The one that floors me is the person that didn't like to eat foods with sauce and couldn't deal with it at the cafeteria. I hope there is more to the story than just that because the person is, in a word, pathetic.
If you can't deal with something that simple, you can't deal with life.
180
College admission?
I work with young adolescent boys with HIV.
In rural Appalachia. Reading about parenting is like reading about Mars.
Every boy has been raped. You think not. Overly dramatic. Yet rape is a way of life.
The have all done sex work. This is not a contradiction. More a symptom. They hate married men. There is always some kind of rent to pay. They get the value of money. They bribe cops. No celebrity journalist covers that.
Reading about parenting is science fiction. The boys attract and scare adults. They were done with school by ninth grade. However, they are not stupid. Playing with sex work is like playing with a loaded gun. They are still children.
They see sex work as four years of running a business. Antiretrovirals (when available) create viral loads that are undetectable. No transmission. How successful you are at business is reflected in what sidewalk you sleep on, and what you wear. Not designer clothes. But clean ones.
Disparity.
All of them have been sexually abused, too. By parents. No bulldozers. No helicopters. They are broken, suicidal, and filled with internalized rage. No one writes articles about celebrities who support them. They are discarded, mainly gay, clinically depressed, at-risk, and exhausted with mere survival. The institutions of education and family have failed them. Society itself pays an exorbitant price for the cyclical poverty, the sexual rape and violence it is indifferent to.
College exists in a galaxy far away.
186
It's always been so much easier when you cheat.
31
As a college professor at an expensive private Boston area University, I've had snowplow parents call me because they didn't like a grade junior received on an assignment. I politely tell them that junior was held to the same standard as the rest of the students in the class, and the grade reflects that. I then politely refer them to my Chairman, who usually tells them maybe junior should go to a lessor college, then he suggests they call the Dean. The Dean, thank God, also tells them maybe junior should go to a lessor college. You'd think they'd get the message. They don't. (Yes, faculty compare notes on which kids have idiots for parents.)
238
The poor little poppets! What will happen after the parents are gone and a major roadblock is encountered? These parental enablers are actually telling their children that the child is useless, that only with the parent’s assistance can these kids do anything. I knew a 32 year old woman whose mother refused to cut the apron strings, this silly mother drove half an hour twice a week to clean her adult daughters apartment. Don’t these parents understand that they are bringing up children who consider themselves useless? Every time you do something for your kids that they could easily do themselves you are saying to them, “ you aren’t capable, that’s why I have to do it”
73
My view for some time is that coddling your children is a form of child abuse. It keeps them infantile and unable to grow up into adults nor prepared to face the demands of an adult world.
94
One of the upsides about growing up in the 1970s was the parental honesty when you had misplaced notions of talent:
"Uh, why don't you do something you're good at, honey?"
107
As a childless boomer, I find these stories (almost) unbelievable, and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my parents for sending me to Wossamotta U.
67
from a self-sufficient out of high school retired attorney F/70
One good news story: Betsy Devos, so-called Secretary of Education in this so-called Administration whose family is rich from private school sorties, lost a ton of money in the Theranos debacle. Conned by a Stanford drop out who never left home without a made-up face and equally made-up business plan. Now facing federal fraud charges, take a look at the Theranos fraudster during her depositions under oath without the hair and clothes and make-up. The real woman behind the facade that propped up a $4B business.
So many dollars going to fraudulent enterprises from private schools to for-profit colleges to no-moral-compass actors buying their kids entry to college classrooms -- failing utterly to see how self-evident their kids' inability to cope will be from day one. Please - let these parents do jail time. Where kids were knowing participants now 18, send them to jail too. Washing dishes for other inmates. Then see how hard it can be to expunge felony conviction records as they look for work.
32
"Infantilization is the prolonged treatment of one who has a mental capacity greater than that of a child as though he or she is a child."
Parents have always meddled in their kids lives. IMO, this stuff is different. Keeping control over your kid's life keeps you relevant and in charge. I'm not sure these behaviors are just about the kid. I think the know-it-all parent continues to bully their kids well into adulthood, thereby keeping that adult child a child. This sounds like parents' inability to shift control to the kid.
When did "to seem rather than to be" become a child rearing objective? To me, this is like selfies of the worst kind - no authenticity, but isn't a cute pic?
Infantalized adult children can skate right by being responsible. They don't know how.
Fake parents raising fake kids to become fake adults. We're in trouble.
42
The parent-child dynamics are interesting. I'm a boomer, so my youth is far behind me. In my growing up years, parents like these snowplows were known as "smothers." Those who had mothers with such tendencies did their best to resist them. When they did things like call a teacher to demand to know why their kid got a certain grade, the kids were both angry and humiliated. They got the heck away from those parents at the earliest opportunity. Maybe it starts earlier now so that kids don't recognize that they are being smothered and it simply seems like what mothers/parents do.
45
Another clear indicator of the fear underlying American society.
35
Can someone tell me why the story of Nicole Eisenberg and her son was used as a lead-in to a story about helicopter parenting and criminal bribery? Was it all about the student application burnishing charity that she helped him start with friends? Really??? Was this the best you could do in finding an example of a parent “robbing” their offspring of a childhood? Really??? Was he going to ride his bike to those 20 auditions? Her son supposedly wanted to be a stage actor from a very early age and appears to have been committed to this aspiration throughout his childhood. No kid stays that committed simply on the basis of parental pressure with the possible exception of rare outliers like Andre Agassi. Sounds like he doing everything HE could do to put in the work necessary to give himself the best possible chance. His parents were there to support him any way they could. There are similar stories in the bios of almost every elite athlete from Roger Federer to Simone Biles.
Please…get some perspective guys.
29
The solution is simple.
No one should be allowed to raise their own child.
When a child is born, they should be entered into the child lottery. Everyone will be required to hand their biological child over to the woman to the left who also just had their baby. And so on and so forth.
Then the narcissism that pervades having biological children can be tempered by a sense that a child is just a person in the world and not some mini me trophy.
29
"In a recent study that surveyed a nationally representative group of parents about which parenting choices they thought were best, people, regardless of race, income or education, said children should be enrolled in after-school activities so they wouldn’t have to feel bored." Are the authors trying to say that parents who chose afterschool programs for their children are snowplow parents? What a bunch of nonsense. Besides ignoring the overwhelming evidence of positive impact on academic and life success in participating in high quality afterschool programming, this comment is blind to the realities of many parents who work and who need child care.
26
I’m able to prepare my sons path and limit major obstacles so he can study and concentrate on school. No job at college, no financial concerns.....I expect A’s across the board, and I get them.
I see to small, as well as large problems and solve them for him, many before they become large problems for him.
It works and I certainly don’t need the NYT, of all things, telling me what to do or not do for my son. Call me what you want, but he’ll be running a hedge fund one day while others are still concerning themselves with petty topics such as this.
7
Ironically these kids have a very hard time when they start a full time job; one new hire complained to his grandmother at big community event that he was being disciplined for not getting work done and not arriving on time; it so happen his GM was close to mother of VP (leader of his 110 work team) and so GM complained to VP’s mother about treatment of GS; needless to say the young man did not make it thru his probation (never figured out how to get to work on time). Unfortunately he left feeling very put upon so I can’t say he had an epiphany but I hoped for his sake one would come soon.
32
Still waiting for an answer to how and why Ms. Huffman is being named as the sole wrong-doer in her daughter's SAT saga. May I ask why Mr. Macy is not charged in this, as well? This is insane.
37
Fred Trump paid Donnie's way into colleges (he must've taken his SATs himself, his GPA records clearly had to be atrocious if he threatens the institutions to keep them under wraps. Don't worry. We'll find out after you're buried, dude, after you're part of historical record. And there will be no surprises here for the future generations). Jared Kushner is another one - a Harvard grad not by his own intellectual curiosity or capacity, but by "generous donation" to the campus. The fact that now there is a side-door trying to circumvent entry thanks to inability to compete with the biggest money coming into the back door tells you all you need to know about the front door to the American education system. You can be as dumb as a box of rocks, but if your parents have dough, you get to have all the bread. Why, you can even pretend to be the inventor of bread. These so-called captains of industry just pay for the fancy label so you think you're getting seven-grain wheat, not a bunch of crumbs.
43
You forgot the snake bite kit
3
Think of your favorite books about children from childhood. You will be surprised at how many of them had parents that were busy, absent or even dead!!! How do you think the children were able to have such fantastic and magical adventures????
I’m in no way suggesting that not being invested parents is wrong, just saying that it seems that it might not be so terrible for children to have the opportunity to experience wonder and adventure even if it means letting go, just a little!!!!
30
The law of unintentional consequences
3
Sorry but I must be blunt: this phenomenon is what a lot of us black and brown folks call a "white people problem." When the world is designed to disadvantage you when you're non-white STRUGGLE is written into your DNA- there's no room for bulldoze parenting when your basic survival is always at risk and having to worry if your kid will come home alive or if the bad neighborhood you live in will destroy your already tenuous family. White people have designed the world in such a way they don't have those problems so these shenanigans are not all that surprising. But I do feel they're raising a new generation of psychopaths: people who don't know how to rationally channel their emotions because they were never taught how to fail and navigation real world. Leaving school over sauce? God help us all.
142
If this corruption was unique to an individual, a school or an industry... it still would be an insult to all those who have actually did years of hard work and with true talent are sidelined by this corruption.
Unfortunately, it is just one layer of corruption - in one industry- that has dismantled the US respect and ability to compete internationally. Without our status-quo corrupt system, political parties would lose; and pharmaceutical-cigarette-gun-auto-chemical-industrial-oil-finance-etc. companies would actually have to pay the price for their damages and crimes in real time. More importantly, companies could actually compete with quality instead of PR grand standing, bogus legal maneuvers and military games.
The next generation and some of their new leadership are hopeful. This next generation understands the enormity of their work if we actually are to return to a place where we deserve self-respect, international respect and have the capacity to compete on merit.
***Could the media please provide sustained contextualized forum for the thousands of hard-working young adults who are actually building solutions to save us from this corruption.
8
Reading the articles in the wake of the college bribery scandal, you find yourself resembling the spoiled brats mentioned in them, even if your parents weren't rich and didn't commit a crime helping you in school.
If your parents ever helped you with your homework, if your parents ever drove you to school, and if you were admitted to the same university your parents attended even though they made no donations, you then become as guilty as chidren whose parents bribed their way into and through Yale. At this rate, we could criticize children who didn't go into the military right after high school, except that doing so would cast a net that includes most of us.
It's time to stop indulging in these articles and move along.
15
I see the snow plow rev up every day. It seems to begin with parents not wanting to say no to a toddler. To not want the kid to cry because he can’t have something. To not want to make kids deal with even the most minor of adversity. Entitlement is the result.
24
Why all this whining and hand wringing about parents working to help their child make a certain grade of excellence in school education? Did anyone stop to think why this mentality exists? The answer to that last question is competition for spaces at the better schools because of more competition for good jobs placement. Why is this happening? There are more qualified people (millions) nationally and internationally looking for the same jobs than ever before.
11
Amazing how many people even on this enlightened thread seem to feel it necessary to legitimize their comments by dropping references to their own high incomes or elite alma maters. As if an insightful (or unconventional) comment is dependent upon the social status of its maker. We really have become an insecure society. The ugly results are all around us.
32
I had my mother make appointments for me and call in sick for me until I got married in the 80s. I do the same for my daughter in her 20’s. That’s nothing new. Plus 10% of crazy parents calling their adult child’s workplace to discuss a problem isn’t exactly a trend.
3
I don't know about a 3 year old knowing that they want to be in theatre; my mother told me when I was 3 I wanted to be a cat.
85
Can journalists please stop writing that the children didn’t know. These children of privilege attended private prep schools where counselors worked with them individually to prepare their applications for college. They have been test prepped since elementary school and they know where they typically score on standardized tests, and they know how to take them. No high school junior believes that it is acceptable to the college board to take a test in your bedroom with a parent as the proctor. No one increases their ACT score by 10 points, or their SAT score by 400 in a short period of time. Get real. Those kids knew and everyone of them should be expelled.
53
I'm not sure why all the professionals in this article are so eager to mock and denigrate students and their parents (often people who have come to them for help and guidance). Some of the anecdotes strain credulity, i.e. the child who left college for home because of over-sauced meals. First of all, the "top-tier" types of schools that this article mainly references all have cafeterias with a huge range of saucy and sauce-less options. Vast salad bars, sushi, gluten free... Come on Dr. Levine--a kid coming home because of sauce clearly has a lot more going on than a bit of over-involved parenting. Can we muster just a shred of sympathy? And--yes-- it's obviously not a good strategy to call college professors about your child's grades. But what is the stat that 8 percent of parents had contacted a professor or administrator about a grade or "other problem" supposed to prove? Other articles in the Times and elsewhere talk about the very real problem of kids with serious mental illness--depression, suicidal ideation, bipolar disorder--being ignored and neglected by some college officials, with sometimes tragic results. Eight percent doesn't seem like such a giant number to me, and I am guessing that even the finger-wagging experts quoted here would be in touch with a college in a heartbeat if their own children were battling mental health or other serious issues. Really annoying article.
24
I was watched like a hawk as a kid because my siblings were much older.
Too much meddling made me uncomfortable and my protests were met with " I'm you're mother/father'. It really was unhealthy.
Fast forward as an adult, I keep their interaction in my life to a minimum. I have to keep them at a distance or else they would try to insert themselves inappropriately. Sometimes it is well meaning, but still inappropriate.
I'd rather live my substandard level of living right now (between jobs) than have their help ( which they would do if I asked).
But it all comes down to feeling I am in control of my life. Their "help" has destroyed me emotionally.
26
Sorry but there is a difference between cheating to get your underachieving kid accepted into a program for high achievers l. and doing your best -perhaps too much -to open doors and create opportunities for them to realize their potential. While both the former and the latter may presuppose privilege, there is a gulf between commuting fraud - a crime - and using lawful means.
8
I cheated the system.
Children are judged so harshly by the world today. Make a bad impression in pre-school and you are marked for your entire school career. This used to be primarily a problem with private schools but now public schools are "selective" too! The teachers and counselors of our youth are risk averse, always looking for the "safe bet"students, never the potentially great kids. And there is always this looking backward at past "success" in school as the main predictor of future success.
They are kids! Applying to a high school means reaching back to when they were 12 and projecting that person into college because high schools want college acceptances. 12 year olds are not normally obsessed with college acceptance! The entire system is rotten and the "chosen" are often conforming followers good at standardized testing and mind-numbing regurgitation. Truth.
My son's pre-school "recommendation" for elementary was coded with language implying he was not a great catch. His crime was being shy-at 4 yrs. old!! And he was a super bright kid who I knew would be an asset to any educational institution.
I *never* cheat but after agonizing soul-searching I DOCTORED the recommendation. Andover, U of Chicago & Loyola all conferred degrees with high honors/On to a great career & happy adult life. I cheated the system before it potentially cheated my son. I was wrong & so is a system set up to "weed out" innocent 4 year olds for not being perfect little clones.
26
What worries me most is that this is a generation of people I am trying to hire. It's a disaster. I once had someone, 3 weeks into a job, say to me "if you just tell me what to do I'll be able to do it". Umm, if I had time to do your job, I wouldn't need you. She was afraid to think on her own.
46
And parents who genuinely risk life and limb for a chance that their children can stay alive let alone obtain an education, are villianized as a "national emergency." And the DACA scholars from hard working, low income families live in the anxiety of continual threat of deportation. What are these pitifully anxious parents so fearful of? Being "poor?" I pity them and their existential angst. Try putting that energy into raising kind, compassionate, hard working human beings. The "troubles" of the privileged are nothing in comparison.
22
What is the percentage of American parents that might actually be paying bribes for their children’s education?
7
When your child turns 18 years of age he/she is an adult. Consider that they can be drafted and trained to kill, for instance. They are, in our society, considered legal in every sense of the word. And while they may go on to advanced education, or into any number of other pursuits, our society holds them culpable for all that they may do from that point onward.
Essentially, at 18, they are on the edge of the nest you, the parent, have built. They are about to take that leap and commence to fly into their lives. Your job has been to prepare them for that moment, and the final stage of your job resolves itself into stepping back and letting them do it. Will they struggle? Of course. Will they fail? Yep. You did, too, remember? Will they succeed, too? Undoubtedly.
