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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 th

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).
- seiji 11y ago
  Margin of error: go to Stanford, make the right connections, become a billionaire in 8 years versus go to a state school and work for the billionaires while making 1/5000th to 1/150000th as much as they do, yet you're doing all the work that makes them richer.
  - TelmoMenezes 11y ago
    > go to Stanford, make the right connections, become a billionaire in 8 years In my scenario I was implicitly alluding to the real planet Earth.
    - seiji 11y ago
      We're talking hopes and dreams and aspirations and delusions here. How many billionaires has Stanford generated versus the entire state of Ohio in the past 20 years?
  - forgetsusername 11y ago
    >become a billionaire in 8 years versus go to a state school and work for the billionaires If the only thing that matters in life is how much money you make, this might be relevant. Otherwise, working for those billionaires as a college grad isn't that bad.
    - seiji 11y ago
      Lead, follow, or get out of the way. Nothing wrong with having no ambition, but step to the right so better people can pass you by.
      - peoplelovelines 11y ago
        Gross. What a shallow and pathetic way of viewing the world and the people around you.
  - cthalupa 11y ago
    Stanford has 27 billionaire alumni. At any given time, there are ~15,000 students studying at Stanford. Getting the top 10 schools for creating billionaires, it accounts for 206 total. (Though this number also includes Cambridge, and I'm not sure if the 11 billionaire alumni from there are part of the same 500ish US billionaires) Out of the 500ish billionaires in the US, nearly 100 of them have no degree at all. So, these top schools produce about double the amount of billionaires that zero degrees do, and roughly the same number as the rest of the schools combined. This is such a relatively small sample size and there are so many factors in play here that it would be silly to draw any sort of strong conclusion from this, but even going with shoddy science on this and playing fast and loose, we can see that while, yes, you do gain an advantage in the 'become a billionaire' game, it's still a ridiculously insignificant chance, and the population of billionaires without a degree or with a degree from a school not known for producing billionaires is still higher. All of this to say: There ain't no easy path to billionairehood besides being born one, and getting in to Stanford or any other school does not increase your chances of becoming one to a statistically significant number.
- FLUX-YOU 11y ago
  He's not really talking about mortal survival but social/career success, the consequences of error meaning you don't get to climb as high.
- BurningFrog 11y ago
  > 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. This is also a big factor in the "impossible beauty standards" syndrome. Being the prettiest girl in the village was tough but humanly possible. Competing against photoshopped versions of the most attractive women on the planet is not.
throwaway13337 11y ago
>Nobody wants to be the parent of the most mentally stable Starbucks Barista This is a very American problem and the cause my (20's) generation's unhappiness. No one is happy with just being a stable person. Being a stable person is a great goal. Most people aren't.
- 6stringmerc 11y ago
  As noted in the article, the observed issues with mental health problems would indicate that pushing toward such an "achievement" extreme carries with it significant baggage.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Yep. We have lost half a generation to Starbucks jobs, and people know that they are lost. It's ruining their mental health, and not building any kind of economic health. I don't blame the helicopter parents for this, though.
- Thimothy 11y ago
  I've have worked in the restoration business in Europe and would absolutely hate doing the same jobs in the US. Here, it is tactically accepted that even people that faces the public can have a shitty day, specially if the pay is not-so-great. You know you are not 100%, your clients know it, your boss knows it, but as long as it doesn't become a regular problem, it's ok. Now, besides having a shitty day, knowing that my pay and lifestyle is in danger if I give the client a less than perfect experience would do nothing good to my mental stability.
anon4 11y ago
That was my thought as well. The parents are making the rational decision that they can't afford their kids to fail, so they take every measure to make sure they get to a good start. A good start in this case meaning getting admitted to Stanford. It might have something to do with low-qualification jobs disappearing, which in turn means you have to have a college degree to be self-sufficient. Once upon a time, you could be on your own when you were as young as 12 (yes, I mean ancient times). Not too long ago you needed only high school education to get a good job, so you're staying with your parents until 16-18. Now you need college.
- BrandonM 11y ago
  This is only true in a world where being an electrician, plumber, heating and cooling technician, etc. -- all jobs that are in-demand and pay $100K+/year -- have a negative stigma attached to them. Mike Rowe gave a great Ted talk about this: https://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs https://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs
ThomPete 11y ago
Getting your kids into Stanford has nothing to do with helicopter parenting and I think you are missing the bigger point. The failing that you do when you are 6 is very different from the one you do when you are 16 or 26, they all accumulate and you can't redo your childhood. The things you learn when you are 6 and 16 are closer to the competition you are in when you are out of Stanford. Getting in to stanford is nothing compared to making it through life in one piece and with success.
- analog31 11y ago
  So, what happens to those kids after Stanford, e.g., the ones who get CS degrees but were helicopter-parented? How do they compare to the kids who were equally interested in computers but "allowed to fail," e.g., did not have sparkling resumes and were rejected by Stanford?
  - falcolas 11y ago
    In ten years, one is homeless, the other gainfully employed in the tech field? Honestly, we don't know. And while your choice of university matters for the first few jobs out of university, it quickly gets pushed to the back of the bus in favor of experience. Mental stability and the framework to deal with real life, though, matters much longer.
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    They are competing against those who got into Stanford and wasn't helicopter parented.
  - crpatino 11y ago
    In my experience, going to a prestigious university gives you a head start. In 10 years, it will matter most what you have done after you graduate than where you graduated from. Of course, you still have a network of connections... but again in my experience those do not translate well if you want to do top of the line work. If you eventually want to get an MBA and boss nerds around, ivy league is the way to go... but if you are committed to be a lifelong technologist, is matter little if at all.
munin 11y ago
> Nobody wants to be the parent of the most mentally stable Starbucks Barista here's an important question to ask yourself: if you had to choose, would you rather your children be kind, or smart?
- ryanmonroe 11y ago
  A kind idiot probably isn't of much use to society
  - WalterSear 11y ago
    Whereas unkind people are actively detrimental to society.
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    Neither is a smart asshole. How useful to society are those who try to leech money off it in the most efficient ways possible? (I'm talking charlatans and certain branches of banking)
  - ckaygusu 11y ago
    Sticking to the context, a smart person with ill intentions may damage the society. For a reference "smartness", assuming being kind or misogynistic is equally likely, the expected worth of a person is still zero, i.e. "isn't of much use to society".
  - oh_sigh 11y ago
    Sure they are. They won't be inventing new devices or running successful businesses, but they will probably enrich the lives of anyone in their social circle
- avz 11y ago
  Both would be best, but if I had to chose I'd go for smart. I've seen smart, but unkind people learn to be kind over time. I doubt a kind halfwit can learn to be smart. That's presumably the case because smartness defines your general ability to learn, change and adapt.
