Question

Write a 7 page essay on helicopter parenting and work cited

Answer 1

The term helicopter parent was first used in Dr Haim Ginott's book called Parents and teenagers in 1969. It was based on the claims of teenagers who said their parents hovered over them like a helicopter. The term gained so much popularity that it gained space within the dictionary as well. Essentially, it can be said that it is a type of parenting wherein the parents are highly focused upon their children. Such parents tend to take too much onus or responsibility of their children's success or failure upon themselves. Sometimes it also happens to an extent that the parent seems overfocused on the children, blurring their goals and objectives with theirs, becoming overprotective, over-caring and often intrusive. A helicopter parent may persist at any age group. For instance, for a toddler such a parent would constantly be backing up the child while he/she is playing, allowing little or no alone time. For a teenager, such a parent could be constantly either guiding themselves, or arranging a regular coach/teacher/guide for their child in order to function. There could be many reasons to such kind of parents including the following:

1. Fear of dire consequences could prevail: Leaving the child alone or having them navigate their own lives could be threatening for certain parents. Another reason could be their own anxiety prone temperament.

2. Feelings of anxiety: Parents often have their own personal anxiety related issues which tend to impact their parenting strategies as well.

3. Overcompensating: it is an important defense mechanism as well whereby parents tend to compensate for the poor parenting or neglectful behaviour they got from their own parents during their childhood.

4. Peer pressure from other parents could be another factor leading to such parenting. Often times, parents have a company wherein other parents are observed behaving in an overly protective manner towards their children and the same is observed in the peer group by other parents. Parents tend to learn from one another since no rule book or underlying strategies govern parenting as such. Social learning is a potent form of learning and therefore the company in which the parents are occupied tends to make a huge impact on the way they modulate their own parenting styles.

The consequences of such parenting could also be detrimental. It may often backfire in ways that the child may be less empowered to make their own decisions and theerfore suffer from low self esteem and poor confidence in themselves. Constantly having others to make their own decisions and solving day to day problems tends to make a child more dependent and less self sufficient. Poor coping skills and poor resilience is another consequence of such parenting. Poor life skills such as problem solving, decision making, developing interpersonal relationships ( in case parents interfere in how a child mst befriend children at school or neighborhood), etc. Moreover, the parents' anxiety may also be transmitted through observational learning into the child himself. This means that the child may end up becoming more prone to anxiety in future, which may further impact the different domains of his life later on. For instance, his/her relationships may be impacted as well.