——->

There’s been lots of talk and media coverage over the last few years about helicopter parenting.

That was then.

Over the last few years parents have raised the bar — or perhaps I should say lowered it.

They have become snowplows, which is even worse.

How bad is it?

At Stanford, said Julie Lythcott-Haims, the former dean of freshmen, she saw students rely on their parents to set up play dates with people in their dorm or complain to their child’s employers when an internship didn’t lead to a job. (…) Snowplow parents have it backward, Ms. Lythcott-Haims said: “The point is to prepare the kid for the road, instead of preparing the road for the kid.”

That goes hand-in-hand with my philosophy about coping vs. control.

Nor does end when they leave school.

In a new poll by The New York Times and Morning Consult of a nationally representative group of parents of children ages 18 to 28, three-quarters had made appointments for their adult children, like for doctor visits or haircuts, and the same share had reminded them of deadlines for school. Eleven percent said they would contact their child’s employer if their child had an issue.

Parents contacting managers isn’t new, I wrote about it way back in 2010.

Do you recall how the Boomers complained and blamed their parents generation for the world they were inheriting?

The world they are leaving their kids is in far worse shape, not to mention that they prevented those same kids from gaining the skills they need to deal with it.

Image credit: Les Chatfield and Stewart Kaye

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 28th, 2019 at 10:45 am and is filed under Culture, Personal Growth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Tags: adult, Boomers, parenting, parents
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