But if you have done your job well, inculcated in them their own sense of confidence and success, you can, and should, step back and let them live their lives as they see fit. Let them fly on their own. It is, after all, their life not yours.
In fact, take a lesson from the birds whose metaphor I have been using. Think of it this way. You may remain bound to them forever, but the strings are loosened, you can go back to living your life. You can resume the flying you started before you were a parent. You've done your part. Now it's on to whatever comes next for you, too.
John~
American Net'Zen
18
Adult children of the very rich do not become ennobled by hard work, but do have the financial resources to hire hard workers.
12
its' the obstacles and adversity that we overcome that help define who we are and our future. Read Angela Duckworth.
10
You can reject that help, as it usually comes with "implied conditions". Independence as a young adult will transform your life.
For college, I moved 3,000 miles away. From my home in CT to California, to separate myself from my parents, and "bad family dynamics". I became a very different, happier, person. My parents gave me good habits, core values, and "life skills", but some heavy psychological burdens too.
They gave me limited financial support for college, but I worked every summer and did work/study during the school year. I graduated with a small amount of debt and with a degree that set me up for a life of work in computer science.
College was "all work and no play" because I chose this level of independence. My friends remarked, "You're so mature!".
I was solid. I could be relied on. One year into my first job, I was made a team lead, and have managed [I think I lead, not manage] groups of people ever since.
22
I am so grateful to my parents who knowingly or unknowingly let me let learn many life lessons and take risks as a teenager while knowing that I had a stable home to come back to. I was petrified as a 16 year old of driving alone, so my mom wouldn’t just let me opt out (we employed a full time driver through my dad’s employer at the time) but cycled behind my car for a whole mile many times to show me that I could do it and survive. When I was preparing for the SAT as a teenager in another country planning to study in the US, my parents did not do the research for me or hire a company (which they could have afforded) to do it for me. They let me take the public bus to go to the only library in the city where I could spend a whole day figuring out how to study for and take the SAT on my own as an international student. They let me attend parties in high school and trusted me to tell them who was there and what happened there. They never hovered over my school work but expected me to get good grades and manage my own time.
Once we arrived in the US, they were blissfully ignorant of the college admissions system and what it took to succeed. So all the decisions were left to my 18 year old self. I made mistakes but I learned fast. I applied for need based and merit scholarships and worked more than part time through first 2 years of college and graduated debt free. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without all those struggles, and for this I will always be grateful.
25
I've worked on university campuses for 15 years. There are times that this behavior from parents is oppressive, intrusive, and unwelcome by students. At least FERPA laws give students some control over what schools can disclose to their parents (grades, for one).
I led campus tours, and saw many students that couldn't wait for the breathing room that moving to college was going to give them. One in particular egged me on to walk faster, eager to get a chance to talk to me without his parents in earshot.
My most extreme example of this is a phone call I received, by a parent, of an applicant for a *faculty* position. I still wonder if that applicant has (or needs) a restraining order on her mom.
I also pointedly call college students "students," not "kids."
18
My son failed out of a prestigious northeast college after spending more time with his girlfriend than studies. He ended up on the midnight shift at the local brewery and no girlfriend. The guys on the shift explained "life" to him. He arranged a student loan and returned to college where he excelled. He now works for a multinational corporation assessing IT assets before acquiring companies. The lessons learned from the guys at the brewery have been priceless.
84
I regret years ago being a helicopter parent, I truly thought I was doing the right thing. I was always present, intervening with teachers, plowing thru her life, making sure she applied to the best high schools. She ended up being accepted into a very sought after high school, where she did not excel (despite my hovering). At that point I realized it was time to step back - which I did. Witness to many failures and slow success, she is now entering grad school, 4 years behind her peers. Looking back, she NEEDED to experience the results of HER choices. It was tough, but the best thing that happened to her. Parents, let your children fail, we learn from mistakes, not our successes.
58
Once human life expectancy was 30-40. Economic independence was a competent hunter/gather, sperm/ova donor--skills acquired as young teenagers.
As civilization progresses so do the demands of education and maturity. So do the standards of good parenting. Unconditional love is folly. Let 'em grow like weeds, results in weeds.
Of course, they learn best from their own mistakes, and their immune systems need antibodies.
But they can't make enough mistakes to be well educated; they need vaccinations. Thus helicopters/snowplows --aka life planners.
Of course leave room for "lateral growth"--hobbies might grow into careers. Financial planning is not enough.
The strategy is pyramidal--a broad base of skills learned young--when learning is easiest--accent and bad habit free--pure potential. Specialization increases gradually. The broad base allows for cross fertilization and hybrid vigor.
Thus the earlier schooling starts the better--in home or school--but usually better in school by professional educators. Parents--helicopter or snowplow--are teaching assistants. education brokers and to some extent curriculum managers.
The planning doesn't end with career and a family. "Count no one happy while they live"--some unhappy ending might lurk around the corner--addiction, depression, dementia, back stabbing infidelity--on and on.
But leave room for the transition from parent to friend. Friends helicopter and snowplow too. It's called "cooperation".
3
Millennials are the first generation that were raised as investments. As a group, they are the most educated and hardworking. They devoted unthinkable amounts of time and money into preparing themselves for the labor market. They have less of a social safety net. They are poorer and more unstably employed than their parents, grandparents and great grandparents.
Schoolwork, homework and extracurriculars have exploded in volume and difficulty - something that kids had no choice in. It's an arm race of preparation in response to a changing labor market that has over the last 50 years fused the intellectual and business fields into a new super-breed of professional; one who claims the the majority of wealth acquirable by the working classes.
The accepted paradigm of building human capital is that grades eventually turn into money, choice or better life outcomes. The American sociologist Donald T. Campbell concluded in his research that "The more a quantitative indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressure and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor." This is known as Campbell's Law.
If a number (or series of numbers) stands between your kid's probability of success after he/she [and you] have invested time and money unlike ever before - yes, you'll likely hover over your investment and grapple with your ethics. It doesn't take a behavioral economist to realize it.
17
A well-educated and successful woman I was dating several years ago had a 24 year-old daughter, also educated and living apart from her mother.
We had planned a day hiking in the mountains when we got a call from her daughter, who was hysterically crying. I thought something awful had happened to her just from hearing her on the phone.
Turns out she got a flat tire and was parked on the shoulder of a highway. No accident. No injury, other than to the car's tire being flat.
Her Mom told me that she had to go to her daughter's aid, and our day's plans got cancelled. Her daughter had Triple A.
Needless to say, we did not make it as a couple.
56
What many people overlook here is the hard socio-economic reality underpinning this: never before has life in America been so comfortable for the rich and so vicious for the rest.
Under current conditions, with a minority getting ever more unbelievably rich and the middle class becoming impoverished, parents are RIGHT to be terrified that their kids will go down the socio-economic ladder and be doomed to life in under-paid “gig” economy, bad or no healthcare, no savings or pension, constantly growing crippling debt.
It doesn’t have to be this way and it’s not this way elsewhere: get universal healthcare, a much higher minimum wage, tax the rich to scale back the gap to sane proportions, invest in public childcare and education, in affordable housing and in a safe, clean environment.
Do that, and the stakes for being slightly poorer than your parents will suddenly not be so harsh, and we could all raise our kids in a much better reality with far less anxiety for everyone . Only THEN can we let kids be kids again, and all of us, rich, poor and in-between will have a much better life at every stage.
36
We’ve got it wrong if we don’t look at the structural issues that give rise to snow plowing. Others have catalogued the roads to clear: the right daycare, preschool, charter/private/public school, youth sports or arts or music coach, tutors, community “service,” social media activity, etc., etc. I’ll add a new twist. Make all those roads lead to two years of Universal Service—military or civil. Make it the norm for young titans to be or young to be left behind to face the obstacles and opportunities of living on their own with others they may never have known. Reward them with a tax-free down payment on their future to be used for tuition, a trade or to start a business. Let them see that the real reward, however, is an America where everyone they know is “all in it together.”
27
As a head of a k-8 independent school, I can see how the snowplow parents turn other parents into this type of parent. The balanced, trusting parents see many others puppeteering their child to position them to look good to independent high schools and wonder if their child will be disadvantaged if they don’t do the same. Despite explaining to parents that building skills and independence is key to adult success and higher education success, they just can’t shift their thinking. It feels to me like they are operating in perceived survival mode - do this or something terrible will happen to your child’s future. As a Montessori school, we are competing against many area independent schools that promote such focus on getting into the ‘right’ school by making their graduates’ school placement front and center in their pitch for why students should attend their school. Are our parents not reading the same articles we educators are? Anxiety, depression, and drop outs are on the rise. I hope this is not a continuing trend in the decades to come.
16
We just had fun when I was a kid. Played with sticks, ran in the woods. Swam in streams and read books.
Of course, I am 60 now, and don't understand these new parents and their weird drive to push kids beyond being just kids.
I remember having so much fun, a sense of discovery and wonderment. I wonder if so many kids today, peering at their devices, look at the world around them.
I just hope it will be true. Kids being kids.
42
Schools play a role in this too.
My kids’ school has a sign-in website. Parents are expected to check it regularly- like every 2 days. It has classroom pictures and homework assignments and so forth. The site emails me when there is a new posting.
The school board also has a site that emails updates every week.
There is also a daily paper logbook that comes home with the kids that needs my review and initial every day.
Parents are always plugged into the classroom seeing videos and photos of the school day- as if parents are being asked to be participants in the classroom.
There are learning nights that must be attended where children “share” their knowledge with their parents.
Most importantly we get report cards from teachers that are vaguely worded without specific percentages and tallies of exam marks.
All this hyper involvement without accountability for results.
My parents were working class people with little education who barely spoke English. They rarely visited my school but they seemed to understand a report card very well.
I tell my children that I was never reminded to do my homework-never-not once. I supervised myself in this regard. In fact, as a child, I would translate letters and documents for my parents.
My children think this is an unbelievable and hilarious tale.
50
This is exactly the opposite of how children are raised in Sweden. From a young age, children play by themselves on climbing/monkey bars that would be considered too dangerous in the USA. Perhaps Swedish children, playing on their own, occasionally fall from these bars (being Sweden, the ground under is either rubber or sawdust or some material that conditions the fall somewhat) but they get back up--also on their own. which do you think is better preparation for life?
36
I’ve found Europeans children and young adults to be more mature with common sense and problem solving skills than US kids. Then again in Europe folks have a safety net and social contract while in the US it is up to the individual to take care of themselves.
26
It is not only parents who keep this awful practice going. Teachers participate as well by rewarding projects and papers that have obviously been done by parents. When my son was in middle school I thought I should start a web site offering science projects for sale - just joking. It was frustrating to be a parent who tried to resist this trend. When we toured boarding high schools and saw projects displayed, they looked surprisingly like ones I remember from my own high school years. There are limits to what most 14 year olds will do on their own. The school he chose and attended did an excellent job of helping him become an independent young adult. Without parental over-involvement, most kids experienced success, failure and the occasional dreaded Saturday night study hall. I tried hard to emphasize and reward striving over guaranteed success. It was hard to watch him struggle sometimes. I have colleagues who still correct essays for their kids in law school.
14
I had many thoughts as I read this article, few if any were positive. When I was 7 years old, which was 61 years ago, my father took me to my first Scout meeting. It was in Scouts that I learned many of my best life lessons. Why, because I learned to fail at a young age and learn. When I recruited boys to join Scouts, I told their parents that I would give them a chance to fail at an age where the consequences would not be dire.
As a 14 year old Patrol Leader, I lead my Patrol on a competitive exercise but at a crucial point, I did not really listen to the majority of my fellow Scouts and we came in last. The result was that I lost the next election for Patrol Leader and I had to learn from my mistakes. I could go on but this is just one example. Failure toughens you and prepares you for life.
I have a son who is an Eagle Scout and is in the US Army. He scores off the charts on IQ tests but never really put in the work at school and bombed out his freshman year in college. By the time he was 25, he finally realized that the Army could instill discipline that he could not. I did not pave the road for him, he had to figure it out for himself. It was excruciating at times for my wife and me to watch but he bit our tongues and let things play out. He is preparing to be deployed overseas and we are concerned for his safety but we are equally proud that he is doing something he loves and he is proud of himself.
18
Barbara Ehrenreich’s book “Fear of Falling” explores middle-class parents’ fears of their children slipping into a poorer class and how that leads to more intensive parenting. And that was in 1989! This has been building for a long time as people realize the precariousness of their financial well being.
31
I live in a competitive, I was the mom with the kids who hated school. I was lucky they made it through high school. In fact, one didn’t. She quit high school in 11th grade, got her GED, started community college, transferred to our states flagship university, did amazing, interned for a Senator, became President of her sorority, and is now backpacking through Southeast Asia. Sometimes your kids know what is best for them, even though you think you do. Many parents judged me... and when I tell them about my daughter now...they are surprised... and a little bit jealous!
20
“Sixteen percent of those with children in college had texted or called them to wake them up so they didn’t sleep through a class or test. Eight percent had contacted a college professor or administrator about their child’s grades or a problem they were having.”
I lived at home until my second year of grad school, and still my parents never acted as my alarm clock.
As a psychologist, I often say I could make my entire living from kids who go away to school and come back because they lack the skills to get by day to day. I’ve seen so many in my practice....usually smart enough to do the work, but lacking the executive functioning required to manage their time, organize their work, balance school and fun, or problem solve issues with roommates.
You’re not doing your kids any favors with this lack of preparation for the real world, you’re just ending up in my office paying for my next vacation. Let them skin a knee once in awhile. If they screwup they may actually learn something.
26
The best thing my parents did for us is to tell us we were going to be on our own at 18. Grown up, old enough to drive, make our own decisions about whether to go to college or work, but the bottom line is, they were cutting us loose financially. Of course they weren't going to let any of us kids slip through the cracks, but we didn't know that at the time! So we four kids worked, saved, studied and became independent adults. Varying degrees of success, but we all managed to make our way in the world without returning home with our tails between our legs.
20
I couldn't agree more. Another person commenting here describes a similar approach and have even coined a term for it: Benign Neglect. It works for me!
10
Aren't we all becoming a little judgemental here about how the other parents have got it all wrong? Barring a few overzealous parents mentioned by the author, I think most families do the best to raise good kids. For those of you saying, letting a kid stay at home beyond high school is a big no no, I don't see anything wrong with that if it saves money and the kid graduates college without a huge student loan debt. Majority of the kids in other parts of the world stay home to finish college and do pretty well in life, they don't turn out to be brats. Parenting like everything else is very personal. It is rather funny when the high school counselors tell the parents that they need to be involved and be a partner in raising good citizens of this society because now I'm afraid that I might be labeled as a helicopter parent when I occassionally email my child's teachers asking for advice on things I don't know and trust on their expertise.
26
I wonder how much of the parenting trends describe here are due to growing social insecurity in America. In addition to the dropping percentage of kids who will out earn their parents, we Americans have the subconscious awareness that people with "average" incomes might not even be able to afford healthcare, buy a house, or find a good education for their kids. Somewhere in our bones we know that the corporate sharks who increasingly control these essential needs do not care whether we sink or swim, and would be happy to eat us for lunch.
55
I know a young man struggling in college who really doesn't want to be there. When I asked him what his ideal job would be, he said "pizza delivery driver". I said why are you in college? He said "my parents believe everyone should go to college and they wouldn't listen to my objections and just insisted that I had to do it and they would somehow get me through it".
What a sad situation and a total waste of money and time. Parents need to recognize that everyone does NOT belong in college. There should be no shame in that.
35
@sfdphd Very insightful comment. But, on the other hand, how can a young pizza delivery person ever afford to get sick in this country or even break a leg? They are out of work. Now, working your way up to owner of the pizza place...yes.
8
@sfdphd. There is, however, shame in being a 26 year old pizza delivery man.
3
Side note: The term "helicopter parenting" was not "in vogue" in the 1980s, it was coined in a book published in the '90s. Kids in the '80s were "latch-key" kids, mostly walking home on their own until their parents came home from work. Some horrendous child abduction cases garnering national attention happened in the early 80s and hadn't really impacted child rearing yet. I grew up near where poor little Adam Walsh was abducted (we used to shop at the Sears where he was last seen by his mother. As a kid it was pretty scary, seeing the missing signs everywhere.) Prior to that our parents had already taught us not to talk to strangers or go anywhere with someone else unless it was pre-planned. There weren't cell phones, we walked home, our parents came to some activities at school (but not constantly)--- we learned to function in our everyday lives at school for ourselves. If your teachers and parents talked often, it usually meant someone was in trouble. I'd have been mortified if my parents did most of the things mentioned here.
