13 ms·

Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

147 points by walterclifford 11y ago

leroy_masochist 11y ago
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.
iovrthoughtthis 11y ago
Classic PR.
- minikites 11y ago
  PR for what/who?
  - iovrthoughtthis 11y ago
    "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-checklisted-childhoods-and-raise-adults/ http://time.com/3910020/the-over-parenting-trap-how-to-avoid... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-lythcotthaims/helicopter-parenting-is-a-trap_b_7586656.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-lythcotthaims/helicopter... http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/books/review/how-to-raise-an-adult-by-julie-lythcott-haims.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/books/review/how-to-raise-... http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-prj-how-to-raise-an-adult-julie-lythcott-haims-20150611-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-prj-how-to... 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 This is unfortunate given the historical references to 'helicopter parenting' and other writing that has covered the issue.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.
6d0debc071 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      A very small number of teens do, which is fine with them.
  - 6d0debc071 11y ago
    The Dean can of course want whatever she likes, without contradiction or with hardly matters since our wants are not rational. But the chance of getting it seems unlikely to lie with preaching to parents that they should let their children fail. Especially not in a nation with a very high culture of ambition where so many perceive failure as catastrophic. If you are a gatekeeper to an area of high value, and if you set demanding test standards, then people are going to try to teach the tests. All the talking about good parenting in the world seems unlikely to change that. In that position, one can either change the standard to support that which one desires, (Have a discussion that goes something like, “If we are interested in educating young men and women of resilience, how do we encourage and/or test for resilience?”) or one can complain. I've yet to seen any indication that complaining will improve matters in a situation where the majority of the incentive seems to lie on the side of those who act contrary to your desires.
gotothrowaway 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
- Gotadime 11y ago
  You just tried to spin a cultural issue (that is, by the way, highly tied to liberal thought) to support your liberal political agenda. These helicopter parents are the same people that protest when their kids don't get a trophy for losing a soccer game. The "no child left behind" / "no hurt feelings" / "safe place" crew. To say that more of their ideas will help to solve the very issue that they created is simply laughable. I don't disagree with you that competition for admission and cost of tuition probably do have some effect on this issue. But those effects have always existed in the higher education system and only more recently has this issue popped up. This isn't an issue of politics or economics. This is an issue of culture and parenting philosophy. Not everything can be solved with a Bernie Sanders bill. Some things require actual introspection on an individual level. Some things require a criticism of our own thoughts and ideas.
  - sagichmal 11y ago
    > These helicopter parents are the same people that protest when their kids don't get a trophy for losing a soccer game Facts not in evidence. > The "no child left behind" / "no hurt feelings" / "safe place" crew. No child left behind was a Republican (conservative) initiative.
chrisgd 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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_ferlazzo/2015/10/response_is_grit_an_asset_or_an_excuse.html http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_fer...
  - chrisgd 11y ago
    Great, thanks for sharing.
m_fayer 11y ago
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 11y ago
  > 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.
supercanuck 11y ago
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 11y ago
  > 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.
  - riffraff 11y ago
    > What I think is happening is that global communication is leading to increased status neurosis. A thousand times this. There is also a growing body of research[0] that shows that social media make you feel worse cause you are exposed to a selection of what's good in other people's life. I suspect the same often applies to TV. [0] which I have not read further than the news reports, so might be total bullshit, caveat emptor, but I am inclined to believe it based on my anecdotal experience.
    - agumonkey 11y ago
      And the information era triggers an addiction to know more all the time which is knowing nothing. Schooling, parenting ... sometimes I even wonder how could my parent let me play outside without a cellphone, when in fact, all previous generations did fine.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      It's all global media. Even colorful lifestyle magazines. Those celebrities you read about are carefully selected top N of 7 billion people. The chance of meeting any single person like that in one's neighbourhood is practically zero for a normal human being, yet you treat them as next-door neighbours in terms of comparing yourself to them, because media hijacks the availability heuristic. That effect is a reason why I start to think mass media is doing more harm than good to humans (a lot of ways in which general population turns batshit insane can be attributed to availability heuristic).
ThomPete 11y ago
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
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- terda12 11y ago
  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.
ck2 11y ago
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.
GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
I first heard complaints about 'helicopter parents' a full twenty years ago.
6stringmerc 11y ago
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.
awl130 11y ago
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 11y ago
  > 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
dalke 11y ago
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+parents&dq=helicopter+parents&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y https://books.google.com/books?id=kXkT2dXGjtYC&q=helicopter+... 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=helicopter+parents&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=helicopter%20parents&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=AfQDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA6&dq=hel... 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+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 https://www.google.com/search?q=expect+everything+to+be+hand... 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=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 https://books.google.com/books?id=agt7vyGWtXoC&pg=PA14&dq=ex... > 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=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 https://books.google.com/books?id=b00EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA6&dq=exp... : > 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.
learning_still 11y ago
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.
bhouston 11y ago
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.
Multiplayer 11y ago
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.
dilap 11y ago
A self-correcting problem, since the next generation of kids will be left to fend for themselves by their helpless, helicoptered parents. :)
- seiji 11y ago
  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.
- 100k 11y ago
  Or it will extend to the previous generation, like in this Portlandia skit: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BLW0MnqH0r8 http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BLW0MnqH0r8
cJ0th 11y ago
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.
wfo 11y ago
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.
- klunger 11y ago
  This. It is like that old adage, "Behind every great man, there is a great woman." For the modern era, it should perhaps now be, "behind every top-tier university student, there is a helicopter parent". It takes so much to get into one of these schools now that it seems impossible for any child without extensive support.
  - zkhalique 11y ago
    Perhaps, following sentiments of Peter Thiel and others, it's not necessary to get into an elite school today, in order to succeed. If it was, then good education and success would still be scarce in today's world, as most people can't afford to go to Harvard, Stanford, etc. Now we have MOOCs an schools can become centers for socializing, tutoring and testing. A great teacher can educate more than 300 people a year this way.
    - Thriptic 11y ago
      It's never been necessary to go to an elite school to be successful; it's simply much easier to get your foot in the door with employers if you have the words "MIT" or "Stanford" on your resume as opposed to "Coursera" or some random college. Moreover, employers COME TO YOU if you are at these institutions, you don't need to go out and beg for face time.
Overtonwindow 11y ago
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...
nerdwaller 11y ago
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.
mikejholly 11y ago
"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?
zkhalique 11y ago
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.
lemevi 11y ago
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 11y ago
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.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
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.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  Which is why it's important to build that trust with your kid early on. The longer parent wait with letting go of their fear of any harm to their kid the more damage they potentially inflict on them later on. Just like in the entpreneurial world. Making mistakes when you are young is much safer than later on in life. But yes as a parent I understand exactly what you are saying.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > 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.
11thEarlOfMar 11y ago
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.
tokenadult 11y ago
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.
sabujp 11y ago
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.
Mikeb85 11y ago
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.
lazyant 11y ago
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.
usmeteora 11y ago
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.

