be limiting how many activities applicants may list on their applications (3?), as well as limiting the number of courses a college would consider on an application. (In other words, do not give bonus points to applicants who’ve gone without sleep and lunch for four years.)
Recent research has shown a link between lack of sleep and depression. It could be that parents who drive their children to outdo their peers through sheer overwork (and I think we all know someone like that) are unwittingly depriving their children of sleep.
Austin, good post.
Albert, good one: the sexual revolution! Look at all the problems the idealistic 60’s caused 
The culture of accomplishment also works against long term relationships, or even relationships at all.
Everything is complicated. I wonder if the authors of this article are much younger and don’t have the, ahem, historical perspective some of us have.
^^^ Historical perspective, I like that. 
After reading these comments, I agree with you all that true clinical depression is not caused by parenting. I went to a doctor a couple years ago and I was diagnosed with a few things, one of them being depressive disorder (I’m not sure if I’m actually depressed but that’s what the doctor told us) along with social anxiety and selective mutism and two other things I don’t remember. And my parents are definitely not helicopter parents. In fact, their non-helicoptering is what caused me to still have problems to this day. If I had received treatment for selective mutism back in kindergarten when it was first noticed, I would have been a normal child by now. But since they ignored it and waited till I was entering high school, I still have to deal with this. I don’t know why I posted this article, from my own experiences I can tell it’s not true.
I don’t know if that article is true, but it does make sense that when there’s been too much “hand-holding” then there could be anxiety/depression issues when suddenly the crutch is gone (while away at school).
Imagine that you’ve always had someone “keeping you on track,” and “keeping you organized,” and “waking you up for class,” and “making your meals and washing your clothes,” and/or “cleaning up after you.”
Now, suddenly, you’re hours away from home, you’re sleeping thru classes, you can’t find your stuff, you’re making painful mistakes (forgot test/forgot assignment)…then I could understand why some kids would become anxious and depressed (they usually go hand in hand).
I have seen too many parents have minimal expectations for their child (no/few chores, few/no life skills developed, etc) because their kid has a full schedule of ECs, sports, school, etc…all of which the parents manage (here’s your clean uniform, you have practice today at 4pm, don’t forget (blah blah blah), and so forth)
Kids need to build their confidence…and that comes with experience, managing mistakes, and learning foresight and orgn skills.
Ahh, the good ol’ learned helplessness.
I disagree with the article and statement for the most part, but there have been some good points brought up in this thread.
“It could be a very localized phenomenon, however, seen mostly in elite colleges. That’s where the intelligent, “overly parented” might end up in droves. In which case, elite colleges come in for a share of the blame. Perhaps one step towards less pressure for youth would be limiting how many activities applicants may list on their applications (3?), as well as limiting the number of courses a college would consider on an application. (In other words, do not give bonus points to applicants who’ve gone without sleep and lunch for four years.)”
Every large scale study I’ve ever seen shows that the largest rates of depression, suicide, and suicidal ideation (i.e. people who think about suicide a lot but are not successful in killing themselves) is among 18-25 year old’s who did not/are not attending college.
So the idea that elite colleges are somehow to blame (or the activities of the kids who go to these schools) is logically absurd.
What seems to be quite real is that many forms of mental illness (including but not limited to depression) start to manifest themselves at late adolescence/college attending age. But to blame Harvard and Stanford for depression would be to ignore actual data.
But it’s much easier to blame Harvard and Princeton and the helicoptering parents who send their kids there. Yup, that I understand.