44
I agree with so much of this. It kills me though that college administrators take shots like this - about kids not knowing how to fail and being so over-programmed that they failed to learn basic life lessons - but they don’t own the role that colleges have played in this. College admissions are brutal. There is little room for error, mistakes, life lessons or growing pains. Colleges might look past imperfections if the reason for the imperfection was interesting enough. Most things aren’t interesting enough. More important is the COST of college (and we can blame both private institutions and state legislatures for that). My oldest is a high school junior, and I try really hard not to snowplow or helicopter parent, but I admit that I just might text her to wake her for college exams if the consequence might be me paying more tuition. Life lessons are good, but not necessarily with the price tag of an extra semester (I’m sure that sounds dramatic, but with prerequisites and hard-to-get-into classes, this is reality). Let’s not just blame parents. Our society and our colleges are super guilty when it comes to expecting perfection and making the stakes of everything ridiculously high.
39
I was a supervisor at a substance abuse treatment facility. I had to sign off on any letters that were sent from the facility. One of my supervisees brought in a letter for me to sign, and then said "Ok what do I do next?" I told her to ask our office manager for a stamp. She said, "Ok but then what?" I truly did not understand what she was asking me. I thought maybe she meant she was unsure of where to find the address or something. I asked her what she meant, and she said,"How do I mail the letter?" I just sat there for a second trying to figure out what she did not understand. She saw the confused look on my face. I thought maybe she was joking around, and laughed thinking she would join in, but no, she was serious. I asked her if she was asking how to put the address, return address, and the stamp on the envelope. She said, "yes". Now, I do realize that most communication is done online these days, but many of our clients do not have internet access, which is why we send letters. I asked her if she had ever sent cards or something to someone, and she told me her mom always did that. This was a very bright girl with a master's degree. I showed her how to address the envelope, and felt bad that I had laughed, but I truly thought she was kidding around. She was fine, but learned something new that day.
45
I didn't graduate from high school due to a crippling illness. When I left home, I had to forge my own path--I couldn't do physical labor/join the military or get into a traditional college. Fast forward 10 years: I got a masters degree from a well regarded school and am doing very well thank you. Letting kids sink or swim on their own merits is a vastly underrated means of getting them to grow up very quickly. I don't comprehend these parents who blow their kids' noses for them. What kind of spouse will they be when (if?) they get married if they can't navigate life?
26
The specific details shared by the psychologist about her patients make them identifiable and makes this a HIPPA violation.
7
Wow. I'm pretty happy our parenting approach was what we jokingly called "benign neglect". As long as they got decent grades (not amazing grades - my son has a learning disability) and I didn't get a call from the school or the police, we just enjoyed them. The only exception was manners and kindness; we absolutely insisted on those. Both kids started at community college and transferred to universities, where they are doing just fine. Trade school or a job with decent wages and benefits would have been just as good in my book. I'm grateful that they're healthy, reasonably happy and still talking to us - even when they don't want money.
45
Absolutely benign neglect. As a high school teacher I'm all for it. Or 'tough love'. At the moment I have a bone idle boy whose Dad is 73, is with his 5th wife and, in addition to several other sprogs, a 3 year-old. Dad is constantly on everyone's case because the boy is getting nowhere. He seems to think we can get him into one of the toughest universities in the country. It is a pipedream but even if he does get in the boy won"t survive. Dad needs to take him out of school and send him out to work. But he won't. Dad, a very expensive lawyer, wouldn't be able to stand the indignity of his son working in a burger bar. Dad is going to be the ruin of him.
4
It's tangential, but no-one should apply to 26 "schools". Admissions information exchange among colleges and universities should be allowed and the Common Application (arguably an inherently bad idea) should "lock up" after the 8th application or so. Applying to more than 8 (I'd actually say 6) colleges or universities implies a lack of preparation and discrimination on the part of the student and/or the parents.
It is in large part the absurd multiplication in the number of applications per student that causes acceptance rates at the elite "schools" to be so low. Among other vices, this (1) further overburdens terribly overworked admissions staffs; (2) increases the tendency to set admissions floors (of varying hardness) based on quantifiable aspects of the application, to the detriment of truly looking at individuals; and (3) increases the vulnerability of the system to manipulation and corruption, as parents desperately search for an edge to help overcome overwhelming odds.
It's a vicious circle--a "Red Queen" in evolutionary terms: you have to run faster and faster just to stay in the same place.
29
It just occurred to me that my son probably needed to take his SATs-so I asked him when they were. Fortunately he hadn’t missed the deadline for registering.
18
Over 29 years teaching in a professional grad school, I've witnessed a gradual decline in resiliency and attentiveness among students overall. I don't think it's attributable to snowplow parenting, though, because these students are already out of college. There may be broader cultural forces at work. Perhaps they're the same forces and trends that were reflected in a recent Axios poll suggesting that 49.6 percent of Millennials and Gen-Z-ers would "prefer living in a socialist country."
https://www.axios.com/exclusive-poll-young-americans-embracing-socialism-b051907a-87a8-4f61-9e6e-0db75f7edc4a.html
10
You make a really good point here and it raises another observation. So much of what we do now, due to the aid of technology, is almost excessively easy. For example, I frequently order my groceries online and then go pick them up from the store. My generation (though thankfully not me personally) orders food for delivery, on average, several times a week. Virtually everything we want, from food to alcohol to consumer goods, is available at the click of a mouse or a few taps on a smartphone, with no need to leave the house. With so much of modern life evolving towards prioritizing convenience, is it any wonder young adults are so adverse to and unprepared for the inconvenience and boredom of school and work? This culture of instant gratification is toxic and socially isolating.
32
Yes, there are a LOT of such parents out there! There are also parents who don't even bother to know what courses their children are taking in HS, never show up for teacher's conferences, and just generally "opt-out" of their child's education.
Both are very, very detrimental to a child. But there are parents who understand the difference between "high expectations" and being a "pushy parent". High expectations means that if a child is capable of A work she should not be getting D's. Pushy is darned close to being emotionally abusive. Most people can see the difference.
Right now, my blood pressure goes up every time I see an ad on TV for a new migraine drug. The child asks the mother if she feels well enough to play. And Mom then dons her pirate hat, and the roar around the backyard, playing and playing, just the two of them. At the end, they discuss what they will "play" tomorrow.
Mom should suggest the child call a friend or go to a neighborhood friend's house to play. A mother is not the same thing as a playmate. She should not be her child's "best friend". I think this is why some SAHM's today find parenting very burdensome. I never had any desire to be the activity director on a cruise ship, nor did I see myself as my child's playmate. Of course, when they were sick, I might build something with Lego or blocks, and I read to my children a lot. But their playmate? Never!
Children need to be bored. Children need to fail sometimes.
49
It is just more selfishness. People not looking outside of their own little worlds. Zero wonder so many struggle with poverty and isolation, most people who could help are too busy obsessing over their children. It is so gross.
13
Never mind the illegal help; look at the difference in what's legal.
How much help parents give children varies with income. Poor, non-college, and immigrant parents do little; they lack money and/or knowledge of the system. Middle-class parents supplement what school offers with private tutoring, sports, and college admissions coaching; one parent told me she spent over $20,000 on such prep for her child.
Children of gradually more affluent parents get even more. Going away to camp breeds self-confidence and independence; ditto vacation travel in foreign countries. In high school, attending expensive or elite academic or sports programs gives kids an edge over others. In college, students who can afford it do internships which provide valuable work experience, references, and future professional contacts. Students who have to work for tuition lack the time.
Kids with smartphones are more connected to their parents, for both better and worse. When Mom calls, you'd better answer. As a teacher, I've had kids answer phones in the middle of class. "My Mom's calling". Parents are told not to call during classes.
Kids who once -had- to develop independence, initiative, and real-life decision-making skills now find that phones and email allows them and their parents to decide how to split those skills between kid and parent.
In contrast, when I attended college, far from home, in the days before PCs, I was on my own for almost all major decisions. I managed. No longer.
17
In 1988, we heard Bruno Bettleheim speak about his new book, The Good Enough Parent. His view of parenting was demanding in its requirement for parents to always feel empathy, not always easy (e.g. dealing with a screaming toddler in the grocery store). I remember he spoke about the pressures parents were placing on their children at the time. In 'the olden days' large families of 10 children were common and there was no expectation then that every one of the 10 would be extraordinarily intelligent or talented, but now, with only one or two children, parents perceive it as personal failure if their children are not special in every way. And the tragedy is that every child is unique and gifted, but those qualities may not be recognized or nurtured given the constant focus on preparing for future achievement instead of appreciating the present.
I am the parent of two millennials, and tried to be conscious during their childhood and not create the 'Hurried Child' syndrome in them. That was another popular book in the 1990s about the overscheduling of children.
18
So what you're saying is that every generation has a new parenting trend that's pushed forward by journalists and pop-lit and this isn't, in fact, a "crisis" or even a "trend" in parenting?
2
I saw a YouTube video clip somewhere in the hinterlands of Viet Nam where the folks were savoring their native delicacies with their chopsticks. I noticed a young child who could barely manage his chopstick. No adult and older children provided the assistance. But then I realize this kid will soon learn the art of chopstick.
18
This article has me thinking, whatever would we do if a Third World War came to fruition? Young adults who have to leave Uni because there is sauce (horrors!) on their food in the refectory/cafeteria. How would this generation survive fighting in places such as Guadalcanal, Dunkirk, Iwo Jima, Midway, Battle of the Bulge, D-Day, Pearl Harbor (to name but a few) with typical military rations??
We are failing our children by making life easy for them. I’m not suggesting you purposely make your children’s lives miserable and difficult. I once had an argument with another mother over allowing our kids to walk home from school in our incredibly safe neighborhood. My children were 8 and 10, hers were 8 and 12; she wouldn’t even allow her 12 yr old cross the street by himself. I asked if her son would be in college when she finally cut the umbilical cord.
19
My kids have different chronic illnesses. There is no way to remove every obstacle they face. They each have their own form of persistence and resilience.
10
i can't help but think that a big driver of this behavior is technology. There was no way for parents to be in constant contact with their kids when i was in college in the early '90's. I lived in a dorm room with 3 other girls and one phone. Good luck getting a call through when the phone was free. Kids had no choice but to figure things out for themselves. Seems to me the problem is people being tethered to their phones. Not only are these kids unable to take care of themselves, but they are unable to even be alone.
38
why shouldn't parents keep their kids from failure? I'd rather have a law firm clientele handed to me and continue to live the $500,000 lifestyle that I grew up with than build a clientele from scratch or some other type of livelihood like a successful business. Kutscher's had closed but the heirs are still enjoying the fruits of their grandparents hard work and success.
1
The problem of bulldozer parenting may be getting worse, I can't say; but it's hardly new. I remember when I was a grad student and resident tutor in an undergrad dorm at Harvard University in the mid-80s. I happened to be in charge of room assignments. One night I was awakened by a phone call at 1:30 in the morning. It was a student's mother telling me that her daughter couldn't possibly continue to live with her roommate, and demanding that I find another place for her. At 1:30 am! I told her off for calling me at that hour. I think she was shocked. The next day she complained to the house master (as he was then called) about my manner.
I sometimes wonder what happened to that girl. Is she now doing the same thing to her children?
21
Yay! So great when parents criticize other parents. While I certainly don’t want people to break the law or use wealth to gain access to college, I think the bigger issue is not the habits of certain parents but the vast economic disparities that allow so many families to struggle, and confuse other parents into thinking that their children should be separated from poor children.
25
It's a modern-era caste system. We talk about meritocracy and work ethic while simultaneously having a social fetish with celebrities who have either never truly worked a day in their lives or, if they had, started so far ahead due to their family wealth and connections that it should render their accomplishments meaningless.
For those around here who are wondering why so many young people embrace socialist ideas, a large part of it is because the ability to work hard and get ahead is largely gone. There are so few opportunities to start at the bottom in a company and work your way up without a college degree, unlike my parents' generation. My dad graduated high school early, at 15, never went to college, started at the bottom at a car dealership and worked his way up to senior management with all necessary training paid for GM. Now, even the salesmen have business degrees. Heck, even police officers I know have diplomas in "policing studies."(what is that, even?)
I got a two-year college diploma and went into business for myself, now making about $95,000 a year at age 26. But I won't deny for a second that my success was contingent largely on sheer luck. Meanwhile, my best friend with a teaching degree who speaks three languages works at Costco. She's smarter than I could ever hope to be, and it makes me so angry that she's worked so hard for nothing.
22
I'm not sure parents know how to be parents. My father was not a good parent, nor was his father a good parent. After he passed, my mother sat down and we reviewed our family history, mom provided the back story.
For instance, I started a business when I was 50. My father blew up and just about disowned me. Later, mom told me he had done the very same thing when he was let go at 50, after 6 months, he failed (he had not cultivated connections). He expected me to fail miserably. It didn't happen, but there were hard feelings for 10 years because I had not taken his advice. Every visit home for the holidays, he would lecture me on my poor choice, regardless of my income of over $200k nor a day without work. Parents have expectations they are unwilling to surrender.
22
This article explains how my mother in law raised my husband's siblings. She was hard on him, the eldest, almost neglectful in fact. But she went above and beyond for his 2 younger siblings and still does while we're all in our 30s. However, my husband is the rock and, I argue, the most independent and resilient in his family, which are traits that attracted me to him when we were dating. While his siblings always need the crutch from mom, are unreliable and flakey during serious situations. We can't tell them certain things that are "too difficult to hear" to avoid upsetting them like they can't handle it. I feel so validated in my observations of his family over the years now reading this article (been together for 9 years). As someone who grew up with a single parent who was working 24/7, I used to feel envious of my MIL's overkill attentative behavior to his siblings, but as years went on I became grateful for learning my hard lessons early in age and how to deal with it.
19
I really have to laugh when I read about these hyper-parents. The real problem is just beyond the horizon. There is now in existence, biotech that makes editing your unborn child's genes possible. CRSPR gene editing makes the process relatively inexpensive. Certainly, it will be within reach of the wealthy. When this happens, many unpleasant surprises that can accompany random gene combinations will be preventable. It will be possible to give a child a "leg up" that makes the current admissions scandal look like leaving an apple on teacher's desk. Memory, confidence, good looks, disease resistance? All will be within reach. Natural birth kids will need affirmative action to ensure they have some form of access to all the things that will be available "enhanced" children. THAT is what should worry all of us.
5
@Indrid Cold
Think the planet will last that long?
11
I have raised and launched 4 kids. All are successful adults (PhD linguist who works for Google; ER doctor; working and attending nursing school; 2nd LT in the US Marine Corps). My parenting philosophy was based on a quote from author Robert H. Heinlein: "Never cripple your children by making their lives easy for them."
We guided them, assisted them, but never got out in front, between them and the world. I also told them I would support them through college and then they were on their own, good luck, it's a harsh world out there.
Seems to have worked.
28
My mother was a helicopter AND snowplow parent long before either term was invented, and I hated it, especially since most other children of my generation were raised more "free-range."
It was damaging in many respects, but I struggled through it with the help of my college friends, who gave me the courage to say no to the helicoptering.
Their informal "therapy" was helpful enough that when Mom wanted to accompany me on job interviews, I was able to tell her in no uncertain terms how ridiculous that would look.
37
Has no one ever read any accurate history. Lincoln never went to Harvard and he did ok. His numerous failures paved the way for his compassionate wisdom. Washington struggled through numerous failures and seems to have done all right. It is a tough world out there and the fate of our children is not entirely in our hands. That jungle must be traversed by young people who have known adversity or they will be snow-plowed into superficial, boring and spoiled adults. Haven't you noticed?
11
What are these young adults studying? The offspring of snowplow parents can't be studying engineering. You've got to do the math yourself, pages of equations.
9
@Kathleen you are missing the point. It’s not the children who want snowplow parents. In many cases, they are mortified by the behaviors. The medical students I mentioned were very smart, obviously, and did very well, or they woukd have failed out very early. It was the overbearing parents who were interfering and embarrassing their adult children (med students are 22-26 years old!)
