"New research shows that hyper-involved parenting is the route to kids’ success in today’s unequal world.
… It’s a familiar story. Psychologists, sociologists and journalists have spent more than a decade diagnosing and critiquing the habits of “helicopter parents” and their school obsessions. They insist that hyper-parenting backfires — creating a generation of stressed-out kids who can’t function alone. Parents themselves alternate between feeling guilty, panicked and ridiculous.
But new research shows that in our unequal era, this kind of parenting is essential." …
This article shares the findings of a study conducted by two researchers–one from Northwestern University & the other from Yale University. I wonder what their parents were like.
This is not my definition of helicopter parenting :). This article seems more about setting your kids up for success by giving them opportunities. Helicopter, to me, is the parents that does their kids homework and projects, that intervenes if a child’s feelings are hurt by another child, that argue with teachers that they are unfair graders, who won’t let their kids learn from failure and disappointment, etc…
Maybe I need to rethink the definition…
FWIW, I totally agree with this author that we are making the economic divide worse. My husband and I agonized over pulling our daughter out of public school. I totally believe if everyone was forced to keep their kids in public school, that it would be much better for all. However, when it’s your own kids education/future on the line, I’ll fully own that we were selfish and put her needs over the general good.
@momofsenior1 : Usually I agree with your posts, but our definition of helicopter parenting differs. I have never known, or, at least, never been aware of a parent who does a child’s homework or argues with teachers. But, because our child attended Catholic school & then a prep boarding school, such behavior would have resulted in expulsion.
Public school would have been a poor choice for our son. He needed more academically and benefitted from a strictly enforced set of rules.
For example, bragging about a good grade was forbidden at the K-8 parochial school. The only time our son got in trouble was when another student asked him what grade he received on a test. When he replied loud enough for others to hear, he was sent to the principal’s office. He never made that mistake again.
@Publisher I have seen many, many parents who do their children’s homework and argue with teachers and administration. I can’t tell you how many times I have had to invoke the privacy rules to avoid such helicopter parents at the college level! At both affluent public schools and selective private K-12 schools, I have also seen what I would call helicoptering by proxy, or maybe we should call it the “chartered helicopter,” where affluent parents hire tutors and consultants to do the job of helicoptering. I am not talking about the occasional tutor for when a student is struggling; I’m talking about having a private tutor for nearly every academic subject, and a life coach from the age of 13. I do, though, think the authors of this particular piece are using the term “helicopter parent” to describe a set of behaviors that might be better called the “managed childhood.” IMHO, the “helicopter parent” does things for the kid, and removes all obstacles, and doesn’t tend to care much about fairness to others, whereas the parents described in the article have created a path for a kid and put up a nice cushy bumper guard so they don’t go off track, but don’t seem to actually be doing their homework for them. Authoritative parenting isn’t quite the same as helicopter parenting, to me.
Edit to add: but, yes, both help to maintain the level of social inequality in the US.
@Publisher Wouldn’t it be nice if your public schools offered enough academically and also enforced the rules?
I’ve seen a number of parents pull their kids out of our public system when things got “tough” in late elementary or middle school. I understood their concerns, but lamented the fact that involved parents were leaving the system. These are exactly the people who can help create a more rigorous and responsible school.
My son entered public school in Kindergarten. The school was brand new. I am not going to share any more other than to say that that was his only year in public school.
The parent who continued to drop off lunch for the HS kid who forgot it (in the middle of the day- you have to feel sorry for the parent who clearly needed to be needed) was the parent who went to Costco once a month and drove to that same kid’s college dorm to fill the fridge with snacks, restock the Poland Spring, replace the shampoo, etc. Friends would point out that an 18 or 19 year old was capable of buying granola bars (or doing without), but the parent insisted that “she’s in college to study, not to go grocery shopping”.
Kid graduated, moved back home, had a series of minimum wage jobs, finally moved out by age 30 or so.
I don’t think helicoptering is good for either party. Being an involved parent is not helicoptering- doing something that your kid is more than capable of doing (or should be doing) is helicoptering. You can look to peers to see what is age appropriate- at pick up at nursery school, the 3’s are not putting on their own coats or shoes (most of them). In pre-K, most of them are. At age 18 or 19, most kids in college know how to purchase a snack.
@Publisher - In middle school science olympiad the two boys who won first place for their build event, high fived each other and then very loudly announced that their dads were going to be so excited. We were right behind them walking out and they told a friend that the dads built it themselves because the kids were at sports practice. The public school that they attended was widely known in our area for having parents do all the build events with little to no involvement from their kids. It was ridiculous but pervasive.