- 11y ago
crpatino 11y ago
That's just stupid. What good will an Stanford education be for someone who puts a bullet through their heads within one year of being thrown in an hyper competitive corporate environment where there is no safety net to ensure that your every step will eventually lead to success? I specially disliked the part about having the rest of their life to "fail". That's tautological of course, but it takes on a whole new dimension if the "rest" is measured in months instead of decades.
a8da6b0c91d 11y ago
The college admissions system has encouraged the arms race mentality. The SAT has been repeatedly reworked such that test prep works better. I really doubt involvement in the summer activities they apparently value indicates anything about qualification other than parental resources and involvement.
meow_mix 11y ago
So now getting into a top college is more important than being a functional person? Failing when your an adult is more than getting a bruised knee: It's getting stuck in a job you hate, ending up in a bad marriage and becoming sick/obese because you don't know how to take care of yourself. All of those things happen because people don't know what works for them. The reason they don't know that is because other people have told them how to live their entire lives.
- scarmig 11y ago
  It's not evident that so called "helicopter parenting" and getting into a top college causes any of the above. First and last are anti-correlated with it, and I wouldn't be surprised if the second is too. Obviously some people overdo it, but superior life outcomes and being a functional adult seem to go with heavily involved parenting.
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    Heavily involved parenting doesn't mean helicopter parenting and thats something thats very important to understand.
  - fsloth 11y ago
    Involved parenting is not about controlling ones child (well, not directly, most of the time), nor protecting them from lifes bad outcomes.
jroseattle 11y ago
> Those parents got those kids into Stanford. Correlation/causation fail. The worst part of parents functioning this way is that they assume they are dictating results.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- lern_too_spel 11y ago
  If it didn't work, this former Dean wouldn't be complaining about it. I see her complaints as more sinister. She comes from a privileged background, and she's concerned that people from her social class are getting pushed out of her university by kids whose parents made them work hard.
bduerst 11y ago
Survivor bias. The students accepted to Stanford could be a representative sample of the larger upcoming student population in other universities, with regards to helicopter parenting.
veryes 11y ago
Exactly so. Only a name-brand school will actually deliver career benefits commensurate with the cost of attending. If you can't get in to a Harvard or Stanford, one might do better to learn a technical trade independently than go into debt to attend a UCSD, Washington State, or god forbid a second-tier private college. Second tier schools are not worth the money they're asking in the present environment.
- eitally 11y ago
  This is such bullshit. Smart, motivated kids will excel no matter where they are, and there's almost* nothing a Tier 1 state school won't be able to provide that will make a substantive difference in their career. Even Tier 2 public schools will be a-ok, and a lot of those kids will receive large scholarships at tier 2 privates... and they'll end up just fine, also. I think I'd separate your statement into two parts: 1) if you can't get into a decent school, consider trades. 2) god forbid anyone pay list price for a private college education. You & I apparently just disagree on the definition of "decent". * In all honesty, the only thing I can think of OTOH is if you want to go directly from undergrad into investment banking or elite law, where the vast majority of new hires still come from Ivy League (plus a few others: Duke, Georgetown, Stanford, ...) pipelines.
jon_dahl 11y ago
What a false dichotomy: Stanford or life as a service worker. Both Google and YC have stopped focusing on college prestige in their hiring/acceptance, because it wasn't a particularly strong indicator of success. I would much rather send healthy kids to a state school or liberal arts college than unhealthy kids to Stanford.
- ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
  Better to be a Harvard dropout (Zuckerberg) than have a CS degree from Humboldt State.
  - ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
    And to combine that with an upper middle class background (like Zuckerberg)
  - bennylope 11y ago
    Conflating one spectacular success with all [Harvard] dropouts is a silly comparison.
  - kec 11y ago
    Is it? We know of two notably successful Harvard dropouts: Zuckerberg and Gates. While their success most likely hasn't been anywhere near as spectacular, I'm willing to bet you know dozens of successful people who graduated from state & small private universities.
    - ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
      Both also had very upper middle/upper class backgrounds.
  - obstacle1 11y ago
    Better to win the megabucks than the $5 scratch-off ticket. What's your point? That being an enormous outlier is sometimes a great thing?
smtddr 11y ago
>>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" What a terribly insulting thing to say. Arrogance at its peak.
- benp84 11y ago
  I'm pretty sure it was a comment on the state of the education environment, not a personal opinion.
awl130 11y ago
you've entirely missed the point. the article is making a claim on an entire generation of students and using stanford merely as an anecdotal sample
lmkg 11y ago
The article implies (but does not state) that these students struggle once they're in. Getting in to Stanford has only marginal value on its own, the majority of value is in graduating and receiving a degree. If parents are optimizing for success at step N-1 at the cost of success at step N, that is self-defeating.
lemmsjid 11y ago
As a parent, I would a thousand times rather my child be a mentally stable barista than a questionably stable Stanford student. In fact, having recently interacted with the Standard undergraduate body, I feel quite sorry for most of them because it's such a terrible pressure cooker stress environment. My primary goal for my child is for her to be a whole person. If she can do that at Stanford, fine. If she can do that at Starbucks, fine. Instead of helicoptering her into an Ivy League depression, I'm focusing on making sure we're financially stable enough to be a cushion for the inevitable times when she fails while trying to find her own way in life. I say this from experience, coming from a family where ivy league tier educations are normal--and so is depression.
- lifeisstillgood 11y ago
  Congratulations - and any tips on staying out the way, gratefully received :-(
- arcanus 11y ago
  > ivy league tier educations are normal--and so is depression Similar background and I have always suspected they are correlated.
- dawson 11y ago
  There are plenty of depressed baristas too.
  - fsloth 11y ago
    Specific occupation is not the point - rather what the child thinks what his/her family thinks of her career choices and that this does not drive them into places they would not naturally go to. I.e. that their important life choices are not made because of extrinsic but of intrinsic motivations.
thewarrior 11y ago
I'm always wary of upvoting a comment like this , but being from India and experiencing the difference getting into a good college makes , he has a point. Ofcourse it's not a stark choice between getting into a Stanford and serving coffee at Starbucks but still . And I can't digest the snobbery in saying that a Starbucks worker is devoid of any dignity . But the comment still somehow resonates with me. Perhaps it's a reflection of my own inferiority complex of not being able to study at an elite institution. It's a little hard to get over such feelings.
- kangman 11y ago
  You should check out this podcast about impostor syndrome and cultural conflicts that occur when two opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum meet. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/550/three-miles http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/550/t...
- plonh 11y ago
  It isn't about dignity of the job. It is about health insurance and living wages.