6
When I was a child, teachers were respected and so was the education they instilled. If I had ever gotten into trouble in school, my parents first words would have been "What did you do?" They would have sided with the teachers - unless it had been something truly surreal. Same with the tendency of pre-schoolers to take something without parental knowledge at a store. You were taken to the store to return the item and apologize. Our parents were teaching us to take responsibility for our actions.
Now, we have obnoxious parents who literally do not want the rain to fall on their children nor a C be written on a report card. Maybe the child got that C because they were doing their best or maybe they were not paying attention. Either way, changing the grade does not make the child more intelligent or more motivated, but never allowing the child to learn and grow from the experience does harm the child who never learns how to take credit for her successes (the C in a difficult subject) or to improve their own performance (being fully engaged in learning).
Snowplow parents are giving healthy children emotional crutches or wheelchairs instead of encouraging them to walk. What, I ask, will your children do when you are dead?
25
Shouting this again and again for those in the back...
Aunt-Becky-gate is not a problem with merit based testing, it's people cheating a bribing and committing crimes.
Aunt-Becky-gate is not a problem with kids preparing for a test as they very well should, it's people cheating a bribing and committing crimes.
Aunt-Becky-gate is not a problem with parents helping their kids as any parent does, it's people cheating a bribing and committing crimes.
Please stop abusing gifted and talented kids, or parents doing their job, every time some elitist tries to cheat the system. There are real children being directly harmed by this reactionary nonsense:
http://www.blacknews.com/news/kamilah-campbell-black-honors-files-lawsuit-falsely-accused-cheating-sat-scores/amp/
8
Exploiting children to fulfill the unrequited life dreams of the parent is nothing new. This is what keeps the psychoanalysts flush with cash.
It always was, and still is, a particularly appalling form of child abuse.
Do we all remember Jessica Dubroff or JonBenét Ramsey?
I have seen many "stage mothers" and "stage fathers". They treat their children with utter contempt and seem to exist in a state of perpetual anger aimed at the child. The look I have seen on the faces of a children as they tell their parents they did not pass an audition. It is an expression of stark terror.
I have known three people who were agents for child performers - and they all decided to get out of the business rather than participate in ruining the lives of children.
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
9
Am I understanding correctly. Ms. Eisenberg's son started a "charity" ? For what purpose, exactly? To send children of the well-to-do to a theater program?? If that can be called a charity, I can be called a published author for having a comment posted in the NYT.
31
Probably to fulfill a community service requirement for graduation.
7
We've gone from helicopter parenting to snowplow parenting...hmm and Felicity Huffman had a parenting blog???
9
Start calling it child rearing again.
3
We are creating a generation of monstrous, self entitled brats, who lack the basic skills to deal with life.
22
@Phil. I doubt it. Literally every generation, going back to early writing in the Roman Empire, has moaned about how horrible the next generation will be. You need to meet some real kids, and not rely on hyper articles like this.
2
Parents should help strengthen their children, not lift their burdens for them.
Good reading:
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure Hardcover – September 4, 2018
by Greg Lukianoff (Author), Jonathan Haidt (Author)
7
@Bjarte Rundereim
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/20/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind-review
Good reading? Not according to this review ~
You mean just a ricotta pie won't work now? (Carmela Soprano trying to influence a college admission on "The Sopranos")
16
I was the student health nurse for the Cornell Medical School in New York 25 years ago. Every single day, a parent called me to complain about a “health” issue their child was experiencing. These complaints ranged from earaches, headaches, blisters, and the very common constipation. The students themselves didn’t call or come in, the parents called, usually half hysterical that their 22 year old “child” hadn’t had a bowel movement in three days. And keep in mind, these “children” were medical students and some of them were in their fourth year and were going to be interns in a few months taking care of patients. I often wondered how some of these people even got into a prestigious medical school, and now I think I know.
33
@Pamela Morris
"...the parents called, usually half hysterical that their 22 year old “child” hadn’t had a bowel movement in three days. And keep in mind, these “children” were medical students and some of them were in their fourth year and were going to be interns in a few months taking care of patients.
Yes, these parents are are all - up in their kids business -
4
1 in 5 college students have considered suicide according to CBS News so helicopter parenting must not be working.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/1-in-5-college-students-so-stressed-they-consider-suicide/
8
I don't know if the parents are robbing their children of adulthood, as much as robbing them to use their own mind.
Just like physical exercise, children need to have mental exercise, with obstacles that challenge the mind, so that they can learn to make the right decisions by themselves.
16
YES, YES,YES, YES!!!
Are you listening? YES!!!
I have just spent 3.5 years trying to "reach' some millennial employees; all of whom suffered from these problems. Deep practical incompetence. "I don't know how to check the oil on my car." "Why is it MY job to be sure the tires on the wagon (I'm using) all have enough air?? And how was I supposed to know if I kept pulling the wagon with a flat tire that would wreck the tire?" " 'I know you told me not to burn branches here; but it was way more convenient.' 'You're in the middle of 50 acres of bone dry 5 foot tall GRASS!' 'um. so?' "
Omigod. And on, and on. I tried REALLY hard to reach these people; but- they were missing critical bits of basic thinking - mostly realizing that their actions have actual consequences for everyone else in the operation.
And incidentally; I can see NO evidence that high school sports teach "teamwork".
37
Memo to snowplow parents:
You cannot live your child's life for him or her, so quit trying to do so.
Hint: What happens to your kid after you are gone (or do you expect to live forever)?
19
Are teenagers really that stupid and unaware that they would actually believe that a national testing service, like the one that runs the ACT, would allow a kid to take the test at home with his mother as proctor? Why wouldn’t everyone take the test at home if this was allowed? Perhaps these kids just got so used to their parents paving the way that they never even questioned why their friends had to take the test with hundreds of other kids but not them.
Did these kids also never question why they were suddenly allowed two days for the test while their friends only had one? Why they suddenly had a doctor certifying that they had a disability just in time for the SATs? How many parents in this country finagle that when their kids are perfectly fine to take the test with their classmates.
What great values these parents teach. And what a stunning lack of opportunity for their kids to struggle and learn Nd understand that sometimes you lose, sometimes you just have to work harder, and sometimes no matter how hard you work, you still can’t get what you want. These are important lessons for everybody, but especially for kids.
17
That's an awfully long essay for saying that spoiling your kids is not good for them.
19
Why don't they flunk out, or do they? These kids who get into Georgetown or USC with faked credentials, SAT tests someone else took, essays someone else wrote must be woefully under-equipped to succeed there. Do they somehow muddle through? I wonder if anyone, perhaps college admissions officers, have looked at this.
14
@JonK
Maybe they just hire someone to take their exams for them and to write their papers?
11
These aren't "parents"; these are very wealthy parents. 1% of us are not indicative of all of us.
I teach in an urban district. These are "children" too. These are "parents" too. "Snowplowing" for them? For a complex set of reasons, at back to school night, no one comes.All of my students know someone who has been shot & killed, & all of them have fallen asleep or hidden to gunshots. For them, community college is an accomplishment.
What is interesting to me is that the Michigan parents' idea of getting their kid into a top college was to have a 'charity" --in other words, Black Lives Matter because they are props for their own advancement. I have seen many upper class kids boast they 'volunteered' to 'help' urban kids read - for one summer,taking away trained peoples' jobs. It's not about the kids. It's about themselves.
So here, with this article--unintentionally it's doing the same thing. The only 'real' people are the wealthy. Who cares that middle class people work 4 jobs & are never home or that our kids are $50K in debt just from going to college (never mind an Ivy). We are invisible. We exist only as props to make the wealthy feel good, if we exist at all. If they notice us, we're mocked as rubes, racists, idiots. We should be happy for crumbs at work b/c we're lazy. These are the people saying all this--the same people who cheat & lie their way to top jobs while putting a sign in their front yard Hate Has No Home Here.
21
What no one seems to acknowledge....these people just ‘got caught’. A former boss of mine....her daughter’s horse trainer paid someone else to do her daughter’s homework at high school which led to an athletic scholarship, then kept it up in college. Very well known Wall-Street billionaire, huge democratic donor- well they paid someone to write their daughters’ papers in college. No, they didn’t go through an ‘official business’ to make college dreams and graduation a reality, which might have been their smartest decision. Trust me, serious amount of helpless, undereducated people out there who hold ‘big’ jobs. And, they have have ZERO street smarts.
25
This kind of overbearing parents exist also in Sweden where they are referred to as Curling Parents; if you know the sport you'll understand...
13
and this is why i refuse to purchase girl scout cookies from anyone but the girl scout herself!
25
As a first generation with refugee parents who did not speak any English, my parents had none of the experiences other parents had.
Years later after many jobs Durakovic by my childhood and several degrees, coaching soccer and baseball to my children and their peers in a tony Westchester suburb three memories stand out: first, before each game children who never learned how to play “choose-up” with their peers or to make rules for the game, would circle around me before each game waiting for starting line-ups; second, being harassed by Mothers demanding more playing time for “my Johnny; and third, watching one father on the side line videotaping his 12 year old southpaw pitcher that we all knew he planned to use to get his kid a baseball scholarship, hoping he would pitch in the big leagues.
You could always tell how parents were over-scheduling and over-activing their kids and over-parenting by looking at the activities posted on their refrigerators.
Best story was the time a parent car-pooling her son and his friends from baseball to hockey without time for making dinner stopped for Chinese food. Kids wearing jeans in the car burned their thighs spilling hot won ton soup in a white take-out container in the back seat, while Mommy threatened to sik husband-lawyer to sue Chinese restaurant owner-immigrant while kids watched Mommy protect them. Great lesson on justice and parenting and unwillingness to take responsibility.
9
This parental protection and payment tendency is very common and actually expected in most countries of the world. Proctors get paid to help students take exams in Pakistan, for example. Chinese parents do all they can.
Why are people suddenly freaking out in the US?
1
@Inveterate. So if other people commit a crime, that crime is now acceptable? Whataboutism.....
Cheating weakens the fabric of any civilized society -that’s why.
11
Fear is a powerful emotion. Fear is triggered by survival instincts hard coded into Homo sapiens physiology. An active mind drives behavior in ways that can appear divorced from a child’s long happiness, never mind the parents. But perhaps that is the ultimate paradox: that these instincts drive behavior divorced from present and future happiness. I’m not giving parents a free pass, however, sometimes people just can’t help themselves and they become imprisoned by the swirling societal fictions that appear so real. Yes, perhaps these kids earn more money, according to the research, but are they happy, fulfilled, living with real purpose? Do we really believe graduating from Harvard or Umass will be the difference between meeting basic human needs and not? I’m not convinced. Harvard research itself has looked at this question and concluded: it is relationships, stupid.
4
What happens to the snowplower's kids when the snowplower parent dies? Are they prescribed some sort of anti-anxiety drug for the rest of their lives?
11
You are doing a tremendous disservice by helping your offspring. Unfairly helping them sets them back.
3
If "poor" parents had more shekel to cast about, would their behavior be any better than the "rich" parents castigated hereabouts? Money corrupts. If you ain't got none, you're safe.
5
@Heckler
Safe? In what sector of the underclass?
4
In many instances today, the parents are more obnoxious than the students! The gutter has come to power! Sad.
7
Yes, "...arms that can only lift a spoon". (Thanks to "Everyone's Gone to the Moon".)
1
Maybe there is no large scale moral lesson to be drawn from this scandal.
Act with honor. Don't cheat.
Rich, poor, old, young, black, white, atheist, believer, dumb, smart, successful, unemployed, unknown, famous.....
Just behave as if your life, and your family's lives, depended upon your own integrity.
12
Those Felicity quotes at the end are amazing...
7
Tell you one thing....in my day you never dared to say you were bored. Because if you did, you'd be give something to take away the boredom, like cleaning the garage. I'm astounded at the parents who think they have to be like some sort of TV set, always entertaining the kids.
27
"If children have never faced an obstacle, what happens when they get into the real world?"
They run into people like me that started at the bottom and put in the time, sweat, blood and effort to get where I am in life.
10
@Bryan
Yes, me as well, and where is that exactly?
The old bank account will soon be down to $2,000 and I'll be eligible for food stamps...
5
I'd be interested to read an article about how the two actresses (or daughters) accused of these crimes had blogs which fuelled the need for Ivy League universities as backdrops to the real business of selling merchandise.
9
@MCV
This is one piece that puzzles me … why do the children of people who are already filthy rich need Ivy League degrees anyway? Why not just give them the money? Or just support them in whatever they want to do?
14
"At Stanford, she said, she saw students rely on their parents to set up play dates with people in their dorm" What?? I know that American kids are several years behind to other nations when it comes to independence but this is unreal. Where we come from kids start going to school by themselves using public transportation at the first grade and then they are also responsible for finding friends...
17
I taught at an elite private prep school in the 1980s. The head of psychiatry at Children's Hospital in Washington D.C. gave a talk to just the faculty, and one of his main points was that kids need to learn how to pick themselves up and dust themselves off when life knocks them down.
I'll never forget what he said: "If you want your children to succeed, let them fail early and often."
23
Full transparency, my husband and I have no children but I see this happening all the time. I’ve worked with college kids and recent graduates. The entitlement is eye rolling. I’ve had kids say to me, “will this take long, I have to catch a train”. My answer, “don’t worry, there’s always another train!” When something needs to get done, I hear quite often “I don’t know how to do this.” They are so scared of making a mistake because if they do, they don’t know how to cope. I feel like no one tries. I always say “give it a try, see how you do”. They have no idea how to learn from their mistakes. I’m a little scared for the future.
21
Last night Bill Maher spent a good bit of his HBO show talking about this (well, it was more ranting). You could see his tie loosening around his shirt collar as his neck kept expanding and his blood vessels pumped overtime. He inadvertently referred to the phenomenon as "bulldozer parenting," perhaps because no one in LA would know what a snow plow looks like.
That said, I'm less concerned or surprised by this story of privilege paying for the privilege of a place at the table of privilege than I am at the obtuse denial of someone like Ms. Eisenberg.
I lived in Detroit for 5 years. Near where the riots broke out in 68. I know the difference between Bloomfield Hills and Detroit.
I grew up in an impoverished coal county in Pennsylvania and made my way to an Ivy League college through a trifecta of scholarships, grants, and loans (back when they were 3%). And I did it myself. Neither of my parents graduated fro high school and neither had either the time nor the ability to be of much help with the 3 applications I made to college.
That a parent would think it within reason and not crazy-over-the-top to do what she did is far more disturbing than anything I've yet heard or read about any of those arrested. Lord save us.
18
These parents are out of control. My parents told me they owed me high school and I managed to earn three degrees with not a dime from them. They wouldn't have known how to navigate higher education because they didn't have any. If you are curious and ambitious you can make a success no matter if you attend a "no-name" college. I know it is more competitive now but this absorption with elite colleges is numbing and destructive. I never asked for homework help, wrote my own essays and papers and got great self-confidence for being self-reliant. I feel sorry for these spoiled kids whose lives are run by their parents.
12
I have had several peers around my age (late 40’s/early 50’s) tell me that they will not take on interns from prestigious colleges like Ivies. The young adults coming from those schools have no idea how to cope with a job. Now, they look for state school grads who worked their way through college. I can understand why.
39
When I was pregnant with my first-born (1983) I was working in the investment business. I was in NYC for a conference and couple of the guys (it was all guys in those days) asked me if I had enrolled the unborn child in a ("top") preschool yet. And, if not, I better get on it or that child would have no chance to attend an Ivy League school. I really thought they were joking . . . NOT! That was the beginning of the helicopter parenting era - my kids did just fine making their own mistakes and us not running the gauntlet for them. Neither of them went to elite anything - but have 4 masters' degrees, one PhD., jobs, and no student debt!
More importantly, they grew into really nice, good adults who we thoroughly enjoy. People need to get a grip and let their children grow up. It is amazing what they are able to do!!
28
Gosh, how unfortunate for the children/students that they have helicopters and snowplows for parents. But, most of all, it's our society that suffers as some of these students grow up to gain positions of power that they truly didn't earn and can't perform well. I can think of a few politicians who lack competence, character, and compassion who fit right into this category.
32
Some of these parents might have been watching The Simpsons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3EqZ-OCicE
3
In the station wagon with all the STUFF, on the way to college, my parents gave me a pep talk.
You're going to be out from under our supervision. A few hours, and you'll be a free man, my father said. I nodded at his eyes, fixed on me via the rear-view mirror, and grinned.