Arguing with teachers and admins was also common in our dd’s catholic HS. You were lucky to not have experienced that. One parent went off the rails during back to school night because of the length of a writing assignment and the “undo stress it caused his daughter.” Again, not an isolated incident.
We pulled our daughter out of public school because of lack of rigor as well. AP/honors courses were always the first to get cut when budgets weren’t passed and the HS was down to barebones offerings when my daughter was in middle school. The district lost hundreds of students within a few year period. They ended up bringing back the courses but it was too late for DD.
Actually only the author of this opinion piece said the word “helicopter”. And drew some weird conclusions along the way.
The two research authors offered different words for parenting styles one being “authoritative” to mean parenting that does a lot of guidance to create a self-reliant kid and “authoritarian” which meant creating a rule-follower. Neither of which has anything to do with being a helicopter parent.
For many years it has been known that authoritative parenting is better than authoritarian or permissive parenting. And that involved parents are important to success. That, however, does not translate at all to helicopter parenting as it is usually defined. The article says that good parents: “emphasize adaptability, problem-solving and independence”. The bad rap on helicoptering is that it fosters dependence, not independence. Certainly, solving every problem for a kid (as helicopters do) does not foster problem solving!
The author seems to be stretching the definition to get her opinion in the paper.
@Publisher The term “authoritative” is often used by psychologists and child development specialists. There’s a diagram with four quadrants: permissive, authoritarian, authoritative, and neglectful (or something like that–I think the fourth term changes a bit from chart to chart, but the others are pretty set).
It’s really hard to make anything of this article unless one goes straight to the book written by two research authors. I just heard of this book, so I haven’t. This opinion piece is unfortunately written poorly, i.e., unclear in making points. For example, what works, as in the title, “It Works”? Because the book was written by two economists, I’d assume that whatever “works” is from the jobs perspective? What about personal and social perspectives? The opinion author did point out those conflicting studies from psychologists, sociologists and journalists but quickly swept those aside and went straight to “this new study says it now works” without any care to explain the conflicting – “it” doesn’t work vs. “it works” – shift in the way we look and understand the so-called helicopter parenting. My own guess is that there really isn’t a conflict at all. The helicopter parenting can, after all, produce different effects in different realms, i.e., it may “work” from economical standpoint but it may not from psychological and social standpoint.
You can count me as a parent who does not think that parents putting their children in a position to succeed constitutes helicopter parenting. It should not be news to anyone that children who have parents who allow them every opportunity to succeed are more successful than those who don’t.
I will freely admit to being invested in my kids education every step of the way (except grad school). I consider it my job as a parent to help my children acquire the knowledge/skills they need to be successful adults. I never did a project for my kids but I certainly helped them think about their projects, what supplies they needed, when they planned to work on the project, etc. I also proof read papers and helped them learn new math concepts. That is what ALL parents should be doing. Being poor is not an excuse to be an uninvolved parent.
I have known helicopter parents. Those parents were on the phone with teachers, running interference with coaches, and smoothing all the bumps in the road for their kids. That is not the same as being involved with your kids. My son had a college room mate whose parents wouldn’t let him be off the meal plan his SENIOR YEAR because they didn’t think he could handle cooking, cleaning up after himself and grocery shopping AT AGE 23!
I’m patting myself on the back for being a more or less authoritative parent. However, I had to deflect criticisms both from friends who were surprised my kid didn’t do his own laundry yet at age 10, and others who told me just to write his homework essays if he’s having such a trouble with them.
" However, I had to deflect criticisms both from friends who were surprised my kid didn’t do his own laundry yet at age 10"
LOL. I had many people pretty much say that my kids would end up dirty later in life because we not only didn’t have them do laundry at home (this is because my feelings are: STAY OUT OF MY LAUNDRY ROOM!!!) but they had laundry service at school. Then my daughter did a semester abroad with no service available. So she did laundry after spending 5 minutes watching a youtube video on “how to do laundry.” Years of prep are simply not required or even helpful for tasks that can be learned in a few minutes. Now she lives in an apartment and is “into doing laundry” just like me.
I find it interesting, on a forum that celebrates 90th+ percentile ACT and SAT scores, amazing EC’s and admission to multiple hyper-competitive schools, that anyone would argue with the title of this article.