ryandrake 11y ago
Exactly. Our society is quickly bifurcating into haves and have-nots, and the middle class is disappearing. If the trend continues, by the time my daughter is college-aged, middle class lifestyles will be all but gone. Her only shot at not living in poverty will be an education, although already we're seeing a good education does not guarantee anything. If it takes "helicoptering" to help get her into $PRESTIGIOUS_SCHOOL you bet your ass I'll be firing up the rotors.
obstacle1 11y ago
>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" Surely you are joking. "Do everything for them during THE developmental phase of their life, then throw them to the wolves once your have produced a helpless little Stanford graduate" is your vision of good parenting? The whole of life before the age of 21 is irrelevant to you because it is just a means to getting into Stanford? Have you thought about the implications of your viewpoint? A parent's relationship with a child is determined by the place where the child works? Words fail.
r0naa 11y ago
I am so grateful to my parents for putting so much trust in me while I was seemingly going out of control during my teenage years. Seriously, it took me years but I now realize how much self-control and discipline it took them to stick to their philosophy and let me explore things on my own. I come from a very middle class background, but I had the chance to experience a lot of things. Some I regret, some I don't. But the important is that I know how it feels, and I know what I don't to be. That's also the very way I found my calling in Computer science, and what drives in life. They have trust me, when empirical evidence was screaming them not to. That's, I believe, the most beautiful proof of love they have ever gave me. When my turns come, I hope I will be as good as a parent, as they were to me.
- jschwartzi 11y ago
  My parents were the same way, but I'm glad they forced me to go to college, at least. At the time it felt like a waste of time, and I had to take a job clerking in a warehouse when I got out because there were no jobs, but I was lucky to have met the person who got me that job, because within four years I was an engineer. I couldn't have done that without an education and a ton of luck.
smithkl42 11y ago
"Nobody wants to be the parent of the most mentally stable Starbucks Barista." - I believe you speak correctly for much of the population. But not for me. I would much rather have my three children work at Starbucks (or in construction, or as plumbers, or whatever) and be good human beings - full of love, justice and mercy, faithful to their families and loyal to their friends - than get into any Ivy League and fail in any of those much more important areas. It's not even close.
- kelukelugames 11y ago
  It's much easier to be full of love, justice and mercy when people don't have to worry about money. Studies show a low threshold for that dollar amount but that number is multiple times higher for US major cities.
  - smithkl42 11y ago
    Perhaps. Certainly it's easier to be conventionally happy with enough money. And conversely, I think that folks who have a strong moral foundation find it a lot easier to make enough money. The arrow of causation quite likely runs both ways. But I know that the strongest sense of community and loyalty that I've seen are from working-class folks who may not have much money but who happen to have a strong underlying moral foundation.
snowwrestler 11y ago
I do agree that some parents feel that way, but they're wrong. A graduate of Stanford (or Harvard, etc.) can still fail, and fail hard. A job environment is far less forgiving than even "hard" schools like Stanford. A top-school diploma gets a kid in the door, but then it's up to them. A boss is not going to give a bad employee a break because their mom dropped by. At the same time, the range of available jobs is huge. The idea that it's "Stanford or Starbucks" is not reality.
GetofMyLawn 11y ago
This is so true. However, I don't think it should start after you have children. When I decided to settle down and have children, I only dated very intelligent women based on their profession and if they were in MENSA. At the time when we decided to have children, we took our best eggs and sperm to produce the best genetically intelligent children we could. So, for these "vintage" parents who are just getting their kids into Stanford, I applaud them. But because it's getting more and more competitive, I pity parents who don't start their helicoptering before the child before it is in the womb!
- peoplelovelines 11y ago
  You know what's sad? I can't tell if sarcastic. I could easily see an elitist power couple doing this :(
briandear 11y ago
Assuming "getting into Stanford" is the gold standard of parenting success. Plenty of billionaires who didn't even go to college. I refuse to make the admissions committee of Stanford be the judge of my parenting. By the plenty of graduates from 'good' schools working as baristas. Barista status has zero to do with your school accomplishment but with intrinsic traits such as motivation, ambition and creativity.
gdubs 11y ago
What makes you think one can make up for freedom lost during childhood? Our brains become rather rigid as we get older. One axiom for success is that it requires a thousand failures. Learning how to cope with failure is arguably the most important thing you can teach a child. And personally, I'd be proud to be the parent of the world's most mentally stable barista because life is about more than status.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Honestly? > What makes you think one can make up for freedom lost during childhood? Our brains become rather rigid as we get older. If this was true in a practical sense, we'd have the government raising up kids, because parents pose too much a risk of producing a suboptimal generation. > And personally, I'd be proud to be the parent of the world's most mentally stable barista because life is about more than status. That's what those of us who didn't get to the top spots like to tell ourselves so that we may sleep better at night. Life may not be about status and money, but having the two makes it an order of magnitude better. Trying to tell yourself something else is denial, really. Don't get me wrong - I definitely don't encourage turning kids into zombies and making them jump arbitrary stupid hoops that one needs to get to a top-tier university or otherwise gain status. But that's the world we live in - rewarding bullshit instead of actual value. There is no point in pretending otherwise, and seeing things for what they are is (almost) always helpful.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
cthalupa 11y ago
>You know what. Those parents got those kids into Stanford. Obviously helicopter parenting is working for them. Is getting kids into Stanford the end goal? If it is, that's pretty short sighted. Congratulations! You got into Stanford. Now what? Going to a top tier school is not the end. You don't win the moment you get accepted. College is the start of your adult life (or usually - based on this article perhaps some of the students are still in the childhood phase...), and where huge amounts of your actions and decisions start to have real and lasting consequences. > 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" I would take a well adjust, mentally stable, happy kid working a non-prestigious job than one that is unstable, depressed, etc. with a good one. Because, you know what? When you fail to raise an adult, even if they get to Stanford, a lot of them are not going to be good at jobs that require responsibility and personal judgment. This sort of short sighted idea that getting a kid to a good school is winning and anything less means you're relegated to baristahood is ridiculous. Even ignoring the fact that a college degree is not a requirement for success in life, there are multitudes of schools that will give you the proper education needed to succeed in a field that does require college without the insane demands of Stanford, et al.
fsloth 11y ago
"Today's environment is extremely competitive and the margin for error is lower." The number of poor in the world is steadily declining. To fuck up ones life in a western country basically requires a mental or health problem. I am left wondering what one is competing about.
Grae 11y ago
>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" What a terribly unfortunate conception of "failure" and "success" this mindset represents. One that is all to common, but certainly not the only option.

