Helicopter parenting aka overparenting has been reportedly deemed as a precarious strategy when it comes to child raising. Based on several researches, helicopter parenting is the culprit for hampering the development of autonomy in kids for years.
What Is Helicopter Parenting?
Helicopter parenting is defined as a parenting style practiced by parents who hover over their children even into and through their college years. This type of parenting method is highly criticized for creating very protected, unprepared young adults who return back home, Phys.org notes.
Typed Of Helicopter Parenting
Helicopter parenting can be divided in different categories. These include "pink helicopters," the "paramedics" and the "bystanders," The Atlantic reveals.
The bystanders refer to the less actively involved parents while paramedics play an active but more hands-off role in their children's lives. Pink helicopters, on the other hand, are parents who took a less academically rigorous consideration.
Why Helicopter Parenting Needs To End
Sierra Rayne of American Thinker has called for helicopter parenting and government "child services" departments' despotism to end. In Rayne's Apr. 29 article, she wrote both were causing more harm than good, when it comes to raising children.
Studies have also shown that helicopter parenting has been worsening a child's anxiety and school performance in the K-12 years. According to Huffington Post, severe cases of overparenting result to anxious, depressed, dependent and emotionally inhibited children.
"If we continue to overparent our kids, we are in danger of raising further generations of adolescents that are missing three key virtues of character: self-reliance, self-confidence, and resilience," psychiatrist and author Abilash Gopal wrote.
Helicopter Parenting Crisis
By nature, parents are overprotective and over directive. However, authors Julie Lythcott-Haims and Jessica Lahey said helicopter parents should stop looking at their children for validation or as a furtherance of their own ego, NPR learns.
To solve the helicopter parenting crisis, authors urged schools and parents to stop blaming each other. Instead, both need to work together to show kids the value of learning.
New Book On Helicopter Parenting
Despite the negative effects of helicopter parenting to a child, University of Chicago Press-UC Merced Professor Laura Hamilton detailed the advantages and disadvantages of overparenting. In her new book, "Parenting to a Degree: How Family Matters for College Women's Success," Hamilton said helicopter parenting is a way for many overbearing parents to monitor their kids' future in higher education.
"In many ways, these parents are responding to very logical economic and social pressures," Hamilton said, as per UC Merced University News. "It's very expensive to send a child to college-way more than it used to be-and there's no guarantee that your child will be economically secure even if they graduate. Parents heavily monitor their kids because the cost of not doing so is potentially so high."
Aside from helicopter parenting, Hamilton also tackled the different parenting styles and gender issues. Hamilton also found that several well-off parents perceive college as a way for their daughters to build and develop social networks and skills to find successful husbands.
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