We expect that you'll immediately do things that we disapprove of, said my mother, who was knitting. I made weak protesting noises. She went on. And we expect that those things will complicate your life and make you unhappy.
Well, my father said, we don't care. Are you unhappy? We don't want to know. We told you not to do those things. You deal with the consequences. -- His eyes again. -- Do you understand?
Two exceptions, my mother said. If you get arrested or if you get a girl pregnant, we can hire a better lawyer than you can afford and we can find an abortionist quicker than you can.
I sank back into the rear-seat cushions. I understand, I said. I wasn't grinning any more.
32
cate, the Terry bradys of the world are very likely to criticize younger generations for not having "gumption" like they did and I'm sick of it. I've been hearing about it since 1979 and I'm done with the implicit judgment that we could have had the same outcome had we just been as smart and industrious.
6
I find it strange children would allow their parents to co-opt so much of their autonomy. Having a parent do your laundry for you would be absolutely mortifying public information. It's equivalent to telling your friends your mom still cuts your meat for you. I certainly wouldn't stand for it. We were all in a hurry to grow up too fast. Good luck stopping us. Short of sending a kid away to boarding school or prison, all the parents failed.
I actually strategically planned my high school jobs around avoiding parents. Delivery and restaurants were obvious choices. I lucked out though and got a job at a small independent movie theater. You want to talk about independence. The skies had no limit. Good luck finding me between the hours of dusk and dawn. We even had private screening parties in the theater for all the staff and their friends. BYO-Whatever. A professional cleaning crew came through in the morning.
Why young adolescents would trade this sort of freedom for a snow plow is beyond me. I made it through college better than many of my more sheltered peers. I like to attribute my self-sufficiency to sneaking on the bus to NYC after work on school nights. Cell phone or no, my parents weren't going to find me unless I wanted to be found. My father had one very simple rule: Your GPA stays above 3.0 at all times. I graduated both high school and college with honors.
14
@Andy Today's college-age youth find a weird sort of freedom in trading what some see as liberty for substantial support. They have come to expect support where previous generations never imagined it.
Is this a matter of generational difference or the symptom of a problem? As a 30+ year college professor, I'd vote for the latter, as it extends to their academic performance. They are rarely hungry to learn because they expect all of their food to be delivered predigested. There are exceptions of course. If there weren't, I would have quit long ago.
7
@Andy
They don’t realize it’s co-opting their autonomy for if you’ve been surrounded by that approach from infancy you won’t know any better...until, finally, reality will set in with a shocking earnestness.
6
Parenting is a difficult process. These examples are hilarious and as a teacher I can testify that they are all too common. However, most middle or even upper class parents deserve a bit more sympathy. Those I know are only “guilty” of having tried to be the best possible parents they can be. It’s important for children to have parents who are loving, involved, and who want their children to be stimulated in schools and understood by their teachers. I think the biggest mistake I see is that these parents simply don’t realize that at some point their chief responsibility is supposed to shift from trying to protect their child from disappointment and difficulty to helping their child negotiate hurt and difficulty. They stay in protection mode, and the result, in some cases, is delayed maturity in their kids. And these are the kids who are going to face the consequences of climate change and resource scarcity! I wonder, sometimes, how they will adjust to possible crises or sudden hardship...
9
Pretty eloquent testimony to how seriously parents take the challenges and cruelties of our modern “I’m OK, you’re lunch” life — life in a world fraught with debt, radical inequality, school shootings, predatory marketing on an unprecedented scale, and omnidirectional hostility.
I’m not necessarily excusing what is under discussion here, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that parents who love their children want to protect them, and that we are at a moment in history — the moment of children in cages, uniquitous scams, crushing expenses for very limited rewards and opportunities for too many; the age of Momo — when doing just that seems insuperably hard.
Someone has to try to protect children from the bear-pit we’ve prepared for them, is my point.
4
@MM
And what will they do when they - meet a bear?
4
If the bear is big enough, the same any of us would do: get torn to pieces. You have to watch out with metaphors.
2
Ah, the parenting predicament. Our mantra, while raising a now successful, independent, now adult daughter, reflected our own (hopeful) obsolescence as a goal. Is that not the end game? Otherwise, why do we parent at all? Was it easy? Not always. Did we make mistakes? Of course.
If you are a parent, please, be the grown up! Say no. Structure situations where your child faces adversity and needs to practice problem solving. Demand challenges in school to teach the value of hard, academic work. And when facing a perhaps less than desirable teacher, tell your kid to make it work as he or she will be better suited to suffer the occasional fool are we all inevitably faced with throughout life.
We enjoy a wonderful relationship as adults - not so obsolete after all - which I believe has sprung from a philosophy of rights with responsibilities, actions yielding consequences, and expectations of mutual respect and honest effort in all things.
Is that not what we owe our children, society AND ourselves?
8
Come on! There had to something in the dining hall with no sause on it! I get the Stanford dinning hall menu every week. Hardly anything has sause on it!
4
Why don’t you know how to spell sauce?
15
I had been an elementary schoolteacher. One of my fourth-graders - an amiable, easy-going child - was not The Problem. It was her mother: a habitual offender of thinking that her input on *everything in the classroom* was both wanted and valued. After five months of this nonsense - during a written test - I looked up to witness her child clearly leaning over towards a peer, copying exam responses. Cut to the principal-parent-teacher meeting re the consequential zero grade, wherein I informed said parent that "You are robbing your child of the opportunity to learn from her mistakes." The principal backed me, the zero grade would hold, the student seemed bewildered by all the fuss (!) and that parent learned *nothing* from the experience. These maladaptive parenting manipulations begin early; now as a business consultant, I see the ramifications of such parenting: in 20- and 30- something employees who view workplace issues in terms of how they are - with a preadolescent bitterness - about how they didn't get what they wanted. They're also genuinely astonished that HR is calling them on the carpet for behaving badly, exhibiting immature managerial decisions, and displaying an appalling lack of emotional intelligence towards their employees, who they so maladaptively "manage."
16
90% of how children turn out is determined by the time they leave the womb. Unless you are an extremely neglectful or sociopathic person, they are going to be and do what they will with or without you. So let's not get obsessed by minor variations in parenting behaviors. So let's stop blaming parents for all of their children's foibles.
3
@ Mark: " ... let's not get obsessed by minor variations in parenting behaviors." And now for the *responsible* version of parenting, please - or are you blithely oblivious to that reality?
4
@Mark
Ever hear of - nature or nurture?
2
And I have to add, I don't believe for a minute the kids of these rich, dishonest parents didn't know what they're parents were up to. They seriously didn't wonder why they were given extra time to write an SAT? They didn't say, "hey mom, dad, I'm not dyslexic!" And are you telling me they never looked at their own application and said, "But mom, dad, I don't play varsity tennis?" Or: " But mom, dad, how come all my classmates are writing common app essays except for me?" Or perhaps, "hey mom, dad, you know that essay I didn't actually write -- why does it talk about hwo much I love water polo, when I you know I hate chlorine?' Seriously, if this is all about kids taking responsibility, why do we suddenly let these kids off the hook? They knew. Just saying ...
25
And I have to add, I don't believe for a minute the kids of these rich, dishonest parents didn't know what they're parents were up to. They seriously didn't wonder why they were given extra time to write an SAT? They didn't say, "hey mom, dad, I'm not dyslexic!" And are you telling me they never looked at their own application and said, "But mom, dad, I don't play varsity tennis?" Or: " But mom, dad, how come all my classmates are writing common app essays except for me?" Or perhaps, "hey mom, dad, you know that essay I didn't actually write -- why does it talk about hwo much I love water polo, when I you know I hate chlorine?' Seriously, if this is all about kids taking responsibility, why do we suddenly let these kids off the hook? They knew. Just saying ...
In typical Gray Lady fashion, enterprising writers -- and family therapists behind the scenes -- have turned a news story into a supposedly new phenomenon: "snowplow parenting," which doesn't seem to be any different from "helicopter parenting," which wasn't new when it was first coined, either. Wealthy, famous and powerful parents have ALWAYS set up their kids, and it sometimes involves illegal and/or unethical behavior. As the newspaper of New York society, The Times should recognize that their society pages (now known as the Style pages) has always celebrated people brought up in this environment.
14
@Peter Blau
Well, if you read the article, you'd see that a distinct difference is drawn between "helicopter" parenting and "snowplow" parenting. Helicopter parents hover and attempt to protect the child from any possible harm. This may be harmful to the child, but it's not like snowplow parents who don't care who they hurt or what laws they break in helping their children get things they haven't earned.
5
Parenting is hard and it is extremely difficult to watch our children make mistakes. We worked two jobs took care of our parents while we were both attending college full time.
After graduating from grad school we were married and worked hard so that our children would never want for anything.
Our children were going to have it easier than us.
Unfortunately they didn’t want to academically work hard because they knew better than us. So now they realize how difficult it is to economically move forward without a college degree.
When they ask us to pay for college now the answer is the same, work and save maybe you will then value your own education.
I am glad we said enough is enough we can’t live your life. We were heartbroken when they chose to throw away a college education .
However looking at this college admissions scandal so many other parents ran up against the same ignorant wall our children have built. Their life experiences know more than adults.
They want to live their lives and as parents we will support them but not financially.
12
These kids ultimately become parasites, living off the wealth of their parents and never making a meaningful contribution to society. I have no tolerance or sympathy for what will be their inevitable plight as the money runs out, which it always does when one cannot support him/herself.
12
My two sons are a freshman in college and a freshman in high school.
My wife and I barely looked at either of their homework after they were old enough to start taking care of it completely on their own (around 5th grade). My older son did have a lot of trouble with math in high school so we hired an after-school tutor to help him. That was the extent of it.
While he seldom got any A's in high school and definitely got plenty of C's (even with the tutor's math help), he got into the college he wanted to (a very good small liberal arts school where he's quite happy) and is getting B's and C's there, again with no parental assistance.
We basically ignore our younger son's school work. It's his business. He knows it and he does it. Not necessarily the way I would (he often does his homework on the bus to school - not my favorite approach) but he's getting A's and B's.
I already was through high school once on my own. I certainly didn't need to go through it again. And both my kids know it. So they learned how to do it themselves.
20
@D Rosenberg
Wow, you sound like the perfect parent! I have three boys, one in college and two in high school. I can only hope to be as fantastic a parent as you! Please share other tidbits of wisdom to the rest of us flawed, mere mortals.
Articles such as this one help us all feel so superior.
6
I was an administrator at elite colleges and universities for all but the final four years of a three-decade career in higher education. The stories I can tell. I rarely tell them, however. I’ve become too disheartened by family members and friends who listen to an outrageous tale—of, for example, the father who called his child several times a day to literally direct her to her next class or activity—and tell me they would NEVER help in such a way. Yes, they “edited” their children’s applications and continue to “edit” their homework. Yes, they book transportation and all other arrangements for every school break. Yes, they make appointments and remind their kids to go to them—and to wake up, go to class, eat meals (sometimes checking the dining hall menus posted on line). Yes, if their child goes abroad for a semester they demand twice-daily FaceTime sessions. But they would NEVER be helicopter parents.
I really dislike the way this makes me sound. And I try to look at the flip side, wondering what unseen advantages these children are gaining. I also know that colleges are complicit. After all, who gave parents the idea that perfection (or the appearance thereof) is the only ticket that will get their children through these golden doors?
If I were a parent, I hope I would resist the arms race and let my kids fail, as my parents did. But having seen many colleagues wielding snowplows for their own kids while lamenting the helplessness of our enrollees, I doubt it.
27
Sometimes I make reference to the "benign neglect" with which I raised my children back in the day, and I can sense that the only part many hyper-parents hear is "neglect." The thing is, though, we fed them, clothed them, taught them to swim and look both ways before crossing the street, insisted they lead balanced lives by limiting their TV to an hour on weekdays, created traditions and memories with them, and shared our interests with them. But help them with their homework? No. Intervene in their relationships with teachers and peers? No. Play with them? Rarely. Fill out their college applications or write their essays? No. Save them from the financial consequences of their mistakes (and there were some mistakes!)? No. Refrain from chewing them out if they deserved it? No. Schedule their every waking minute with enriching, resume-padding activities? No.
And guess what? They are now independent adults with college educations, good jobs, good friends, and solid romantic relationships, all of which we try very hard not to brag about, BTW, because these are their accomplishments, not ours.
26
ALL smart technology is designed to make children lazier and stupider and, therefore, easier to manipulate.
ALL social media is designed to replace the civic values of democracy with the violent values of tribal societies.
4
How about those 1 in 65 -- or is it now 1 in 36 -- kids who are autistic? Or the incredible proportion who now turn out to be learning disabled -- is it 1 in 15? Or the ones whose parents have to work opposite shifts, because they need two salaries and America doesn't offer childcare?
How bout a neat little feature (cute anecdotes please) about how those children are robbing their parents of adulthood?
5
It's funny how every commentator here thinks they are not a snow plow parent when I bet if you had a third party observer, they will absolutely say at least 50% of the commentators here are snow plow parents.
It's just statistically impossible that we see so many snow plow parents in major metro areas, but none of the NYT readers here claim to be one.
13
College needs to stop being the end-all-be-all destination for kids. These days, with the whole of human knowledge literally at our fingertips, it's become another commodity available to anyone who can pay for it, a degree now just an expensive piece of paper. Meanwhile, the people who are fixing your cars, unclogging your drains, replacing your circuit breaker panels, and getting your internet to work again are the ones pulling in six-figure salaries and going home with peace of mind. But no, Muffy, manual labor is awful, we MUST get you into that Ivy League school so you can major in gender studies or art history and get a job serving the plumber his venti latte at Starbucks.
14
@Trish
and they all send their kids to college . Those who cannot run a business experience relatively low wages, and little job security.
Snowplow, helicopter, Drone...a rose by any other name still smells like parents not letting go and thereby handicapping their children and preventing them from becoming independent adults. Check out Slouching Toward adulthood by Sally Koslow for deeper understanding of the issues for the parents and the children.
4
Yep. This is why, as of several years ago, I have a policy of not hiring people under 40. Starting about 10 years ago when millennials were entering the work force everything changed with hiring. The difference between gen-x workers and millennials is huge. The former is as autonomous as you can get, and very productive; the latter need constant hand-holding, extensive training, and endless supervision and "emotional support," to the point where it's easier to just do the job yourself. Our company struggled and was on the brink of failure for about 7 years of this nonsense, then I replaced the millennials with gen-xers and we're back on track, finally succeeding again as a company. It's a great policy (and thankfully legal because it's only illegal to discriminate against people over 40, not under 40), I highly recommend it to any company struggling with a workforce that needs managers to become stand-in mommies and daddies to function.
36
This is not a solution. Millennials (myself included) were not all raised this way and are suffering the crippling reality of our social immobility.
2
Talk about perverse narcissism! These parents are acting from a place of fear. Their own fear of not being sufficiently worthy ... and lovable! Their behavior has nothing to do with unconditional love for their children. What's more, they're confusing artificial external power -- that which can be earned, bought, "liked," lost, negotiated, traded -- with authentic internal power that comes from living in alignment with your true essence, who you are at your core. These parents don't realize that nobody can take your power away from you when you live from the inside out. Needless to say, they'd have no idea what I'm talking about. External validation is all they know and what they thrive on. It's horrifying to realize how little self-awareness or emotional intelligence these parents have. Their values and behaviors reflect their own insecurities and superficial values. It's no wonder their children -- too many children -- are experiencing higher rates of anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts than they have in years. Only when Americans reexamine what "being rich" really means will our children experience true enrichment. Until then, snowplows will be blocking the way toward living a meaningful life that has more to do with making vital contributions to humanity than being featured among the rich and famous.
3
in 2001 i left for college armed with a copy of "where's mom now that i need her" and the ability to function in a new environment. i earned good grades, navigated the study abroad experience, and found success in several clubs and organizations, on my own. now it's considered "adulting." back then it was.... being a responsible human. my parent's hands-off approach worked quite well.
6
There are tens of thousands flawed studies that collectively have failed to support the idea that styles of parenting, excluding systematic abuse and neglect, affect the attitudes and behaviors of adult offspring. The brilliant work of Judith Rich Harris, who died recently, exploded this nurturing myth, beginning with her book, "The Nurture Assumption" 1998, The ideas of helicopters and snow plows are pop-psychology at its worst.