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).
seiji 11y ago
Margin of error: go to Stanford, make the right connections, become a billionaire in 8 years versus go to a state school and work for the billionaires while making 1/5000th to 1/150000th as much as they do, yet you're doing all the work that makes them richer.
- TelmoMenezes 11y ago
  > go to Stanford, make the right connections, become a billionaire in 8 years In my scenario I was implicitly alluding to the real planet Earth.
  - seiji 11y ago
    We're talking hopes and dreams and aspirations and delusions here. How many billionaires has Stanford generated versus the entire state of Ohio in the past 20 years?
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  >become a billionaire in 8 years versus go to a state school and work for the billionaires If the only thing that matters in life is how much money you make, this might be relevant. Otherwise, working for those billionaires as a college grad isn't that bad.
  - seiji 11y ago
    Lead, follow, or get out of the way. Nothing wrong with having no ambition, but step to the right so better people can pass you by.
    - peoplelovelines 11y ago
      Gross. What a shallow and pathetic way of viewing the world and the people around you.
- cthalupa 11y ago
  Stanford has 27 billionaire alumni. At any given time, there are ~15,000 students studying at Stanford. Getting the top 10 schools for creating billionaires, it accounts for 206 total. (Though this number also includes Cambridge, and I'm not sure if the 11 billionaire alumni from there are part of the same 500ish US billionaires) Out of the 500ish billionaires in the US, nearly 100 of them have no degree at all. So, these top schools produce about double the amount of billionaires that zero degrees do, and roughly the same number as the rest of the schools combined. This is such a relatively small sample size and there are so many factors in play here that it would be silly to draw any sort of strong conclusion from this, but even going with shoddy science on this and playing fast and loose, we can see that while, yes, you do gain an advantage in the 'become a billionaire' game, it's still a ridiculously insignificant chance, and the population of billionaires without a degree or with a degree from a school not known for producing billionaires is still higher. All of this to say: There ain't no easy path to billionairehood besides being born one, and getting in to Stanford or any other school does not increase your chances of becoming one to a statistically significant number.
FLUX-YOU 11y ago
He's not really talking about mortal survival but social/career success, the consequences of error meaning you don't get to climb as high.
BurningFrog 11y ago
> 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. This is also a big factor in the "impossible beauty standards" syndrome. Being the prettiest girl in the village was tough but humanly possible. Competing against photoshopped versions of the most attractive women on the planet is not.

