Each new generation of parents wants to be better parents than their own, showing more support, giving their children more opportunities, and keeping them from making the same mistakes that they did. The result is an increase of over-parenting or helicopter parenting that is crippling their children physically and emotionally throughout their lives, and hurting their chances of developing healthy and successful lives. 

From infancy to early childhood development, fearing for their child’s health and safety, parents tend to “bubble-wrap their children”. They wrap them in layers of over sanitization and strict environmental boundaries that harm the foundation of their health and social skills. These restrictions seem to be harmless; Cleanliness and avoiding harmful pathogens are recommended by doctors and pediatricians. Misconceptions that every germ and bacteria is harmful to your health paired with chemicals and antibacterial products make it easy for parents to disinfect every surface they see as “dirty”. If everything children touch is disinfected they will never have the ability to build antibodies, and well increase their chances of obtaining chronic illnesses like asthma. “Priming and seeding of the micro biome is absolutely critical”, a study conducted in 2016 compared the health of Amish children, who grew up on small single family farms, who were raised in an environment described as “ rich in microbes”, and the genetically similar Hutterite children, raised on industrial farms. The results showed that the Amish children had much lower rates of developing asthma despite their exposure to sawdust and other airborne pathogens. These fears are very rational, wanting to keep your children from contracting deadly diseases and illness is a healthy concern. However; it is one thing to keep your child away from “Impure water and unpasteurized milk [which] has played a major role in reducing infant mortality” (Klass 2017) , but building a “built environment” (Klass 2017) that limits early exposure of natural bacteria and pathogens as well as exposure to animals and dirt is taking a simple concept and blowing it into a unhealthy proportion. Our bodies are genetically evolved to deal with harmful pathogens in our environment, but our adaptive immunity requires exposure to pathogens in order to learn how to make antibodies. So that when that specific pathogen enters our bodies, we have means of fighting it off. Your adaptive immune system relies on this gathering of information from your surroundings to do its job, “It not only protects against potentially lethal infections but also controls a number of persisting infections” (Simon 2015). If you deny the initial exposure, especially in children when their immune systems are stockpiling information, they will be more susceptible to harmful illnesses and infections then their counter parts who where given more environmental free reign.

Infants and young children begin learning to fend for themselves at very young ages, if you give them the room to learn. Not only is their bodies learning how to defend themselves from pathogens, but they are also maturing by learning to rely less and less on their parents for constant comfort. There has been many debates on if it is beneficial to let your child cry themselves to sleep, or come every time they begin to cry. Studies recently done in Australia put these different ideologies to the test by comparing child sleep patterns, over time, of those who let their children cry themselves to sleep and those that don’t. What they found is that not only do the children who were left to cry fall asleep 12-15 min faster, but “the babies did not show signs of being more attached to their parents, nor did their parents report more behavioral problems” (Storrs 2016). Showing that children are capable of adapting and self improvement even in early development, only if the parents keep from jumping to their rescue every time they experience discomfort. This ideology can be applied to the way parents deal with different situations throughout their children’s lives. Allowing them to work through the difficulties, showing tough love, is sometimes the best way for them to learn and grow most efficiently. For a parent it can be hard watching your child struggle, even when it is what is best for them. But once the initial shock has passed, your child will emerge a stronger and more capable individual then they were before.

As a product of building walls around our children, confining them to a house and the attached yard, we restrict their opportunities for “free play in their neighborhoods and parks”(Malone 2007). In past generations, children cut their teeth of independency and exploration on the backs of bicycles, ridding to and from school, across suburbs and to and from friends houses. These situations increase a child’s ability to problem solve, interact with their their surroundings and develop social behaviors through experience and mistakes. “The irony is that without these skills their children are likely to be at greater risk of falling victim to the dangers that these parents strive to protect their children from” (Malone 2007). We have gone from telling our children “be home before the street lights come on” to “stay where I can see you”. Parents are all too aware of the dangers that plague our societies, the stranger danger and situations their children could be exposed to if they don’t track them every second. We want to protect their innocence and fill their free time with structure and ridged boundaries to keep them contained and on the path of what is now being defined as a society of “Turbo children”. This means speeding up the pace of a child’s life by creating such strict constructs too early in order to keep them away from the harmful experiences they may have if we gave them the “traditional childhood” their parents had. But if these mistakes built the generation before, then why deny the next generation the ability to learn these same lessons? There are many appropriate things to fear in the world for children but cutting off all exposure to their environment and experiences outside of constant watch will not help them develop to their full potential. Children need to be hygienic, and cared for, but walling them into a world of constant structure and rigid boundaries will only produce a generation of underdeveloped children lacking in the basic social building blocks of life.

 

Continuing into their high school and college carriers, the way that children experience school is largely connected to how competitive the world is today and what it means to get ahead. Children are beginning to feel the weight of academic competition earlier with each generation, and with each increase of intensity, children are losing less and less of their care free childhoods to society’s expectations and meeting their parents' expectations. Schools are offering Middle school students high school classes and college courses to high school students further propelling children towards their college careers. By the time they reach university they have enough credit to skip the first year! The mixing of course levels comes with the pressure to jumpstart their maturity and force them to adapt to heavy course loads. Along with the increasing pressure of their course loads, the weight of SAT’s and ACT’s on college acceptance and scholarships add financial burdens as well as the corresponding academic burden’s in early high school. These pressures increase the chances of social anxiety and mental illness throughout their academic careers decreasing their quality of life and emotional development. “We spend a lot of time being concerned that parents are not involved enough in their children’s lives” (Lythcott-Haims 2013) but in this concern we don’t know where to stop. It’s no longer the social norm for parents to want their children to be healthy and do well in school; they now require them to fit within a certain level of academic success, have a certain amount of extracurricular activities, community service, and win a set amount of awards to put them ahead of all the other children trying to do the same thing. What valuable life lessons and emotional development are parents sacrificing to place these “Check list” activities over their true development and emotional well being. The pressure of over-parenting creates a side effect that children are no longer doing these activities for themselves because they are passionate about them but because they know that this is what it takes to please their parents. children begin to associate achievement not with what they earn but with how proud their parents are of their status.

