The Bad News About Helicopter Parenting: It Works | Hacker News Reader

The Bad News About Helicopter Parenting: It Works

nytimes.com

43 pointshippich38 comments

I don't believe that I define helicopter parents the same as the author of that piece.

Helicopter parent in that article: Someone who is involved in their kids' lives but still allows the child some amount of autonomy (see authoritative parenting section).

Helicopter parent in my experience: Exists solely to REMOVE obstacles to a child's success.

The way that was written, a helicopter parent is just a parent that structures a child's time. It's more than that, isn't it? Did I read that wrong?

That is my read, too. There is a bit of a "No true Scotsman" to the debate, but I do feel it is going for an intentionally wrong take on the term.

Yeah there's nothing really wrong with "helicopter parenting" if you define it that way. "Structured time", is basically what school is. It's just that instead of 20-to-1, it's likely up to 3-to-1, so you're very likely to be better at it...

That's pretty much the same as my understanding of helicopter parents, parents who will do anything to help their child, and prevent them from learning how to deal with problems/overcome disparity/etc.

Though I would like to see a follow up study in 30 or so years and see how the different parenting styles end up affecting their kid's children/long term happiness.

"The most effective parents, according to the authors, are “authoritative.” They use reasoning to persuade kids to do things that are good for them. Instead of strict obedience, they emphasize adaptability, problem-solving and independence — skills that will help their offspring in future workplaces that we can’t even imagine yet."

Aside: Knowing nothing about theoretical parenting styles, this doesn't sound "authoritative". Authoritative <anything> wouldn't give you sound reasoning. Authoritative sounds like strict obedience, given that they are practically synonyms but the article says the opposite.

No, that's authoritarian, which the article contrasts.

I'm sure the field has its own jargon and that's fine, but for a lay audience it seems like "persuasive" or "rationally supportive" or "educating" would be more clear than "authoritative".

They may be borrowing these terms from educational psychology where they are indeed used exactly this way.

Is authoritarian and authoritative exclusively educational psychology and child development jargon alone? I'm honestly asking because I work and am steeped in education.

It seems to me that anyone educated would be able to draw a line between authoritarian and authoritative just based on context clues from society (that's not meant to be as condescending as it might sound). Am I wrong?

> Is authoritarian and authoritative exclusively [...] jargon alone?

I'd say so, doing an internet search for "authoritarian vs authoritative" yields almost exclusively parenting articles.

In general, I think authoritarian is used for "you must do what I tell you" rule (governments, due the vocab word authoritarianism), and authoritative is used for "this is for sure the right way" objects and concepts (papers, sources, statements). The definition I have for authoritarian lines up with the parenting style, but authoritative does not line up so well.

My opinion from the outside is that it is not clear. They share the same root word from which their meanings derive; I'd assume they were talking about the same parenting style if it wasn't directly pointed out. If you applied these adjectives to Software Development or some other field, I would be hard-pressed to determine a clear distinction.

I'm only now catching the nuanced difference between "authoritative" (which almost means "guiding") than authoritarian.

Easy mix up from a PR perspective.

I also heard the term referring to parents being over-protective of their child, which brings another class of problems ("free-range kids" debate).

Agree. Was going to say the same. My wife was a teacher. The good parent sat down and helped their child with homework. The helicopter parent yelled at my wife about how she shouldn’t count that homework because it was too hard and their child needed a “chill day”.

I think "helicopter parenting" is not related to authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive parenting styles.

The former defines the parent's relationship to the child's society, whereas the rest defines the parent's relationship to the child itself.

That's exactly it. This piece was written to describe a parent's interaction with the child, whereas I've only ever read about/seen helicopter parenting in terms of the relationship with everyone else.

I'm 100% convinced they are not the same things. This article used that phrase either out of context, or just to get the grabby headline. Not sure which.

From the article: The most effective parents... Instead of strict obedience, they emphasize adaptability, problem-solving and independence

If you'd asked me to define helicopter parenting, I might have said "parenting so invasive it denies kids independence or a chance to solve their own problems". The stereotypical act is something like responding to a bad test grade by calling the teacher, instead of letting their kid do so or work out a different plan.

I get that it's not a rigorously-defined term, but I agree with you - this looks like it's not only different but very nearly the opposite of common usage.

Halfway through this article, they switch from helicopter parenting to authoritative parenting. Authoritative parenting is not helicopter parenting. It's one of the three types of parenting listed in intro-level child psychology textbooks, along with authoritarian and permissive. It's the only good one of the three. It's not news that kids who receive the good kind of parenting have an advantage.

I'm not sure that "intensive parenting style" means helicopter parenting either, but I don't think people are generally arguing that helicopter parenting hurts kids' academic performance in high school. The worry is that they'll be deficient in other ways both immediately and later in life.

>but I don't think people are generally arguing that helicopter parenting hurts kids' academic performance in high school

That was one thing about this article that I missed. Literally nothing I've seen talks about how helicopter parenting has a negative effect on academics, just on the social and emotional aspects of a child. Which is the literal opposite of what this article talks about.

I firmly believe they used the term helicopter parenting to make a click-baity headline to drive views. I hate it.

It's a pretty poorly written article to be honest. I don't see how the author clubs in "authoritative" parenting style under "helicopter parenting" because it is pretty much the opposite.

From the article:

> The most effective parents, according to the authors, are “authoritative.” They use reasoning to persuade kids to do things that are good for them. Instead of strict obedience, they emphasize adaptability, problem-solving and independence — skills that will help their offspring in future workplaces that we can’t even imagine yet.

That's hardly helicoptering. That's just positive parenting that isn't completely hands-off.