throwaway13337 11y ago

>Nobody wants to be the parent of the most mentally stable Starbucks Barista This is a very American problem and the cause my (20's) generation's unhappiness. No one is happy with just being a stable person. Being a stable person is a great goal. Most people aren't.

6stringmerc 11y ago
As noted in the article, the observed issues with mental health problems would indicate that pushing toward such an "achievement" extreme carries with it significant baggage.
cryoshon 11y ago
Yep. We have lost half a generation to Starbucks jobs, and people know that they are lost. It's ruining their mental health, and not building any kind of economic health. I don't blame the helicopter parents for this, though.
Thimothy 11y ago
I've have worked in the restoration business in Europe and would absolutely hate doing the same jobs in the US. Here, it is tactically accepted that even people that faces the public can have a shitty day, specially if the pay is not-so-great. You know you are not 100%, your clients know it, your boss knows it, but as long as it doesn't become a regular problem, it's ok. Now, besides having a shitty day, knowing that my pay and lifestyle is in danger if I give the client a less than perfect experience would do nothing good to my mental stability.

anon4 11y ago

That was my thought as well. The parents are making the rational decision that they can't afford their kids to fail, so they take every measure to make sure they get to a good start. A good start in this case meaning getting admitted to Stanford. It might have something to do with low-qualification jobs disappearing, which in turn means you have to have a college degree to be self-sufficient. Once upon a time, you could be on your own when you were as young as 12 (yes, I mean ancient times). Not too long ago you needed only high school education to get a good job, so you're staying with your parents until 16-18. Now you need college.

BrandonM 11y ago
This is only true in a world where being an electrician, plumber, heating and cooling technician, etc. -- all jobs that are in-demand and pay $100K+/year -- have a negative stigma attached to them. Mike Rowe gave a great Ted talk about this: https://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs https://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs

ThomPete 11y ago

Getting your kids into Stanford has nothing to do with helicopter parenting and I think you are missing the bigger point. The failing that you do when you are 6 is very different from the one you do when you are 16 or 26, they all accumulate and you can't redo your childhood. The things you learn when you are 6 and 16 are closer to the competition you are in when you are out of Stanford. Getting in to stanford is nothing compared to making it through life in one piece and with success.

