The Coming Crash of the "Helicopter Parents"

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Published on Jan 15, 2010 in Issue 081 - January 2010, Demography

Th<strong>e Coming Crash</strong> of th<strong>e</strong> "<strong>Helicopter Parents</strong>"

Last November, an elderly couple in the small Nova Scotia town of Waterside engaged in a dangerous, potentially criminal behavior. Their "offense" was this: When they drove past a child who was riding a bicycle, they extended their hands and waved hello.

An over-zealous parent immediately reported them to the authorities, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested them on suspicion that they had tried to abduct the child. The couple, both in their 70s, were questioned for more than two hours before being released.

While this is an extreme case of overprotective parenting, it's becoming increasingly common for parents to try to safeguard their children from every type of harm, both real and imagined. Time magazine, CBS News, Oprah, CNN, and numerous others have recently weighed in on the phenomenon that's been dubbed "helicopter parenting" — meaning parents who hover over their children and live in fear of every step they take.

Chris Meno, a psychologist at Indiana University, has studied the problem and counsels students who have become anxious or depressed as a result of overprotective parents.1 She said that parents who protect their children too much create people who lack confidence and are unable to achieve things on their own. Children need to struggle in order to become confident in their own abilities. They need to make mistakes and occasionally fail in order to learn.

Or as David Elkind, a child psychologist and professor at Tufts University, put it, "Kids need to feel badly sometimes. We learn through experience and we learn through bad <... To read the full article, you must be a Trends Magazine Subscriber. To learn more, click here

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