3
This article annoyed me to no end. The root cause of all of this excessive “parenting” is the lack of a social safety net combined with ever growing wealth inequality. It increasingly feels as if the stakes involved in getting your kid into the right school or getting her the right job could not be higher. And it often feels like everyone is doing it so you have no choice. This will not end until we create a more just society. Telling parents to stop calling their kids teachers is just pointless.
11
@Sandra
Income inequality and social safety nets have nothing to do with failing to teach children personal responsibility and accountability. Teaching the wrong life lessons by doing everything for them, insuring that they never have the slightest exposure to the negative realities of life, doesthe children a great disservice. It’s only “pointless” if you actually believe those parents should micromanage every aspect of their kids lives, even into adulthood.
13
@Sandra
Here is the problem: "It increasingly feels as if the stakes involved in getting your kid into the right school or getting her the right job could not be higher."
It is NOT THE PARENTS JOB to get the "kid" into college or a job! In every previous generation that was the individual's job, not the parents'. These "kids" are 17/18 and older. They are adults, legally speaking. Blaming income inequality doesn't even make sense and is just avoiding responsibility (ie, growing up).
9
Let me be the snowplow parent's, or devil's, advocate for a minute.
Parents mentioned here, for the most part, did not create the hyper-credentialed,extracurricular world that kids and young adults now live in. The article plainly states how demographics and the increasing requirement for, at a minimum, an undergrad degree for any type of job. Meanwhile, college spots have not increased much at all.
I have run across teachers,administrators,department heads,university lab personnel heads who think nothing of scuttling a young person's whole future because of a perceived slight or petty disagreement.
Judicious intervention in the face of some power-crazed middle-aged professor who is frustrated because she never got published or whatever and wants to take it out on your kid is not a bad thing.
But even I would draw the line once undergrad is complete.
3
Found the snowplow parent on this thread!
13
I've been a teacher for 18 years, but came to it later in life, to allow me more time with my children, now 19 and 17. I actually taught one of the kids in the thick of this current controversy.
More time with my kids them didn't mean always smoothing the path. A lesson I learned from watching both good and bad examples of parenting was to let them fail often in more-or-less safe ways. My usual line is that I wanted them to make enough mistakes when they were young so that they learned what "stupid" looks like...preferably when the cost of stupid was relatively low.
For my son, when he was in pre-school, we had an agreement that if he climbed up a tree, he had to climb down. I would spot for him, but not help him down. I can remember other parents getting up to help my son down out of a tree, and the shocked look on their faces when I told them not to do so.
I've watched somewhere around 20% of parents sweep all problems out of the way for their children, often with spectacularly bad results when a problem arose that they could not make go away. This is just the latest example.
I am proudest of the fact that my children are young grown ups, who respect me, but have no problem disagreeing with me and with choosing their own path.
8
These snowplow parents remind me a lot of entitled parents, which are basically snowplow parents but they believe that they have a right to get anything their child wants whether it’s legal or illegal because the ends justify the means. If you’re curious about these entitled parents then go to Reddit and go to the entitled parents Sub-Reddit
6
Despite their best efforts, these parents have taught their kids a horrible lesson—that it’s okay to cheat to get ahead.
I can’t help wonder if the parents did this as much if not more for their own egos because clearly they were not thinking of their children’s well being.
This is an indictment on our society and how access to a good education and opportunity to succeed is anything but equal. It’s shameful.
6
Apart from the small minority of parents breaking laws to help their kids or abusing or neglecting their kids the rest of us are just trying our best. Give parents (read mom) a break already. It is not always mom's fault.
4
Fire burns. Watch out. This is how you build a fire and use it. Make aware. Teach. Make aware. Teach. Repeat.
2
Why is the Times so obsessed with how the rich bring up their kids? Obviously money or the lack of money is going to distort relationships. I don't blame the parents as much as the institutions that allow money to distort (the supposed) meritocracy. Not all parents, not even the rich ones, are all that interested in being parents and don't have the attention span for helping their children grow up. (Tiffany Trump.) We, as a society, should encourage parental love, and discourage institutional unfairness.
4
I still don’t get why the Loughlin parents would spend so much money to get their daughter into USC, or any college for that matter. She made clear that she had no interest in, or time for, college. According to her she barely had time for high school. What must those high school transcripts have looked like...unless that was also bought and paid for.
10
Your ONLY job as a parent is to launch an independent adult and you’ve got 18 years - give or take - to accomplish this. Every step of the way you need to be teaching them how NOT to need you. Otherwise you are burdening society with the problem you couldn’t solve.
What’s the saying? ... teach a man to fish.
9
When I was in college (late 1960s), I spent my junior year in Vienna. No cell phone, no e-mail, no computers. Airmail letters were expensive, so once a month was about all I could manage. I traveled to Communist countries and the Middle East without ever telling my parents. I had no money so hoarded rolls from lunch for dinner. Once I discovered my classes transferred as pass/fail, I kinda stopped working very hard on the studies, preferring to travel and experience a foreign country. I had a wonderful experience and grew up a LOT.
In contrast, I have had exchange students stay with us who were on Skype with all their friends and family back home every single day, and on the phone nearly as often. Aside from school, they rarely did anything they could not have done at home, despite my efforts. I wonder whether they got anything out of the exchange experience.
12
When I was 16 my father told me to forget about college, as we were poor. My guidance counselor urged me to reconsider, as my SAT scores were high. I didn’t know how to go about applying, or even getting help, so I just focused on getting away from my family. Six months later, living on my own and working (miserably) in a curtain factory, I remembered my counselor’s advice. I figured out how to apply, borrowed every penny, and was in college by January. I did the same for law school. I am proud, but it was very tough.
In retrospect, I would have loved some guidance and support. Perhaps not snowplows or helicopters, but maybe a shovel and some binoculars? Neither end of the parenting spectrum is ideal.
33
I cannot imagine how these kids feel... finding out that your parents think you’re incompetent and incapable? Seems like that’d be a bigger blow than failing a test.
9
Just to say : I walked alone to school and back home ever since I was six.
I walked the streets of Paris at night alone ever since I was twelve. (No cellphones in the early 70's)
I travelled all alone for the first time in a foreign country when I was fourteen.
I am now 59, all in one piece, and reasonably happy.
5
A big part of this is based on fear and desperation, because we increasingly live in a winner takes all society. And the winners want to ensure their offspring are as well off as they are, or even better. As Springsteen sang in Atlantic City, "Down here it's just winners and losers, And don't get caught on the wrong side of that line."
8
I have always believed the most important extracurricular activity a high school student could have is (horrors) a part time or summer job.
14
The freshly renovated kitchen in my daughter’s freshman dorm at a well-known liberal arts college was destroyed in a fire when a first year student decided to make tea. He plugged in an electric kettle, turned it on, and also placed it on the stove over a lit burner. And then walked away and forgot about it.
After the dorm had been evacuated and the fire extinguished by the firefighters, he came forward to admit what he had done and was surprised that people were upset with him.
“But I’d never boiled water before!” was his excuse. And he fully expected to be told it was okay - and win a prize for trying, one can only imagine.
My daughter was appalled. “He didn’t even apologize.” Myself, I wasn’t all that surprised. I knew too many parents who seemed to think their job was insulating their precious offspring from any kind of practical experience as well as from the natural consequences of that ignorance. But as short-sighted - and dangerous - as that parenting strategy is, too many parents have convinced themselves that it is the best way, indeed the only way. Somehow they never connect the dots.
21
My daughter graduated from college with two degrees. It was a long hard slog to get her through, but I am glad I was of assistance to her. What do I mean by "assistance?"
I taught her the value of honor by showing her, through my own life experience that honesty is the ONLY policy. I never tolerated cheating of any type.
I emphasized the importance of hard work and of ASKING FOR HELP when help was needed. When she needed help I got her a tutor. I also hired coaches to assist her in her athletic career. None of these gave her the answers, but they all insisted that she DO THE WORK.
I taught her that there is no shame in admitting that you don't know something, and when you don't know something, there is no shame in seeking out a teacher. I used to tell her the old Arabian saying, "He who knows not, and knows that he knows not,is a student; Teach him." One cannot be educated if one if afraid to raise their hand and say, "I don't understand what you mean."
Finally, I provided support when needed. I paid for Insomnia Cookies and coffee when she was up late at night studying for final exams, or writing papers, but I did not help her to write those papers. When she had to quit her job to take some graduate level courses, I gave her a monthly money stipend to help her out, but I did not interfere with her coursework. I taught her that anything you don't earn is actually stolen.
Snowplows belong on the streets in winter--not in the lives of young people.
9
In my experience, wealthy and entitled parents do intervene with school officials into giving their less worthy, lower achieving kids a spot that rightfully belongs to someone else. We experienced this at our public elementary school. My daughter scored in the 97th and 99th percentiles on standardized math tests last spring and fall, which according to the school website, should have granted her a place in the GT program. I didn’t feel like I was being a snowplow parent by inquiring about this, yet the school was not exactly responsive and tried to have me believe that “challenge” homework packets were the same as GT pull-out programming. My daughter could see which kids received the pull-out programming and knew that some of these kids were wealthy and popular, but not as academically accomplished as she was. Their parents obviously advocated for them. The school begrudgingly gave my daughter a spot, and she is thriving, finally able to work at the level of her ability. It bothers me that I had to intervene to obtain what should have been her rightful place. I was livid about the experience. We definitely do not live in a meritocracy.
11
In my way of thinking, this phenomenon of hyper-vigilant parenting started in the late 1980s/early 1990s, when parents seemed to give themselves over to their children without reserving a semblance of separation between themselves and their offspring. It's almost as if they no longer wanted an adult identity out of fear that their children would be neglected.
I well remember the first time I noticed this. I overheard a group of mothers talking about their toddlers' summer activities. "How does Chloe like swimming lessons? Is she OK with it?" The mother shrugged and said "I don't know! She has to learn how to swim, that's all there is to it!"
Seems like a small exchange but it caught my attention and from then on I noticed many parents excessively fearful of failing to inject every experience with meaning and pleasure.
It has all struck me as an incredibly stressful way to bring up kids.
3
I think swim lessons are a bad example. Yes, my daughter took swim lessons when she was a toddler. She enjoyed lessons and couldn’t wait to join the local rec swim team, which she still enjoys. Swimming is a life skill all young children should learn. I didn’t pay for gymnastics or ballet (she wasn’t interested anyway) because these skills wouldn’t save her life.
1
Considering that drowning is one of the leading causes of death in young children, I don’t think those mothers were at all unreasonable.
2
"If children have never faced an obstacle, what happens when they get into the real world?" Unfortunately, the answer isn't always that they "flounder," as one of the academics in the article predicts. Often the coddling these children receive from their parents is carried over into workplaces that have the same ethic of entitlement for privileged young employees. In my "professional" office, older employees are expected to do the work but make sure younger employees get the credit. Standards are lowered and mediocre work is praised as something extraordinary. In other words, many of these young people have unconscious expectations that their colleagues will assume the role of their parents by making life easy for them, and employers too often accommodate these expectations.
6
I resent how this article's speculation about starting a charity solely to get into college. If they raised money for a charity it is honorable. My daughter started a charity for Alzheimer's disease, since her grandma is afflicted with it, and she wants to help others, especially children. It may help her get into college, but that was not the motivation for it.
@emma Hate to tell you, where I live, kid driven charities are almost always college application driven. Want to look good for towards med school? Do disease charity. Vet school? Something with abused animals. Law school? Inner city charity.
My niece's high school had similar suggestions in the "how to make you look more desirable to college packet"
It's the new "working" two weeks with third world children teaching them English.
My niece's school has 25 charities start teens. It's almost expected.
I remember a couple I know laughingly saying their two kids consistently produced the ugliest art projects in their kindergarten. Their refrigerator door exhibited the proof.
Why?
Their parents let them do it themselves. All of it. While other parents who took their turns volunteering agonized over paint that went outside the lines or faces with three eyes, and 'helped' avoid or repair these terrible accidents, they kept their hands to themselves.
They have great kids, who are now successful, happy, independant adults. Neither is an artist.
11
Years ago, my son came home on midwinter break from his freshman year in college with $70 in his wallet. He went down to Blockbuster and blew the whole thing on CDs. Then he came home and asked me for lunch money so he could get some Chinese takeout. I said, "Where's the $70 you had in your wallet?" He said, "I spent it on some CDs and now I'm starving." I said "Okay. Do you want ketchup or mustard on those CDs?"
Going hungry for a few hours taught him a valuable lesson about budgeting his pocket money.
17
These kids will be eaten alive by every salesman, gold digger, financial adviser, contractor and lawyer well into their forties. Adulthood is not the time to navigate the minefield of life.
26
If that kid's mom has been "working since he was 3" to get him into college, one can only hope that she has set aside funds for his therapy bills when he becomes an adult.
21
"One came home because there was a rat in the dorm room."
So sad but so funny.
14
My son sent me a great letter when he got to undergraduate school; the first week:
Dear Mom:
"You will be happy to know that I never leave my room for the day without the following: crash helmet, safety belt, kevlar vest, steel toed boots, hand sanitizer, life vest, mosquito repellant, sunscreen, flashlight, and a condom at all times. Please do not worry about a thing."
So I didn't !
808
@Consuelo
He made it to college! You did a great job, Mom.
27
@Consuelo, LOL!! You and your son are right cool. :)
35
@Consuelo. AND.....his sense of humor! One is essential equipment in life!
82
My son attends a prestigious high school and commutes four hours a day. I let him date in high school, go to dances and have fun. I also knew that while he was at his dances and ballgames, he wasn’t studying for the dreaded SAT test. Every time he went out I watched in slow motion knowing he wasn’t preparing for some exam. He graduates this June 1 with a 3.88 gpa and a 1500 SAT score. My son is a polite, respectful young man who will look you in the eye and shake your hand. He cares about people and loves helping others. My son is a good citizen who is well rounded and will be a productive member of our society. But, he got rejected from his dream school of Duke and just doesn’t have the perfect grades to get into a Ivy. And I don’t care! And fortunately, neither does he. Even with the pressure of all his friends getting into Ivies, he remains steadfast in his belief that he did it his way and had a great high school experience. Even with a four hour commute, my son lived life in high school and wouldn’t let the perfect score syndrome dictate his actions. As a parent, I couldn’t be more proud. My son will be okay not attending Duke or Yale. My position has always been that those Ivy League schools should pay me for the privilege of having my son attend their schools. My son isn’t the smartest kid in his class but he is the best kid in his class. No brag, just fact.
1176
@Mickey
I don’t know, Mickey. Wonder if your son could have had a decent high school experience without a 4 hour commute to a “prestigious” high school? I think of a lot of activities he might have had 4 hours to participate in or that because of the long commute there were likely activities and friendships he didn’t have because of that commute.
I think long commutes are destructive for families for which they are an economic necessity and maybe even more so for children. Surely if you and your son were ok wth a non-elite college, your son could have attended a closer school and had a more rounded high school experience. I say this, not as much as a criticism of your choices, but perhaps as a thought for other parents considering their own choices for their children. I’m glad your choices suited you and you son.
247
@Mickey
Congratulations, and the effort of a commute is worthwhile, especially if the available schools in your area are not up to standard. A sacrifice in time that was worthwhile for an excellent education, and I'm sure your son will excel at whatever college he attends, it sounds like he has his priorities in order and is well prepared to meet any challenge.
27
@Mickey
"My position has always been that those Ivy League schools should pay me for the privilege of having my son attend their schools. "
- you're kidding right? If those are the entitled values being transmitted to your son, it looks like snowplowing to me.
185
In high school, our daughter had a funny alarm clock that woke her with 'Rise and shine, time to get up'. She attended our Community College, then transferred to an elite university in a big city. We drove her down to school to check her into the dorm, taking her to dinner that night. We said goodbye that evening, our plans were to make ourselves scarce by staying in Cape May for the weekend...this was before cell phones. We parted tearfully, her and us, she wondered how long it would take to find friends. We intentionally didn't call her til Sunday night, when...in a happy voice, rushing to go out...she said she had a load of new friends and they were all going downtown for dinner, bye, luv ya. We were so happy and proud. Now she's 45, travels the world, is a fine good woman. We did our job.
11
@disillusioned Good for her and you! Community colleges are the way to go for a good foundation in writing, reading, science, psychology, history, etc., because at the larger and/or elite schools the introductory classes are mostly taught by people who are well educated in their fields, love to teach, but don't love to sit in administrative meetings or head committees. At the more elite schools, introductory survey classes are mainly taught by teaching assistants.
