In the comments of his recent post about Millennials, blogger John Woodworth asked me a question: Do I think Millennials will "helicopter parent" the same way that their parents did/do? Because it's rather long-winded, the response gets its own post.
In short, no. I don't believe Millennials will hover over their children to the same degree that their parents did – because it's not natural.
The parenting of Millennial children is a direct result of the information landscape of their youth. When most Millennials were born/preparing to be born, the Internet was not the mainstream source of information. Television was. And magazines, newspapers, and radio.
Not that long ago, publishers had complete reign over the information scene. They decided what was good for the masses and what wasn't. They called the shots – whether a self-help book made it on Oprah or a diet was featured on the Today Show or a parenting book was reviewed in The New York Times, etc.
If publishers decided something should be a big deal, it was. When parenting fads took hold, they took hold en masse. It only took one publisher to say, "Hey, every kid is special. Everybody should win!" Once that ball got rolling, parents didn't stand a chance. Their fate was decided. They were destined to raise Very Special winner-geniuses. Straight As for everyone!
While publishers still have a considerable amount of power – we still watch TV and listen to the radio and read newspapers – thanks to the Internet, the landscape is dramatically changing. We're no longer obligated to follow to publishers' curated streams. (Clay Shirky discusses this at length in Cognitive Surplus, which I highly recommend.)
We have a wealth of information at our fingertips anytime, anywhere. This means we're responsible for choosing what we want to consume and forging paths through information by following our own instincts.
New parents are no longer bombarded from all sides with "[Prescribed Method of the Year] is the Right Way" messages. They're hit from a thousand directions by a multitude of conflicting sources, each promoting a different Right Way. Since there's no possible way they can follow all the advice – breastfeed for 1 year, breastfeed for 3 months, breastfeed for 6 months – they have to choose a method that feels natural to them.
We all do this, almost on a daily basis. Just last night I turned to Google for help ridding my kitchen of fruit flies. Although I only clicked the first result, I had five different trapping options and an excess of prevention advice. Based on that information, I had to choose an option that sounded most reasonable to me. (I actually chose three. None of them are working yet.)
Had it been my mother at my age, she would have picked up the phone and called her mother, who would have given her one answer – whatever she'd always done – with maybe a little extra chiding about not keeping rotting bananas on the counter. (I totally don't.) (They're in the microwave now.)
Gone are the days of one right answer. So must die the days of parenting fads.
Since our primary information sources are no longer touting one exact right way to do anything, parents will get back to doing what feels natural. God willing, that will mean they stop raising Special little ego monsters who need Mommy and Daddy to negotiate their salaries.
Then again, maybe information inundation will terrify Millennial parents and cause them to be even more protective of their children. Let's hope not.
As a final thought, do you think this new information landscape might be contributing to Millennials' clinging to their parents? In addition to a coddled childhood, freshly minted adult Millennials may just be overwhelmed by the amount of information they have to sort through in order to figure out what to do. If Mommy and Daddy are willing to step in to help, why not let them?
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2 comments:
I hope you're right, Meghan. helicopter parents can really cripple the self-esteem of kids. Some kids really ought to figure things out for themselves. Others learn by making painful mistakes.
I've taken two boys through childhood into adulthood. I can tell you that over-protective parents are really micro -managers. I've seen it myself. Such parents hate the idea of kids having free time, owning their own consequences and independent thought. You can tell these parents a mile away: their kids are into three sports at age five; they request extra time during teacher conferences; and they manage the entire college application ordeal themselves.
It's a little more complicated than information access, but I agree that parents should rely more on common sense and parental intuition.
A great site on this topic: Free Range Kids. A marvelous blogger points out 'duh' moments in parental, municipal and school stupidity. How coddling weakens kids. http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/
By the way, we use a 1/4 cup red wine with a drop of dishwashing soap in a jar to catch fruit flies. Punch a holes in the lid so the flies make their way to the wine.
John, I agree that it's more complicated than information access, but we are talking about parenting behaviors that defined a generation. If we want to have a conversation about generations, we have to look at factors that made trends spread. And the kind of parenting that produced Millennials was almost certainly a trend propagated by the information landscape. If not, why would it have happened to this generation specifically and none before it?
Our (Millennials') youth was unique in that we were raised during a period when information was spreading quicker than it ever had (24-hour news cycles, hundreds of cable channels, etc.) without constant dialogue and push-back we have today (bloggers, comments on news stories, etc.).
Your view of helicopter parents is that of an outsider. The picture you paint sounds more like a Tiger Mother than what I'd venture most Millennials have experienced. I grew up in Maple Grove, a Stereotypical Millennial incubator. At the time, it was a blossoming suburb, and many of the families were young parents, comparing notes with other young parents. Schools were new, attracting the most modern-minded teachers who wanted to start something great with their innovative teaching/administering methods. Trophies and A grades were handed out like candy. Praise was constant. Every kid was special and reminded daily. And yep, my parents helped me with my homework and were encouraged to do so. Most of the other parents did, too.
Based on what I've read about Millennials, that experience is nowhere near unique. Common, even.
Were all of these people insane? Were they just dumb? No. They were just trying to live up to modern ideas – ideas that spread thanks to the very unique information environment of the time.
I'm stressing this so much because I don't think it's fair or healthy to send such parents or their offspring down a shame spiral for something that happened to an entire generation. If it was a significant enough trend that hundreds–thousands–of articles are being written about it, there have to be reasons. Instead of pointing fingers and criticizing what our parents and schools did wrong, I'd like for us to understand how they came under that influence. The sooner we can acknowledge there were environmental factors at play, the sooner we can all forgive each other and move on.
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