analog31 11y ago
So, what happens to those kids after Stanford, e.g., the ones who get CS degrees but were helicopter-parented? How do they compare to the kids who were equally interested in computers but "allowed to fail," e.g., did not have sparkling resumes and were rejected by Stanford?
- falcolas 11y ago
  In ten years, one is homeless, the other gainfully employed in the tech field? Honestly, we don't know. And while your choice of university matters for the first few jobs out of university, it quickly gets pushed to the back of the bus in favor of experience. Mental stability and the framework to deal with real life, though, matters much longer.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  They are competing against those who got into Stanford and wasn't helicopter parented.
- crpatino 11y ago
  In my experience, going to a prestigious university gives you a head start. In 10 years, it will matter most what you have done after you graduate than where you graduated from. Of course, you still have a network of connections... but again in my experience those do not translate well if you want to do top of the line work. If you eventually want to get an MBA and boss nerds around, ivy league is the way to go... but if you are committed to be a lifelong technologist, is matter little if at all.

munin 11y ago

> Nobody wants to be the parent of the most mentally stable Starbucks Barista here's an important question to ask yourself: if you had to choose, would you rather your children be kind, or smart?

ryanmonroe 11y ago
A kind idiot probably isn't of much use to society
- WalterSear 11y ago
  Whereas unkind people are actively detrimental to society.
- scrollaway 11y ago
  Neither is a smart asshole. How useful to society are those who try to leech money off it in the most efficient ways possible? (I'm talking charlatans and certain branches of banking)
- ckaygusu 11y ago
  Sticking to the context, a smart person with ill intentions may damage the society. For a reference "smartness", assuming being kind or misogynistic is equally likely, the expected worth of a person is still zero, i.e. "isn't of much use to society".
- oh_sigh 11y ago
  Sure they are. They won't be inventing new devices or running successful businesses, but they will probably enrich the lives of anyone in their social circle
avz 11y ago
Both would be best, but if I had to chose I'd go for smart. I've seen smart, but unkind people learn to be kind over time. I doubt a kind halfwit can learn to be smart. That's presumably the case because smartness defines your general ability to learn, change and adapt.
11y ago

crpatino 11y ago

That's just stupid. What good will an Stanford education be for someone who puts a bullet through their heads within one year of being thrown in an hyper competitive corporate environment where there is no safety net to ensure that your every step will eventually lead to success? I specially disliked the part about having the rest of their life to "fail". That's tautological of course, but it takes on a whole new dimension if the "rest" is measured in months instead of decades.

a8da6b0c91d 11y ago

The college admissions system has encouraged the arms race mentality. The SAT has been repeatedly reworked such that test prep works better. I really doubt involvement in the summer activities they apparently value indicates anything about qualification other than parental resources and involvement.

meow_mix 11y ago

So now getting into a top college is more important than being a functional person? Failing when your an adult is more than getting a bruised knee: It's getting stuck in a job you hate, ending up in a bad marriage and becoming sick/obese because you don't know how to take care of yourself. All of those things happen because people don't know what works for them. The reason they don't know that is because other people have told them how to live their entire lives.

scarmig 11y ago
It's not evident that so called "helicopter parenting" and getting into a top college causes any of the above. First and last are anti-correlated with it, and I wouldn't be surprised if the second is too. Obviously some people overdo it, but superior life outcomes and being a functional adult seem to go with heavily involved parenting.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  Heavily involved parenting doesn't mean helicopter parenting and thats something thats very important to understand.
- fsloth 11y ago
  Involved parenting is not about controlling ones child (well, not directly, most of the time), nor protecting them from lifes bad outcomes.

jroseattle 11y ago

> Those parents got those kids into Stanford. Correlation/causation fail. The worst part of parents functioning this way is that they assume they are dictating results.

deleted 11y ago
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lern_too_spel 11y ago
If it didn't work, this former Dean wouldn't be complaining about it. I see her complaints as more sinister. She comes from a privileged background, and she's concerned that people from her social class are getting pushed out of her university by kids whose parents made them work hard.

bduerst 11y ago

Survivor bias. The students accepted to Stanford could be a representative sample of the larger upcoming student population in other universities, with regards to helicopter parenting.

veryes 11y ago

Exactly so. Only a name-brand school will actually deliver career benefits commensurate with the cost of attending. If you can't get in to a Harvard or Stanford, one might do better to learn a technical trade independently than go into debt to attend a UCSD, Washington State, or god forbid a second-tier private college. Second tier schools are not worth the money they're asking in the present environment.

eitally 11y ago
This is such bullshit. Smart, motivated kids will excel no matter where they are, and there's almost* nothing a Tier 1 state school won't be able to provide that will make a substantive difference in their career. Even Tier 2 public schools will be a-ok, and a lot of those kids will receive large scholarships at tier 2 privates... and they'll end up just fine, also. I think I'd separate your statement into two parts: 1) if you can't get into a decent school, consider trades. 2) god forbid anyone pay list price for a private college education. You & I apparently just disagree on the definition of "decent". * In all honesty, the only thing I can think of OTOH is if you want to go directly from undergrad into investment banking or elite law, where the vast majority of new hires still come from Ivy League (plus a few others: Duke, Georgetown, Stanford, ...) pipelines.

jon_dahl 11y ago

What a false dichotomy: Stanford or life as a service worker. Both Google and YC have stopped focusing on college prestige in their hiring/acceptance, because it wasn't a particularly strong indicator of success. I would much rather send healthy kids to a state school or liberal arts college than unhealthy kids to Stanford.

ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
Better to be a Harvard dropout (Zuckerberg) than have a CS degree from Humboldt State.
- ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
  And to combine that with an upper middle class background (like Zuckerberg)
- bennylope 11y ago
  Conflating one spectacular success with all [Harvard] dropouts is a silly comparison.
- kec 11y ago
  Is it? We know of two notably successful Harvard dropouts: Zuckerberg and Gates. While their success most likely hasn't been anywhere near as spectacular, I'm willing to bet you know dozens of successful people who graduated from state & small private universities.
  - ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
    Both also had very upper middle/upper class backgrounds.
- obstacle1 11y ago
  Better to win the megabucks than the $5 scratch-off ticket. What's your point? That being an enormous outlier is sometimes a great thing?

smtddr 11y ago

>>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" What a terribly insulting thing to say. Arrogance at its peak.

benp84 11y ago
I'm pretty sure it was a comment on the state of the education environment, not a personal opinion.

awl130 11y ago

you've entirely missed the point. the article is making a claim on an entire generation of students and using stanford merely as an anecdotal sample

lmkg 11y ago

The article implies (but does not state) that these students struggle once they're in. Getting in to Stanford has only marginal value on its own, the majority of value is in graduating and receiving a degree. If parents are optimizing for success at step N-1 at the cost of success at step N, that is self-defeating.

lemmsjid 11y ago

As a parent, I would a thousand times rather my child be a mentally stable barista than a questionably stable Stanford student. In fact, having recently interacted with the Standard undergraduate body, I feel quite sorry for most of them because it's such a terrible pressure cooker stress environment. My primary goal for my child is for her to be a whole person. If she can do that at Stanford, fine. If she can do that at Starbucks, fine. Instead of helicoptering her into an Ivy League depression, I'm focusing on making sure we're financially stable enough to be a cushion for the inevitable times when she fails while trying to find her own way in life. I say this from experience, coming from a family where ivy league tier educations are normal--and so is depression.

lifeisstillgood 11y ago
Congratulations - and any tips on staying out the way, gratefully received :-(
arcanus 11y ago
> ivy league tier educations are normal--and so is depression Similar background and I have always suspected they are correlated.
dawson 11y ago
There are plenty of depressed baristas too.
- fsloth 11y ago
  Specific occupation is not the point - rather what the child thinks what his/her family thinks of her career choices and that this does not drive them into places they would not naturally go to. I.e. that their important life choices are not made because of extrinsic but of intrinsic motivations.

thewarrior 11y ago

I'm always wary of upvoting a comment like this , but being from India and experiencing the difference getting into a good college makes , he has a point. Ofcourse it's not a stark choice between getting into a Stanford and serving coffee at Starbucks but still . And I can't digest the snobbery in saying that a Starbucks worker is devoid of any dignity . But the comment still somehow resonates with me. Perhaps it's a reflection of my own inferiority complex of not being able to study at an elite institution. It's a little hard to get over such feelings.

kangman 11y ago
You should check out this podcast about impostor syndrome and cultural conflicts that occur when two opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum meet. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/550/three-miles http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/550/t...
plonh 11y ago
It isn't about dignity of the job. It is about health insurance and living wages.

ryandrake 11y ago

Exactly. Our society is quickly bifurcating into haves and have-nots, and the middle class is disappearing. If the trend continues, by the time my daughter is college-aged, middle class lifestyles will be all but gone. Her only shot at not living in poverty will be an education, although already we're seeing a good education does not guarantee anything. If it takes "helicoptering" to help get her into $PRESTIGIOUS_SCHOOL you bet your ass I'll be firing up the rotors.

obstacle1 11y ago

>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" Surely you are joking. "Do everything for them during THE developmental phase of their life, then throw them to the wolves once your have produced a helpless little Stanford graduate" is your vision of good parenting? The whole of life before the age of 21 is irrelevant to you because it is just a means to getting into Stanford? Have you thought about the implications of your viewpoint? A parent's relationship with a child is determined by the place where the child works? Words fail.

r0naa 11y ago

I am so grateful to my parents for putting so much trust in me while I was seemingly going out of control during my teenage years. Seriously, it took me years but I now realize how much self-control and discipline it took them to stick to their philosophy and let me explore things on my own. I come from a very middle class background, but I had the chance to experience a lot of things. Some I regret, some I don't. But the important is that I know how it feels, and I know what I don't to be. That's also the very way I found my calling in Computer science, and what drives in life. They have trust me, when empirical evidence was screaming them not to. That's, I believe, the most beautiful proof of love they have ever gave me. When my turns come, I hope I will be as good as a parent, as they were to me.