3
@disillusioned Good for her and you! Community colleges are the way to go for a good foundation in writing, reading, science, psychology, history, etc., because introductory classes are mostly taught by people who are well educated in their fields, love to teach, but don't love to sit in administrative meetings or head committees. At the more elite schools, introductory survey classes are mainly taught by teaching assistants.
Parenting is incredibly hard. Some would argue that it is the hardest job on the planet. Parents receive no training. There are no courses required, no internships that need to be successfully completed before you become a parent. ALL parents enter parenting without knowing what they are doing. With all of their normal human flaws, most parents work as hard as they can to love their kids well, they make more sacrifices than we realize. So it's so encouraging to me to read articles by "experts" telling parents how everything they are doing is wrong.
Do parents always make the best decisions? No. But neither does anyone else. If every single human being were to take a hard look at themselves they would see enough flaws and mistakes to overwhelm the mind.
184
@Rachel Smith
So then nothing a parent does should be subject to criticism? Does this critical immunity also apply if they are beating their children to enforce discipline? It seems to me the primary role of a parent is to turn children into functional adults, if a child needs to leave university because there is sauce on food I would contend that those parents failed and failure is not above criticism.
83
@Rachel Smith
Yes, parenting is hard and no, there are no courses required to be a parent. We all have to do the best we can. But you don't have to be an 'expert' (why the quotation marks, by the way?) to realize that this trend is damaging to the kids involved and will produce adults unable to deal with the real world.
I found your last paragraph puzzling, to say the least. Overwhelm the mind?? Most people have a flaw or two, but do the best they can in good conscience. Others (see: DJT) never take hard looks at themselves EVER. And obviously, some parents make better decisions than others (see: this article).
42
@Rachel Smith . Many parents enter the project with the prior experience of having been parented, tho. So there is *some* information that was known ahead of time, although admittedly most of us don't totally understand the adult angle on out childhood observations and experiences of parents. But it's not really true that parents careen into parenthood knowing nothing at all about how it works.
35
Where is the line of good parent and bad? I already give my 8 month old store bought baby food and he sometimes eats off plastic (neglectful!) but I got on wait lists for preschools and daycares as soon as I knew I was pregnant (snowplow!). I took Tylenol while pregnant and put my child in his own room when he was less than a year old (neglectful!) but we are investing in his future education even now (snowplow!).
I guess my point is that achieving this "just right" level of good parent who doesn't snowplow/helicopter/whatever but also doesn't neglect their child seems impossible. I'm 8 months in to the whole parenting thing and I'm already stressed out about it (maybe that makes me a snowplow already? Or maybe a helicopter?). I appreciate that this is a problem worthy of discussion, but I don't love the lambasting of parents (obviously not the ones bribing college officials) who with good intentions have not managed to achieve perfect parenting success.
293
As a mom to a 13 and an 18 year old, the best advice I can give to you , is to take yourself out of the running for the Perfect Mom Award. When others judge mothers, do not participate. Try not to be too hard on other parenting styles and decisions or your own. Most of us are doing the best we can with the time and resources we have.
294
@Anna as a mom of 3 my advice is to stop measuring yourself against other people’s standards. You have to stop caring what everyone else does/thinks or you’ll be stressed that kid’s entire life.
47
I was an expert on parenting until I became one.
231
I’m an older millennial and I’m so grateful my parents taught me to be independent in many ways. I teach college now and I see parents doing things I wouldn’t have even considered asking my parents to do. On the contrary, I was terrible at staying in touch in college. I started before cell phones were a big thing and my parents every few weeks would email me “ET phone home” to remind me to call.
258
Some parents understand intuitively that preparing your children to cope with obstacles and failure is how to help them become resilient, adaptable, and to build a life of contentment and self-reliant pride. The experience of adversity probably also ecourages empathy for the struggles of others. On the other hand, what is the psychological need of parents who so strongly identify with their children’s success or failure that they are willing to create co-dependant, fragile and immature adults who are fed a diet of artificial success? I suspect the driver is fear or self-doubt on the part of the parent, perhaps that their own success is unearned or undeserved? Maybe those pointing out that systematic and increasing economic inequality is unhealthy for a democratic society are onto something profound!
260
@Geoff. I think that an important distinction is how a parent defines “success” in their offspring. In my book, your first sentence nailed it, but others have different priorities for themselves and their children. Very sad, I believe.
13
@Geoff It is called Narcissistic Personality Disorder and it is on the rise.
9
I’m a retired college instructor. Several times I was contacted by parents who felt their children deserved a better grade or the opportunity to retake an exam. The father of a student I caught plagiarizing called the dean and asked him to speak to me about changing the zero grade I’d given his daughter—as forewarned in the syllabus. Another student came to my office to tell me he’d called his mother to intervene on his behalf and that I’d “be in big trouble” if she got involved. I laughed—too soon; I was called on the carpet by no less a personage than the provost. Most college graduates today are unprepared for the real-world challenges of work or grad school.
16
There is an ongoing shortage of skilled tradespeople. There is no shortage of college graduates who complain that they can't find a decently-paying job in their chosen field. High school seniors would do well to consider these facts in choosing their next steps.
640
Good call! The world needs electricians, farmers, plumbers, auto mechanics etc. The system is broken. Why is it necessary to take 4-5 years of classes when only a relatively small portion actually relate to a chosen profession? Why not design a course of study that focuses on actual skills needed to work in a particular field.
I thought I would never get through undergrad working full-time as an adult student--6 years and a pile of money later barely moved the needle for me economically. In frustration, one night I tore my diploma to shreds.
Interestingly, I loved graduate school: completed a 36 credit program in 2.5 years, at an well-known C.U.N.Y. business school. My salary increased 30K before even graduating. The courses focused squarely on skills and knowledge I use daily in my career. I loved it, and managed to maintain a 4.0 GPA while working 50+ hours a week in my profession.
Why can't the 36-60 credit model be applicable for undergraduate degrees? It's such a scam!
Trade school, trade school, trade school.
62
What is wrong about becoming an educated person, exposed to ideas you never would have encountered otherwise.
I taught my kids that undergraduate school was required for true education and graduate school was for career training.
All 3 followed that, 1 physician, 1lawyer, and 1 fiber artist all self supporting and paying down school debts.
They are all very happy people and make their single parent, single income mom very proud.
83
@Sand Nas
Unfortunately a lot of higher education seems to prefer to shield rather than expose students to other ideas.
20
I don't buy the premise of this article at all. Both George W. Bush, and Donald Trump, had every advantage, and both their parents clearly bought them their way into College, and look where they ended up. The rich will always have it all over the poor. Nothing can change that.
252
@Rick
Hmmm, I guess I didn’t realize this was a partisan distinction. Glad to hear that wealthy Democrats like he Kennedy clan never engaged in such practices.
30
@Rick
To some extent your'e right but with one exception ,
george bush is wanted for war crimes and therefore can't travel outside of the U.S .
He misses out on all that wonderful painting
experience .LOL
21
@Rick
"look where they ended up"? The Peter Principle in action.
You mean as two of the more incompetent POTUSes we have had?
One simply clueless who was lead around by the nose by his VP ("I am the decider") and one a liar who is criminally corrupt.
57
On the other hand...
I frequently travel with my daughter. Her phone skills are far superior to mine, and I now defer to her in every situation where instant decision-making and information-gathering is required -- a cancelled train, a terror alert, a shift in timing for an Airbnb handover, a missed connection. Her French is also much more fluent than mine, so I frequently find myself smiling silently while she babbles away to hosts, shopkeepers, servers, people on the street. The result of all her full-speed-ahead snowplowing is that I'm fast becoming a dependent elder (gratefully so when she finds me a dirt-cheap train ticket at the last minute).
But if you want someone to read maps or decipher a wine list, I'm still your man.
484
@John
She is talented because she had a wonderful father who provided her opportunities and she took advantage of them.
Most children take their parents for granted and believe life will always be a bed of roses for them, when it isn’t they look for someone to blame,
23
@John
Let’s hope she she has your excellent sense of humor too. That’s something that grows even more valuable as we all get older.
42
Our older daughter announced to us at age 3 that she wanted to go to Harvard. She was an excellent student, studied very hard, did all the requisite things, got good scores and grades, but she didn't get into Harvard. Instead she got an excellent offer from a top school, went to a top law school where she paid for her living expenses by playing the organ at a church every Sunday, and paid off her $200K loans in 4 years while working at a top law firm. While she doesn't care about not getting into Harvard, it appalls me that a student like her might not get admitted due to a rich parent cheating to get an undeserving child a spot instead.
As a parent, you have to start very young letting your child make decisions and help guide them, but not do it for them. I am very proud that my 2 daughters, both in their 30's, are working at challenging jobs, buying their own homes, running their own lives and contributing to our society. It doesn't mean that you don't give them advice (if they want it) or listen while they discuss their problems and give them support when they need it.
8
@JaneM
Seriously? How did she even know what a "Harvard" was at age three? Was she reading the New York Times as a toddler?
6
Am I too cynical to think this whole scandal was never about the kids but was really about the parents wanting to identify as someone who has a child at Stanford or USC or Yale?
844
@Satter Of course you are correct. These parents measure themselves by their children's accomplishments. They want to win anything and everything at any cost. Their children are part of the game. Which football coach said "Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing!" These kids are never on their own outside. They never have to settle an argument on their own. They never are left standing after the popular or better players are chosen for a pickup game. A parent is always there to smooth the path. Not doing well in elementary school? Parent to Principal to School Committee ... The rules of the game are made by those who will fight the hardest to win.
35
@Satter yes. The discussion keeps being framed as “parental love gone awry” but in fact it is, very simply, narcissism. It really has nothing to do with the children, but rather the way the little accessories magnify the reputations of their parents.
51
"The rich are very different from you and me." Oh how true. What stands out to my eye about Operation Varsity Blues is the parallel greed and utter lack of ethics shown by the SAT and athletic department folks who believed that a few thousand extra dollars was worth sabotaging the reputations of the institutions that employed them.
Makes me nostalgic for the days when the family money endowing a chair or a building at the college was sufficient to get the kid admitted, and the school reciprocated by giving a "Gentleman's C" when necessary.
I felt sometime I should be more involved in my child's school work but did not. Guess I was right to let him flounder some. We did support his fencing sport program which allowed him to be a recruited athlete and go to an expensive private college.
He went back East and stayed which made snowplowing impossible and inconvenient, so that was for the best as well.
We helped some with car down payments but then let him pay for the monthly payments. These days if parents don't help with the house down payment the high cost of housing means no home ownership for many. So we helped with that too.
One of the joys of making money is being able to afford to help the offspring succeed. If that is seen as immoral, then I am willing to be immoral. Most do not reject the help I see.
According to the NYT, Trump's father helped him with about one half billion dollars; Trump claims he was self made! Ha!
4
I find it ironic that Felicity Huffman had a parenting blog for which she did not take her own advice. It is easier to tell other people how to do things than to do it yourself. This is an important lesson for all to learn in today’s world of easy to find “advice and/ or knowledge” on the internet that not all of it is true or good for you. You can find all kinds of “commentators/experts” who really are using the internet as a platform to share their “ideas/beliefs” which can be harmful.
2
We have made college a necessary luxury item with limited access. Why should college cost so much? While some parents definitely over compensate and snowplow, I say “Don’t hate the player, hate the game”.
4
Hush Claire and Jonah. I do attest to the validity of your argument based on instinct, if not on data. And I wish you would hush.
I am speeding toward the wrong side of my fifth decade; which despite valiant effort is an accelerated degeneration of body and mind. At any other time, I would find myself on the ice floe, on the kayak, shrieking while plummeting down a cliff. Young, tough, intelligent and prepared kinds in their 20s and 30s would render redundant everything I know and can do.
Except that this is not happening, to the utter chagrin of some, and to my immense relief.
The establishment may wish me off the cliff, I am glad they hesitate (a slight bit) because the young ones they encounter produce a disquieting contrast.
And for that, I have absolutely no one to thank except the snow plow parents, and the eco system that begat this generation of young ones.
Thank you for making possible the lives of my grossly average self, kids, and grand kids. But for you, my family would be mining coal in a far off land, deep in debt, under physical threats from local politicians (or thugs), living in a hovel, and waiting in endless lines for everything.
If I have shekels to spare at the end of this journey, I'd erect a monument to thank the snow plows.
Clair and Jonah, go subvert something else.
1
Part of this is an outgrowth of the nonsense that began with those parents who boast “I’m my kid’s best friend”. They’ll have lots of friends...your job is to be a parent meanin furnishing love and caring but also setting rules, teaching, expectations, and sometimes discipline.
13
These articles are getting pretty tedious. Our parents didn't do any of this stuff for us because they didn't have time and the consequences for a misstep were not so irrevocable. Now that we have one or two kids instead of five or six, we can help our kids more. And there is a lot about the world that has changed in the last 50 years.
Also, you throw a bunch of examples of terrible oversteps that hovering parents make. Lots of us do the less egregious oversteps, and yet would NEVER do the more extreme ones. And yet those extreme oversteps are the ones that get the bad press from all the bitter college professors that write in. NO, I never helped my kid cheat, but I did do some legwork for her so she would have more time to study and sleep. Believe me, she had to overcome lots of obstacles on her own that my generation never had to deal with.
9
This title is misleading. It should say 'How Parents of Extreme Privilege...'. The authors cited are experienced in working with students from extremely affluent families. Julie Lythcott-Haims bases her insights off of her encounters at Stanford where nearly 40% of the student body is either an international student or attended private school. Nationally, approximately 10% of students graduate from private school. Then there's Stanford's $25 billion endowment. Not too shabby. Madeline Levine not only writes about privelege, but she also counsels clients from extreme privilege. David McCullough, Jr. draws upon his 16 years of teaching at Punahou, arguably one of the most elite high schools in the country. Laura Hamilton writes about helicopter parenting...the advantages of it that is. It's easy to paint in broad strokes and describe the behaviors of a handful of parents from a particular vein of society, a very affluent vein of society, and describe it in a way that implies that a new parenting trend is sweeping the nation. All that has really changed are the tactics of this handful of parents as they have been forced to adapt and adopt new ways of ensuring their kids achieve what they believe they are entitled to. Presenting this elitist attitude as though it represents a generic parenting trend is ridiculous.
5
"There are now classes to teach children to practice at failing" A comedian couldn't make this stuff up.
I would not believe any of this had I not had a relative who helicoptered and snowplowed her child into an incapacitated, narcissistic nervous wreck, and then proceeded to refer to said child as a "special needs kid". Yes, three hours in a room alone to take a one-hour test. Calling her at college to wake her up in time for class. Calling the college to arrange rides to her activities. Meantime, the child was depressed and "hated" her parents but didn't know how to get by without them. She became manipulative and duplicitous. It's been painful to watch.
In another comically sad encounter, I was with a colleague when she found out her nine-year-old son was assigned a different class for fourth grade than all of his friends. She was shrieking into the phone at her husband, "This is a crisis! This is a crisis! We have to go to the school and tell them to change it!" What could have been "teachable moment" for the child was turned into a farce.
I feel truly sorry for the children who are captive to these overbearing parents who are robbing them of their independence and self-hood.
8
Basically, once you are in high school, the stakes are too high to allow experimentation and failure. That's a bad thing. But it is reality. You take a risk and try a really hard subject for you, and a risky project - if you don't do great, it hurts your grades, which hurts you getting scholarship money for college. High schools should have room for kids to fail.
6
Snowplowing starts so early that kids have no idea that having Mommy or Daddy intervene to smooth their way past any discomfort isn't normal.
I recall a mom coming to my home to castigate me because her young daughter, who'd attended my daughter's birthday party, didn't like the entertainment (a rented children's movie) my daughter had selected. With her daughter standing there, the mom told me I should have known her child would be "uncomfortable" watching a movie -- and thus should have canceled it.
It's normal to not always get your own way. That's a tough lesson to learn as an adult -- as this girl has had to find out.
