Baby Boomer children, Gen X and Gen Y, had helicopter parents and now these boomer offspring are overparenting their children.
It used to be known as "spoiling." Now, it is called "overparenting"--or"helicopter parenting"--or "hothouse parenting"--or "death-grip parenting." The term has changed because the pattern has changed. It still includes spoiling--no rules, many toys--but other, complicating factors have been added.
One is anxiety. Another new element is achievement pressure. The heck with the child's feelings. He has a nursery-school interview tomorrow. Will he be accepted? If not, how will he ever get into a good college?
Overparenting is the subject of a number of recent books that deplore it in the strongest possible terms.
There is also the environmental-hazards problem. Hovering parents, see lethal bacilli on every surface. To thwart them in the supermarket, you can buy a Buggy Bagg, a protective pad that you insert into the front of the grocery cart before you put the child in. According to Buggy Bagg's literature, this will guard against "viruses, bacteria, and bodily fluids" left on the cart. In a survey, a third of parents reported that they sent their offspring to school with antibacterial hand gels. Who trusts soap?
Once the child goes to nursery school, the academic pressure begins. Gone are the finger paints. Even preschools have replaced playtime with reading and math-readiness training. As the child progresses, the academic load becomes heavier, and his ability to carry it is now regularly measured by standardized tests, as mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Because the test results are rendered in numbers--and can thus be compared with the norm, the ideal and the neighbor's kid--ambitious parents may begin hiring tutors.
If tutoring doesn't do the trick, enterprising parents can argue with the school that their children, because of special needs, should be not held to a time limit in taking standardized tests.
Overparented children typically face not just a heavy academic schedule but also a strenuous program of extracurricular activities. After-school activities are thought to impress college admissions officers. When summer comes, the child is often sent to a special-skills camp.
Admissions officers, it is said, don't know what to make of application forms these days--many of them have so clearly been filled out by someone other than the applicant. When the student goes off to college, overparenting need not stop. Many mothers and fathers, or their office assistants, edit their children's term papers by email. They also give them cell phones equipped with G.P.S. monitors, in order to track their movements.
Students provided with such benefits may study harder and, upon graduation, land a fancy job. On the other hand, they may join the ranks of the "boomerang children," who move straight back home. A recent survey found that fifty-five percent of American men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four, and fourteen percent between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four, live with their parents.
Source: THE NEW YORKER, November 17, 2008