jschwartzi 11y ago
My parents were the same way, but I'm glad they forced me to go to college, at least. At the time it felt like a waste of time, and I had to take a job clerking in a warehouse when I got out because there were no jobs, but I was lucky to have met the person who got me that job, because within four years I was an engineer. I couldn't have done that without an education and a ton of luck.

smithkl42 11y ago

"Nobody wants to be the parent of the most mentally stable Starbucks Barista." - I believe you speak correctly for much of the population. But not for me. I would much rather have my three children work at Starbucks (or in construction, or as plumbers, or whatever) and be good human beings - full of love, justice and mercy, faithful to their families and loyal to their friends - than get into any Ivy League and fail in any of those much more important areas. It's not even close.

kelukelugames 11y ago
It's much easier to be full of love, justice and mercy when people don't have to worry about money. Studies show a low threshold for that dollar amount but that number is multiple times higher for US major cities.
- smithkl42 11y ago
  Perhaps. Certainly it's easier to be conventionally happy with enough money. And conversely, I think that folks who have a strong moral foundation find it a lot easier to make enough money. The arrow of causation quite likely runs both ways. But I know that the strongest sense of community and loyalty that I've seen are from working-class folks who may not have much money but who happen to have a strong underlying moral foundation.

snowwrestler 11y ago

I do agree that some parents feel that way, but they're wrong. A graduate of Stanford (or Harvard, etc.) can still fail, and fail hard. A job environment is far less forgiving than even "hard" schools like Stanford. A top-school diploma gets a kid in the door, but then it's up to them. A boss is not going to give a bad employee a break because their mom dropped by. At the same time, the range of available jobs is huge. The idea that it's "Stanford or Starbucks" is not reality.

GetofMyLawn 11y ago

This is so true. However, I don't think it should start after you have children. When I decided to settle down and have children, I only dated very intelligent women based on their profession and if they were in MENSA. At the time when we decided to have children, we took our best eggs and sperm to produce the best genetically intelligent children we could. So, for these "vintage" parents who are just getting their kids into Stanford, I applaud them. But because it's getting more and more competitive, I pity parents who don't start their helicoptering before the child before it is in the womb!

peoplelovelines 11y ago
You know what's sad? I can't tell if sarcastic. I could easily see an elitist power couple doing this :(

briandear 11y ago

Assuming "getting into Stanford" is the gold standard of parenting success. Plenty of billionaires who didn't even go to college. I refuse to make the admissions committee of Stanford be the judge of my parenting. By the plenty of graduates from 'good' schools working as baristas. Barista status has zero to do with your school accomplishment but with intrinsic traits such as motivation, ambition and creativity.

gdubs 11y ago

What makes you think one can make up for freedom lost during childhood? Our brains become rather rigid as we get older. One axiom for success is that it requires a thousand failures. Learning how to cope with failure is arguably the most important thing you can teach a child. And personally, I'd be proud to be the parent of the world's most mentally stable barista because life is about more than status.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Honestly? > What makes you think one can make up for freedom lost during childhood? Our brains become rather rigid as we get older. If this was true in a practical sense, we'd have the government raising up kids, because parents pose too much a risk of producing a suboptimal generation. > And personally, I'd be proud to be the parent of the world's most mentally stable barista because life is about more than status. That's what those of us who didn't get to the top spots like to tell ourselves so that we may sleep better at night. Life may not be about status and money, but having the two makes it an order of magnitude better. Trying to tell yourself something else is denial, really. Don't get me wrong - I definitely don't encourage turning kids into zombies and making them jump arbitrary stupid hoops that one needs to get to a top-tier university or otherwise gain status. But that's the world we live in - rewarding bullshit instead of actual value. There is no point in pretending otherwise, and seeing things for what they are is (almost) always helpful.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

cthalupa 11y ago

>You know what. Those parents got those kids into Stanford. Obviously helicopter parenting is working for them. Is getting kids into Stanford the end goal? If it is, that's pretty short sighted. Congratulations! You got into Stanford. Now what? Going to a top tier school is not the end. You don't win the moment you get accepted. College is the start of your adult life (or usually - based on this article perhaps some of the students are still in the childhood phase...), and where huge amounts of your actions and decisions start to have real and lasting consequences. > 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" I would take a well adjust, mentally stable, happy kid working a non-prestigious job than one that is unstable, depressed, etc. with a good one. Because, you know what? When you fail to raise an adult, even if they get to Stanford, a lot of them are not going to be good at jobs that require responsibility and personal judgment. This sort of short sighted idea that getting a kid to a good school is winning and anything less means you're relegated to baristahood is ridiculous. Even ignoring the fact that a college degree is not a requirement for success in life, there are multitudes of schools that will give you the proper education needed to succeed in a field that does require college without the insane demands of Stanford, et al.

fsloth 11y ago

"Today's environment is extremely competitive and the margin for error is lower." The number of poor in the world is steadily declining. To fuck up ones life in a western country basically requires a mental or health problem. I am left wondering what one is competing about.

Grae 11y ago

>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" What a terribly unfortunate conception of "failure" and "success" this mindset represents. One that is all to common, but certainly not the only option.