147 points by walterclifford 11y ago

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.

iovrthoughtthis 11y ago

Classic PR.

minikites 11y ago
PR for what/who?
- iovrthoughtthis 11y ago
  "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-checklisted-childhoods-and-raise-adults/ http://time.com/3910020/the-over-parenting-trap-how-to-avoid... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-lythcotthaims/helicopter-parenting-is-a-trap_b_7586656.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-lythcotthaims/helicopter... http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/books/review/how-to-raise-an-adult-by-julie-lythcott-haims.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/books/review/how-to-raise-... http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-prj-how-to-raise-an-adult-julie-lythcott-haims-20150611-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-prj-how-to... 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.

6d0debc071 11y ago

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 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    A very small number of teens do, which is fine with them.
- 6d0debc071 11y ago
  The Dean can of course want whatever she likes, without contradiction or with hardly matters since our wants are not rational. But the chance of getting it seems unlikely to lie with preaching to parents that they should let their children fail. Especially not in a nation with a very high culture of ambition where so many perceive failure as catastrophic. If you are a gatekeeper to an area of high value, and if you set demanding test standards, then people are going to try to teach the tests. All the talking about good parenting in the world seems unlikely to change that. In that position, one can either change the standard to support that which one desires, (Have a discussion that goes something like, “If we are interested in educating young men and women of resilience, how do we encourage and/or test for resilience?”) or one can complain. I've yet to seen any indication that complaining will improve matters in a situation where the majority of the incentive seems to lie on the side of those who act contrary to your desires.

gotothrowaway 11y ago

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 11y ago
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.
Gotadime 11y ago
You just tried to spin a cultural issue (that is, by the way, highly tied to liberal thought) to support your liberal political agenda. These helicopter parents are the same people that protest when their kids don't get a trophy for losing a soccer game. The "no child left behind" / "no hurt feelings" / "safe place" crew. To say that more of their ideas will help to solve the very issue that they created is simply laughable. I don't disagree with you that competition for admission and cost of tuition probably do have some effect on this issue. But those effects have always existed in the higher education system and only more recently has this issue popped up. This isn't an issue of politics or economics. This is an issue of culture and parenting philosophy. Not everything can be solved with a Bernie Sanders bill. Some things require actual introspection on an individual level. Some things require a criticism of our own thoughts and ideas.
- sagichmal 11y ago
  > These helicopter parents are the same people that protest when their kids don't get a trophy for losing a soccer game Facts not in evidence. > The "no child left behind" / "no hurt feelings" / "safe place" crew. No child left behind was a Republican (conservative) initiative.

