Having involved parents may seem like a positive, but in this case, you can definitely have too much of a good thing.
‘Helicopter parents’ are identified by their tendency to ‘hover’ over their children like helicopters, bombarding them with constant supervision, monitoring and interfering in both their personal and academic lives.
According to “Ivory Tower Blues: A University System in Crisis” by James Cote and Anton L. Allahar, this can include an overactive and inappropriate level of involvement in their child’s academic endeavours, pre-emptive attempts to problem solve for their child instead of letting the child do it for themselves and an overzealous need for constant communication.
If the analogy claims that over-protective parents are helicopters, technology could arguably be seen as the helicopter’s machine gun—perfect for the long distance attack and especially useful among parents of university students.
Advances in computer and cell phone technology provide today’s parents with unparalleled resources to monitor and plan their child’s life, as well as providing them with a constant means of communication.
All of this has become a technological umbilical cord, one that can stunt rather than promote growth.
Kevin Weymouth, Sci ’12, said he can relate to technology’s ability to support the actions of his own helicopter parents.
“They are always emailing me, asking about my marks and courses or about my spending habits,” Weymouth said. “They’ve always been like this. … I feel smothered. I’ve always considered myself a pretty model student, but I’ve never been able to venture off on my own the way I feel I should be at this point in my life.”
Weymouth said one time his parents even phoned one of his professors to check up on his test scores and inquire about his attendance.
“It was pretty embarrassing.”
He said he has advice for other students in his position.
“Tell your parents they have to trust that you will go out there and be the best you can be and that they have given you the tools you need to do so by yourself.”
In other words, spread your wings and fly solo, fellow students. It’s time.
Professor Neil Montgomery, a psychologist from Keene State College, has done a recent study on the ‘helicopter parenting’ phenomenon.
He questioned 300 freshmen about whether they could relate to scenarios such as “My parents have contacted a school official on my behalf to solve problems for me,” “On my college move-in day, my parents stayed the night in town to make sure I was adjusted” and “If two days go by without contact my parents would contact me.”
Montgomery said about 10 per cent of students indicated they could relate to helicopter parenting traits like this, adding that about five per cent of the males sampled and 13 per cent of the females could classify themselves as children of helicopter parents.
He said some universities have taken steps to placate this type of parent.
“Colleges have responded in a number of ways and some not at all. Parent orientations are now common at some institutions—there are even administrative officers to work with parents,” he said, adding that not all institutions are so accommodating.
“Admissions offices have now become concerned with this issue, as the coping skills of over-parented students are not good,” he said.“Most professors I know refuse to talk to parents. ‘It is none of your business— my students are adults’ is the phrase of choice.”
Nonetheless, helicopter parenting is arguably pretty tame in comparison to the much more aggressive and ominously named ‘Blackhawk’ parenting.
These parents, hovering and buzzing menacingly above their children, are classified as helicopter parents who engage in heavily interfering and aggressive behaviors on behalf of their children, Montgomery said.
“The Blackhawk parent is a term for very aggressive parents swooping in, guns blazing, to fight their child’s battles.” He said this behaviour is seen as toxic because Blackhawk parents not only interfere with their child’s life but they also instil life lessons in the process.
“For example,” he said, “if the parents do their child’s schoolwork they are modeling that cheating and plagiarism is okay.” Rob Beamish, a professor from the department of sociology at Queen’s, said he has also noticed the helicopter parent phenomenon.
“As a course instructor, despite the large number of students I instruct each year (some 700 or so), I have little contact with helicopter parents,” Beamish said, adding that he does end up dealing with concerns students have as a result from their parents’ hovering.
“The most significant one is students who are unsure of their own ability to correctly interpret what is expected of them,” he said. “Many students want assurance from an older adult that their understanding is ‘correct,’ rather than relying on their own very well-developed skills.
“If I deal with parents at all, it is over concerns that their children might not have all of the correct information or have understood something correctly.”
These parents, Beamish said, can usually be found in the baby boomer generation, who were born during the long period of economic expansion in the post-war period.
“Their parents’ standard of living and their own increased fairly visibly during the 1950s, 1960s and the early 1970s—opportunities for high education also expanded,” he said.
“For the parents of today’s students, the opportunity to go to university was still viewed very much as something one gained through performance,” he said, adding that this opportunity was viewed more as a privilege rather than a right.
This mindset continued as they raised their own children, as they wanted this same opportunities for them, he said.
“So the [parents] became heavily involved in offering them the necessary supports, stimulation, opportunities, etc. that would help their children succeed later in life.”
Doesn’t sound so bad, right? That is, until you factor in the fact that youth’s independence and self-confidence are both susceptible to assault from swooping helicopter parents, Beamish said.
“The unintended consequence is that parents have been far more involved in their children’s lives,” he said, and while that has many positive aspects, it also means that this over involvement extends way beyond what many children need, such as when they enter high school and post-secondary institutions.
“Many of today’s students have continued to look to their involved parents for assurance rather than making more of a break and trusting their own knowledge, understanding and instincts.”
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