Posted by Melia Dicker on Nov 21, 2009 - 02:30 PM
This in-depth story gets to the bottom of helicopter parenting, where parents hover over their children and "bubble wrap" them to avoid harm and any suffering from happening to them. It's no wonder that when parents make decisions and run interference for their children, they grow up anxious, entitled, and helpless. Fortunately, there's a growing movement for "free-range kids" that have the kind of independence enjoyed by the Baby Boomer generation. Parents, let your children get bored, play, push their limits, and learn to be self-reliant in the process -- and don't give in to peer pressure to overparent. Check out the Free Range kids blog, mentioned in the article.Overparenting had been around long before Douglas MacArthur’s mom Pinky moved with him to West Point in 1899 and took an apartment near the campus, supposedly so she could watch him with a telescope to be sure he was studying. But in the 1990s something dramatic happened, and the needle went way past the red line. From peace and prosperity, there arose fear and anxiety; crime went down, yet parents stopped letting kids out of their sight; the percentage of kids walking or biking to school dropped from 41% in 1969 to 13% in 2001. Death by injury has dropped more than 50% since 1980, yet parents lobbied to take the jungle gyms out of playgrounds, and strollers suddenly needed the warning label “Remove Child Before Folding.” Among 6-to-8-year-olds, free playtime dropped 25% from 1981 to ‘97, and homework more than doubled. Bookstores offered Brain Foods for Kids: Over 100 Recipes to Boost Your Child’s Intelligence. The state of Georgia sent every newborn home with the CD Build Your Baby’s Brain Through the Power of Music, after researchers claimed to have discovered that listening to Mozart could temporarily help raise IQ scores by as many as 9 points. By the time the frenzy had reached its peak, colleges were installing “Hi, Mom!” webcams in common areas, and employers like Ernst & Young were creating “parent packs” for recruits to give Mom and Dad, since they were involved in negotiating salary and benefits.
Tags for this entry:
Sara Schmidt
Dec 21, 2009 - 03:39 AM
This article is crazy! I can’t believe how far these parents (and other people in charge of kids) have gone. And I thought I was bad with my Germ-X pump “available” in the house!
You know, my mom freaks out when we let our daughter eat after playing with sticks, play in the floor, that sort of thing. She also insisted on mopping the floor every day when I was a baby to keep it clean. My husband’s family never cleaned anything; we joke that he was raised in “raw sewage.” Today, he rarely gets sick—once a year, tops, usually less—and I am sick every couple of months at the least! That’s just one example, but it is food for thought.