chrisgd 11y ago

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 11y ago
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_ferlazzo/2015/10/response_is_grit_an_asset_or_an_excuse.html http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_fer...
- chrisgd 11y ago
  Great, thanks for sharing.

m_fayer 11y ago

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 11y ago
> 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.

supercanuck 11y ago

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 11y ago
> 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.
- riffraff 11y ago
  > What I think is happening is that global communication is leading to increased status neurosis. A thousand times this. There is also a growing body of research[0] that shows that social media make you feel worse cause you are exposed to a selection of what's good in other people's life. I suspect the same often applies to TV. [0] which I have not read further than the news reports, so might be total bullshit, caveat emptor, but I am inclined to believe it based on my anecdotal experience.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    And the information era triggers an addiction to know more all the time which is knowing nothing. Schooling, parenting ... sometimes I even wonder how could my parent let me play outside without a cellphone, when in fact, all previous generations did fine.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    It's all global media. Even colorful lifestyle magazines. Those celebrities you read about are carefully selected top N of 7 billion people. The chance of meeting any single person like that in one's neighbourhood is practically zero for a normal human being, yet you treat them as next-door neighbours in terms of comparing yourself to them, because media hijacks the availability heuristic. That effect is a reason why I start to think mass media is doing more harm than good to humans (a lot of ways in which general population turns batshit insane can be attributed to availability heuristic).

ThomPete 11y ago

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

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terda12 11y ago
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.

ck2 11y ago

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.

GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago

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

6stringmerc 11y ago

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.

awl130 11y ago

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 11y ago
> 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

dalke 11y ago

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+parents&dq=helicopter+parents&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y https://books.google.com/books?id=kXkT2dXGjtYC&q=helicopter+... 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=helicopter+parents&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=helicopter%20parents&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=AfQDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA6&dq=hel... 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+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 https://www.google.com/search?q=expect+everything+to+be+hand... 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=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 https://books.google.com/books?id=agt7vyGWtXoC&pg=PA14&dq=ex... > 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=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 https://books.google.com/books?id=b00EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA6&dq=exp... : > 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.

learning_still 11y ago

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.

bhouston 11y ago

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.

Multiplayer 11y ago

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.

dilap 11y ago

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

seiji 11y ago
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.
100k 11y ago
Or it will extend to the previous generation, like in this Portlandia skit: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BLW0MnqH0r8 http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BLW0MnqH0r8

cJ0th 11y ago

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.

wfo 11y ago

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.

klunger 11y ago
This. It is like that old adage, "Behind every great man, there is a great woman." For the modern era, it should perhaps now be, "behind every top-tier university student, there is a helicopter parent". It takes so much to get into one of these schools now that it seems impossible for any child without extensive support.
- zkhalique 11y ago
  Perhaps, following sentiments of Peter Thiel and others, it's not necessary to get into an elite school today, in order to succeed. If it was, then good education and success would still be scarce in today's world, as most people can't afford to go to Harvard, Stanford, etc. Now we have MOOCs an schools can become centers for socializing, tutoring and testing. A great teacher can educate more than 300 people a year this way.
  - Thriptic 11y ago
    It's never been necessary to go to an elite school to be successful; it's simply much easier to get your foot in the door with employers if you have the words "MIT" or "Stanford" on your resume as opposed to "Coursera" or some random college. Moreover, employers COME TO YOU if you are at these institutions, you don't need to go out and beg for face time.

Overtonwindow 11y ago

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...

nerdwaller 11y ago

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.

mikejholly 11y ago

"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?

zkhalique 11y ago

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.

lemevi 11y ago

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 11y ago

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.

ChuckMcM 11y ago

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.

ThomPete 11y ago
Which is why it's important to build that trust with your kid early on. The longer parent wait with letting go of their fear of any harm to their kid the more damage they potentially inflict on them later on. Just like in the entpreneurial world. Making mistakes when you are young is much safer than later on in life. But yes as a parent I understand exactly what you are saying.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
> 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.

11thEarlOfMar 11y ago

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.

tokenadult 11y ago

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.

sabujp 11y ago

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.

Mikeb85 11y ago

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.

lazyant 11y ago

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.

usmeteora 11y ago

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.