> It's a pretty poorly written article to be honest. I don't see how the author clubs in "authoritative" parenting style under "helicopter parenting" because it is pretty much the opposite.

I struggled to follow it. I thought it was just me :-)

The bad news about linkbait headlines: they work.

A clarification point, because I had to double check this multiple times: they use two words (authoritative and authoritarian) frequently, and while they look nearly identical, they are completely different.

In one, you act more of a “resource”, a trusted resource to ask questions, give guidance. In the other, you are the “boss” and you have to listen to what they say exactly, and are punished if you don’t.

It isn’t surprising which method gives “more tools” to the child.

However, I think it would have helped readability if they chose different wording, just due to the visual similarity between the words. Perhaps it’s the difference between a coach vs a dictator?

Anyway, wanted to clear up the words for any folks that were unclear, it is worth paying extra attention to the exact spelling on this one.

Edit: had to fix spelling, as it “corrected” me as well =p

That headline is pretty misleading. The tagline is a little better.

> New research shows that hyper-involved parenting is the route to kids’ success in today’s unequal world.

This is equivalent to micromanagement. If you have a good micromanager, it works more than folks like to give it credit. We just typically call those managers, not micromanagers. :)

So, I assert we have known for a long time that something like "helicopter parenting" works. We just use that term for the over involved parents. What this page calls "excesses".

"Done right" we just call it good parenting. And, it turns out, that is damned hard. And it is all too easy to talk about the failures. All the while not understanding exactly why they failed. (Though, I also assert that talking about successes with the same ignorance is a great way to sell books.)

A conclusion I've been reaching as I've grown older is that motivation is one of the most difficult and important things for any individual to learn. Once you have a clear objective, achieving things isn't so problematic -- having clear, realistic, well thought out things you want to achieve is much harder. Even failure is much more tolerable to me when I've failed knowing I were pursuing the right thing; failing when you don't even know what you want is much more painful. That's why taste is probably one of the best skills to develop in your child, letting him make decisions for himself and assessing the consequence of those for himself (instead of mandating anything -- although every now and then kids need stimuli or being slightly forced to try new things).

So high-involvement parenting to me is only good insofar as it helps those things, not if it sets everything you must do and how to do it.

Taste is not something you can't teach either, imo. There isn't anything necessarily more right or wrong about your tastes than the tastes children would pick up from friends and teachers. But I think you should make sure to clarify and expose your tastes instead of mandating (or even hiding) them; and understand your child is unique and your tastes may not fit her in every way.

All this of course lines up pretty well with the definition of "authoritative parenting" in the article, which is valuing 'adaptability, problem-solving and independence'.

"He who has a why can bear almost any how"...

Yes, the article is shitty. But I'm surprised there aren't more people discussing the headline.

The simplest reason why not to helicopter parent, in my opinion, is that it doesn't produce people I'd like to be around. With exceptions, of course, but by and large true. Helicopter-parented kids who follow their parents' carefully set path just feel... artificial, to me.

They lack resilience in my experience. I've worked in higher education for most of my adult life (except for that stint out of grad school in retail, and most of those lessons apply also), and I can spot someone with overbearing/helicopter parents in the first conversation.

They genuinely don't know what to do when they meet a challenge. They may be smart, they may be creative thinkers and problem solvers in a million different ways. But when there is a problem in their life, like a girlfriend breaking up with them, or a course not transferring between schools, or something like that, they just shut off. They either throw tantrums publicly, or, more likely, drop out and never show back up on campus.

That's the problem with helicopter parents. They raise kids with 0 resiliency. I have literally no research to back this up, but I believe it's connected to the uptick in teenage suicides in my area. Kids are raised to have no resiliency, so at the first 'major' issue (and everything is major to teenagers), they just throw their hands up because it IS the worst thing they've ever encountered.

Interesting side discussion in this about the difference between "authoritarian" and "authoritative": it works, but only if you convince kids to go along with it rather than force them into it.

It also argues that the high parental involvement is the result of high percieved inequality; it becomes more important to get your kid higher up the ladder.

I don't know if it's the result of percieved inequality; the article seemed to state it is a result of actual inequality. It also said that successful helicopter parents merely exacerbate inequality.

1. Having parents will always help you end up more successful than not having them. And since a large percentage of people don’t then of course helicopter parenting is better than average.

2. It may help you get into harvard but you may also end up depressed or helpless etc. see that a lot in the valley. kids with tiger parents that are successful but want to kill them selves

It's not a new result that authoritative parenting is better than authoritarian or permissive. This was first studied by psychologist Diana Baumrind in 1966! The NYT article seems to take a couple new studies that confirm this and slap on the "helicopter parenting" label. I hate to call it clickbait, but...

I don't get how "authoritative" parenting (which they label as emphasizing "adaptability, problem-solving and independence") is at all the same as helicopter-parent style overbearing control and micromanagement.

>Opinion >completely unnecessary dig at Trump in the last paragraph

Yeah, sure, ok.

It's also interesting to note that this really only indicates that it works insofar that children of helicopter parents are academically successful - does that translate to the children being professionally successful, or happy about their upbringing?

> So why wouldn’t everyone just become an authoritative parent? Religious people...Donald Trump...

Ah, now I know why it's an opinion piece. The author thinks if you love Jesus, you're a sub-optimal parenting, Donald Trump loving, equality hater.

So much for tolerance.

If it works why do we constantly hear about recent generations not doing as well as their parents financially or career wise?

I think there are a great many variables that might contribute to the differing fortunes of young people now versus those thirty years ago. Parenting style is only one of them, and not necessarily a major one.

Because there are many other variables that apply than parenting style.

Do you think parenting is the only thing that has changed? It’s clearly possible for other effects to dominate.

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