'Helicopter parents' have a hard time cutting apron strings
As a recruiter at a health-care company, Beth Minter has little tolerance for job candidates with so-called helicopter parents. As a mom, however, she used to hover with the best of them.
For years, Minter, a staffing director at Emdeon, was involved in all her son's major decisions. She helped him choose summer camps, explore his extracurricular activities and select all his academic classes. Then he went off to college at the University of the South in Sewanee where, without mom's input, Jeb Bryan created his own class schedule.
"I was just appalled," she said. "I thought, 'How could you have made this decision without me?' I was hurt. He said, 'You are being a helicopter parent. You raised me well, and you just have to let that go.' I didn't think we were at that point, but he made it clear we were."
For many parents and their young adult children, the demarcation is not so clear.
"Helicopter parent" is a 21st-century term for adults who are deeply involved in their children's experiences and problems. In the late '90s, these parents started landing their choppers on soccer sidelines and in teachers' offices, arguing for more playing time or against their child's latest chemistry grade.
Now their dear children are all grown up. The thing is, many of them still rely on their parents' input and approval as much as ever, from simple decisions like which summer classes to take to more involved interactions, including having a parent set up job interviews for them.
Outside reactions to these dependent relationships vary. Psychologists suggest that children of helicopter parents will lack maturity, self-reliance and self-esteem. Universities and colleges are reinventing orientation programs to address hyper-involved parents. And hiring professionals find themselves somewhere between discouragement and acceptance.
The bottom line, said Kathy Hoover-Dempsey, an associate professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University, is that these kids need to be allowed to break away.
"It doesn't work to run somebody else's life in this culture," she said.