Like there are different kinds of people, there are different kinds of parents, according to the FWU Journal of Social Science, helicopter parents are considered to be a kind called authoritarian. Authoritarian parents have complete domination with strict guidelines and strict discipline, these parents are usually over critical and demanding. “Parenting style that focuses on parental control and protection is often associated with high levels of trait anxiety and depression” (Wood et al.,,2003) a social study of students ranging from 17- 25 years old directly connects this anxiety and depression towards life and their academic careers to their parents parenting style, suggesting that students that had social and non-social anxiety “ largely perceived their parenting style as overprotective and rejecting” (Parvez 2013). Students that are going through the most emotional and transitional point of their lives are distorted by the amount of love and support that their parents provide during this time of influence. Over-protective parenting “makes children a little burned out and brittle” (Lythcott-Haims 2013) creating a generation that is less and less sure about who they are now and who they want to be outside of their parents expectations. “there is mounting evidence that developmentally inappropriate levels of involvement associated with helicopter parenting is associated with decreased well-being” (Schiffrin 2017). Many of the Authoritative parents are unaware of the harm they are causing their children and have little empathy for their struggles. Stereotypically, Asian parents are classified under this category. Referred to as “Tiger parents”, they have a very distant emotional attachment to their children as more culturally common. Asian children and children of other immigrant families tend to feel these pressures more due to their parents immigrant mindset and having a stronger cultural weight of providing better then they had themselves (Youtube 2010).  

Somewhere along the line parents have directly intertwined their own success with the success of their children. Many parents see their children as weights of comparison, weighing their children accomplishments with their friends children. Deep down the roots of helicopter parents could be self driven, not just wanting what is best for their children but also what will improve their own social standing. Throughout history, children have been burdened with upholding their family name and brining good standing by their ability to provide and marry well. We have not come far from this primitive ideology, but in order to change this cycle we must first remove the weight of the families honor off of our children shoulders. Our love should not be chained to their ability achieve at every level, and if you truly love your children you should not want to give them this burden.

Over-protective parents allow their children a small window of what they deem successful and anything out side of that window will not be accepted or successful enough. Parents do what they do out of love and caring about their children’s future, they want them to achieve all the potential that they know they are capable of. They have seen what it takes to thrive in a world where you must do more to get ahead. It is not impossible for children to achieve this level of success without parents breathing down their neck, constantly nagging, and forcing their hands towards the “right path”. Children that have parents that create balanced environments of love and acceptance, but also encourage their children to achieve more than what they had, will produce kids that want to learn and have a new passion for life that can only come from their own choice. The drive to achieve all that life has to offer is something that can not be forced into a child by any amount of parenting. However; how children define success as well as their ability to thrive in a world, without sacrificing their emotional development, is determined by the amount of positive support and guidance their parents provide. There is a difference between overprotective parenting and evolved parenting. Overprotective parenting tend to be “supremely selfish”, with parents projecting themselves on their children. Wanting your children to not make the same mistakes of your childhood can easily become you living vicariously through them. Making mistakes is part of children’s lives; to not want them to make mistakes is to not want children to learn any lessons of life that actually matter inside and outside of their academics. Many parents don’t want to have to see their children struggle, they want to see them thrive where they couldn’t and skip the hard portions of life they wish they could have avoided themselves, but to deny their ability to fail and to learn through their own experiences is denying them the ability to become hardened adults, to be able to figure out problems and thrive in a world where only the strong will survive. Over protective parents need to learn the value of tough love, to learn to watch them struggle and not leap to their rescue at ever sign of danger. If you reach out and pulled your kid out of the water every time you saw them struggle then they would have never learned to swim. When it comes to learning how to provide and thrive in a very difficult world you can not expect them to swim if they do not struggle first. But if you wait and be patient, you will see that in time they will always figure it out. Self preservation in the face of danger is something that no parent has to teach their children, but is something that you must let them find for themselves. 

After a long life of being over-parented students pursue careers they may not be fully happy in, lives that they didn’t necessarily want for themselves, and emotional scars that they still struggle with long after their parents are gone. Everyone says that we are a product of our raising and for many people that is true. We learn to parent by the examples that our parents have shown to us, and parent our children in the ways that we have seen to be successful. Many parents will admit that they have not been the best parents, and wish that they had done things differently. A lot of the time this realization comes too late that what they thought they wanted for their children was not what is most important in life. For children to not feel like they are able to follow their passion in life, can keep you from living the life that you want for yourself despite if it is better or worse then your parents current standing. “Variables such as social class , maternal employment, family configuration, and perceived parental influence were found to influence such outcomes as adolescents’ occupational aspiration and attainment, and the range of choices considered” (Schiffrin 2017) when choosing careers. At the end of the day having a history of depression and anxiety on top of a career that you realize was not what you wanted in life will be a anchor that was built at an early age and will be a burden for the rest of your adult life.

Overprotective parents have the right goals and mindset; wanting your child to succeed in life is not wrong. But, with everything in life there is a balance, so parents should be both supportive, and guiding, knowing when to take control and when to give control. Many parents can be blinded by the ultimate success of raising successful children and cant see the negative effects their actions are causing to their child’s physical and mental well-being. Children need to experience the world and decide for themselves what they want out of it. The parents’ job is to make sure that they are healthy and on the right track to lead healthy and happy lives absent of their own personal views.