11
my friends and I, all "college educated" professionals in accounting, law, business, engineering with kids through "decent" colleges (uconn, Xavier, central ct, providence) who are doing ok, are baffled by this story and don't consider it important at all. These are a tiny elite bi coastal slice of mostly financial and entertainment type parents who don't even seem that effective as many of the colleges mentioned are no better that what we 90-110k schlubs did. It skews to the Times audience(I am a subscriber)but is covered far more than it's importance seems. I hardly understand why it is illegal and I know if I had their resources I would have used them much more effectively
Good grief! Needing to leave college because Mommy isn't there to help you avoid sauce?! These parents aren't parents, they are their kids' personal concierges, making appointments and managing simple tasks of daily living. Sort of assisted living for adolescents. How will these kids ever function in a work environment? Ask Daddy to come in and argue with the boss if work is critiqued? The Millennial Job Interview "spoof" on you tube now seems more prescient than satirical.
7
@TigerLilyEye I have experienced Daddy coming to argue with the boss, pretty amazing scene! Daughter did not want to work period.
1
And after college? If the kids make it through college this continues. Nothing new here... The - who you knows - reward underperforming student/employees with a good/better paying job (in my case one that I too applied for). When I challenged the personnel dept (with the help of my union) to compare our qualifications I was told that his job application essay that was completed in their own office - had been lost...
2
As an Early Childhood teacher in a Title I school I also had had my share of parent anxiety. This happens here as well as in affluent communities. It is perhaps the trending way. When I talk to parents asking them to allow their children to make age appropriate choices and allow them to face the consequences of them, I invariably get the gasping disbelief “how could she” evil eye. What is wrong with me??? Even though I explained that failing and overcoming failure is actually training for the future, many of them label me as mean. Most of the time I tell them that when I was 3 yrs old my mother lighted a match to turn on the stove range and the head of the match fell to the floor. I ran for it and my mother, without moving a muscle to grab me, said: If you touch it, you will be harmed, it is hot! Sure enough I did. It was a small burn that hurt a lot. When my mother was putting some ointment and a band aid on my fingers, she said to me: Today, you learned an important lesson. To this day I am very careful with matches. My mother let me made many choices and allowed me to fail many more times in my life, but she was always there to confort me, to advise, to guide. Always with the same line: Today, you learned and important lesson. The same line I use with my students when they ruin a project with too much glue, when they rip and tear, when they do not finish the mother’s day card, when they forget. They are smart, they learn.
4
Only about of 2% of Browns entering class fails to graduate but apparently the California based psychologist quoted here is the one “ regularly” seeing patients from that tiny minority of kids which involves students from all 50 states. I guess they all somehow live in Southern Cali. Ok. Sure.
@AJ
Apparently, California as a whole is well-represented at Brown.
From <> :
Brown University’s Class of 2020 hails from all 50 states (yes, even Idaho, Nebraska, Alaska, and Montana). States that were most represented, however, were not New Mexico, Kentucky, and Tennessee but rather California, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Texas. Shocking, we know. With a record-breaking number of international applicants to Brown, or Americans living abroad, 5,432 students applied from 83 different countries. Foreign countries that were most represented were China, the United Kingdom, Canada, Korea, and India. Again, we know we’ve sent shockwaves to your system with this list of well represented countries.
This is all well and good, but we now live in a “one strike and you’re out” society. It’s entirely reasonable for parents to protect their children against making a fatal error.
Blaming the parents for responding to a problem they did not create is lazy and simplistic.
1
This is most painful to see in the children of parents who are themselves the first generation to attend college. When these teens look back to their immigrant or working class grandparents, they don't see role models of persistence and individual responsibility. They instead see old-fashioned fools who put the needs of others over their own, or they see harsh task masters who expect too much of them.
Whether in the anecdotes in this article or with my students or with the younger generation in my own extended family, the guilty ones are the parents. I question whether they are motivated out of concern for their children's interests or rather out of resentment against, misunderstanding of, and lack of empathy for the older generation that raised them. In any case, if these teens are to be the future of our society, it won't be pretty.
2
And you lost me when you start talking about the everyone wants a trophy generation. Kids didn't want that. Boomer parents did. Like everything else Boomers ruin things then want to blame young people.
3
My daughter was the most under scheduled kid in her peer group. Except for piano lessons and practice, summers were for lounging around, sleeping late, reading and making art projects. Board games, Hanging out with friends. We used to call this playing. Now it is called self initiating! In high school her schedule picked up along with her interests, which she decided on - not me. I did have one quirk, more tiger mom than snowplow variety. With crowded public school classrooms, teachers don't always have time to work closely with their students. So I did. Her writing ability lagged, and as I write for a living I stepped in. Mediocre essays had to be rewritten, even if they received an A. The horror! When she graduated as Valedictorian she was accepted to every school she applied, and received a nearly free education from Yale. At 26 she is thriving in her chosen field, one that requires......outstanding writing skills. We laugh about the rewrites a la Mommy Dearest. No wire hangers, and no dangling participles!! I was an involved parent, but she had to chart her own course and do her own work. And I believe her many hours of free time led to some creative and unusual passions. Meantime, I don't apologize for helping her learn to express herself in writing, especially as I offered my tutoring services gratis at her high school. Bill's wife, Colleen
7
I'm a snowplowed adult. My parents went to extremes to get me into med school. While I was in college, they amped up
[1] tutoring
[2] writing essays together
[3] sourcing extra study materials (including old tests and labs)
[4] emotional abuse if I objected (I was called selfish, unloving, dumb, unrealistic, and disrespectful. They threatened ostracism from the family. They said I couldn't succeed on my own).
As good as their intentions were, my parents unwittingly stole a lot, from you and me. Their drive created a brutally unfair playing field. And their “help” took away chances to know, prove and accept who I really am. I lost my integrity and chances to build competence, confidence, trust, pride in myself. As this article astutely points out, they took away my adulthood (1st decade at least).
What I want you to know: I didn't want to steal any opportunities from you. I acted out of fear of losing my family’s love. I guarantee the "Varsity Blues" kids are acting out of similar pressures. Even if we want to do right, it is extremely difficult to do so, because it means destroying the relationship with the people you love the most.
After 8 yrs of trying to survive med school, I withdrew. I didn't earn it and couldn't succeed on my own yet. My father hates me. Family/friends are afraid to understand my side. You might hate me. But instead of crucifying me and people like me, I hope you give us some empathy and space to start over and become a full adult.
1234
@Try a Little Empathy Having had a difficult upbringing from parents who had unreasonable expectations about who and how I should become, I can appreciate how painful and, occasionally, soul destroying it can be. Hang in there and follow the your own path. At some point you will realize how good you are and, maybe, your folks will wake up to the wonder of the child they brought into the world. And if they don't, it's really their loss.
171
@Try a Little Empathy _ I don't blame people like you who were never given the chance to try your own wings. I'm glad you still have the gumption to try them now. I'm sorry that your family is still letting you down, but I hope you come to learn that you can be your own best advocate. You can still make it.
I had the opposite upbringing. I came from a working class family where both parents worked. I'd go for a week at a time and not even see them, from the time I was in elementary school. Did I miss a lot? Sure, I didn't always have the guidance I needed without having to wait days for it, but on the other hand, I learned self-reliance and the joy of succeeding early on. Mistakes? Heck yes, and some ugly ones, but I grew and learned to cross a busy four-lane highway with no trouble by the time I was ten and how to get myself up and to school without help by the time I was eleven. I learned who to trust and who not to trust and made it through a neighborhood that while not the worst was not the best either. I like myself a lot now. As my mother told me, I raised myself. Out of necessity, but it worked. It can work even for people who have to start doing it as adults, and I sure don't hate you for having to start this late. I admire you for taking the bull by the horns.
134
@Try a Little Empathy Best of luck to you from here. I hope you are able to find fulfillment and happiness, companionship and a profession of joy and honor.
121
In 6th grade my son had a friend - they had a great time playing sports and making creative sports videos. Then they paired up to do a class project-the other boy's mom used to be a graphic designer. Need I say more? She tried to take over the project and my son, in no uncertain terms, told her No, that they should do it themselves. When she called me to complain-and sent me photos of her older son's project that she had also "helped "with - I told her that I agreed the boys should do it themselves (and do some chores to pay for the supplies). Needless to say the boys are not friends anymore and the mom looks the other way when she sees us at school (their poster looked great, though, just a little cockeyed!)
But, in school, when he says that a class is light on teaching, we will give him access to extra resources. For example, this year's English teacher has given only one essay this year, so my son asked to do a morning writing class this summer to learn how to write. He also has a visiting/permanent sub. history teacher this year who thinks that all textbooks are bad, and tests are bad too-they do role-plays about how people felt in history instead. So my son asked to sign up for IXL.com, which has common core social studies for $10 a month, to stay in line with other classes who are learning more.
He does do his own laundry - but we are totally guilty on sauces, though, because we're lousy cooks - but he is really getting into cooking, so he can make his own!
10
I've contemplated that if I was in the position to hire, I'd pick resumes from the middle of the pile, state colleges with, say, a solid engineering background.
My concern is paying a premium to hire an employee who isn't much better than one I could hire for less: smaller salary, lower expectations of what I'm should be providing them, one who treats co-workers fairly, not as subordinates.
I guess I figure I could get 95% of the employee with 70% of the pain. Not only that, if the employee really did get where they were by hard work and thrift, I figure I'd get better impact from my training dollars.
I imagine I'd end up with a lot of talented minority women.
9
@Andrew - agreed! Don't go by resume glossiness - give actual tests during the interview process, and discuss topics you would actually discuss in a staff meeting to assess their actual, unvarnished skills and contributions. Take measure of the person, not the hype (or the extra parental help they had).
3
I am a mom, living in one of the country's hotspots where many highly educated people settle down and raise a family. When we were going through the high school application process, in a city where there are plainly not enough seats in top HSs, public or private, to meet the demands of all the families who desire these seats, I saw plenty of parents race to get their children qualified for more time on the SSAT HS entrance exam. These are kids who never had an IEP or received any type of remedial help while they were attended k-8 school.
I saw parents too involved in middle school work, too.
I am just glad we opted for a top public high school where the teens are truly independent--and, they are selected for their talents--judges red-flag any portfolio that looks like it was done by an adult. I feel like I hit the eject button on the slowplowing environment I saw all around me while my kid was in a private k-8 school. I have no idea if the private high school environment is a continuation of what I saw in the k-8 private school environment because I am not there.
I would hope that top universities weed out dependent children when reading essays and interviewing potential candidates. Any university complaining about snowplowing parents has been complicit because their kids did not have to be accepted. I really do not want to read about Stanford whining about parents. Stanford accepted those families!
9
I feel like a terrible parent; I didn't even sign my sons up for test prep or college counseling or review their college essays. I helped them identify colleges they might be interested in and scheduled tours but otherwise they did it themselves. They are doing very well.
23
(Paraphrasing here): "That's why parents hide certain toys from toddlers to avoid temper tantrums, or take away the car keys until the son finishes his college applications." I'm amazed by these two seemingly "OK" behaviors toward a toddler or a college-aged person.
Avoid a temper tantrum on the part of a toddler by keeping out of the sight the trigger for this out-of-control little one?
That's still enabling the behavior if one can't handle a child being upset. How about standing firm in a loving or friendly manner about something that upsets a toddler, letting the child know that behaviors like "throwing a temper tantrum" are totally out of the question and gets nothing in response from the parent or caregiver but mature handling of the situation. Do sit down with her or him, arm around shoulders in a loving gesture, saying: "I know you really want that toy (affirmation of understanding feelings) but right now it's time that we did this" (whatever is needed to get done rather than playing w/ toy). Keep going: "When we're finished with that, we'll get the toy for you to play with." In-control parent. DON'T FORGET the promise made--get the toy & follow through every time.
Any young man who's old enough to be filling out a college application should NEVER have any kind of interference from a parent, such as taking away his car keys. If he misses the deadline for submission of the application he'll quickly learn on his own to do what's needed and not to procrastinate.
6
If you know your toddler tantrums when they’re tired, is the answer to constantly keep them tired and then “talk the through it” or make sure they nap before they’re overtired there by avoiding the trigger?
There’s a time and place for affirming empathetic coaching, but it’s not always the answer.
1
@Cate I have a feeling you don’t have kids! :)
1
The article says, "[a]nother, the charges said, paid someone to take the ACT for her son — and then pretended to proctor it for him herself, at home, so he would think he was the test-taker."
This simply does not make sense. I cannot think of any college applicant who thinks he/she can take standardized tests at home. All you need to do is to crack open any prep books or go to the College Board/ACT websites (which you need to do in order to register for the exams), and it's very clear you take the test at a designated site.
If this kid went to a small private school, he most likely knew the ins and outs of taking standardized tests simply by going through college counseling at school or even casually talking to his peers. It's really hard to believe that he thought he was taking a real exam. The duplicity and the many layers of outright lies involved in this scandal is mind-boggling.
12
And I thought the self-esteem movement did as much damage to parenting as we were ever going to see. How naive of me.
Since when is it acceptable for parents to contact the teachers of their bored children, in order to recommend a more stimulating curricula? Is self-awareness really such a rare commodity among parents?
One of the best professors that I ever had made it very clear, very early on, that if his students were having any trouble, all they had to do was ask. Beyond that, any problems were completely their responsibility.
Children are exceptional examples of behavioral adaptation through mimicry. Parents who expect shortcuts in life are almost inevitably going to produce children who want things even easier. This is a slippery slope of incompetence.
9
@ubique
Thank you, ubique. Professors at universities, particularly where I teach, have enough work to do in teaching the subject. In the last five years, I have noticed an increasing need for in-coming first year students to be "socialized" into a culture that expects them to be adults. And half of them are unprepared. They expect constant reminders. They presume spoon-feeding. Finally, they are shocked when they have to read an entire novel. They will note that they have "lots" of reading to do (it is college after all), but are appreciative when they can feel their muscle at the term's end. Expect to read, first-years. And learn it now.
College is sink or swim. Not a place to be given handouts. And consequences are meant to be felt. Not avoided. If people don't show up for a test, midterm, or final, then they FAIL it. Pure and simple. We have taken "the dog ate my homework" to another level.
5
@ubique When I started teaching I naively thought that if a child was being disruptive my best course of action was to call the parents in the hope that a consequence at home would end the behavior. Instead I got responses like, "Billy does this because he is bored. Can't you make your class more interesting for him?" Don't know what these children are going to do when they grow up and find that adulthood is not a series of continuously exciting and stimulating experiences.
6
There are times when a parent needs to reach out to teachers to ask them to accommodate the child’s educational needs. My child was reading 4 years above grade level when she was in first grade. The first-year teacher did not understand reading test scores, and assumed that books at the lowest of her reading range would be fine. Books at the highest reading level in the classroom were two years below my her Independent Reading Level. The teacher offered my daughter nothing when my daughter asked for more challenging books. It was not until I emailed the teacher and copied the principal that she finally made arrangements my daughter to access higher level books in another classroom.
This was toward the end of the school year. At the beginning, I noticed that my daughter was not receiving challenging work, and asked for an Individualized Educational Plan. She refused, saying my daughter was not advanced, and referring to another student she felt was advanced. I dropped the subject, since the teacher was working with students at a wide range of educational levels. When my daughter took the test for the gifted and talented program, she tested at the 95th to 98th percentile. I always wondered if the teacher underestimated my daughter because she is a girl and an ethnic minority.
One of the best (masters) courses I ever had was a writing class where my professor would project our assignments and live-edit in front of the whole class. Seeing everyone’s writing styles—and more importantly their mistakes—was hugely informative. I think everyone was mortified at first but after a few weeks when I saw that literally no one ever had a perfect paper, and that everyone had strengths and weaknesses, I looked forward to it. It was also really informative to be able to discuss the professor’s reasoning for the revisions right then and there, rather than trying to interpret notes on my own. I’m a much better writer due to reading those rough drafts.
29
I teach French literature at a college in Montreal. The big deal right now for our academic director is a program that tries to lower anxiety among our students. In our local newpapers, there are often articles written by students who complain about stress, anxiety and a feeling of helplessness. While I sympathize in some way, I feel it is a reflection of the upbringing that they have received, an upbringing based on the idea that kids should be spared the harsh realities of life, such as failure, inequality and, yes, violence. The world is a tough place, but many parents want to pretend it is not so. And so we have « safe spaces » in colleges and « sensitivity readers » in publishing houses. The most resilient of my students are quite often those who are training for a sport competition or are aspiring musicians, two activities that involve effort and repeated failures. Parents who overprotect their kids are doing them a terrible disservice.
We often call (rightly so) the generation that went through World War II « The Greatest Generation ». Their courage could be explained by the fact that they were raised during the Great Depression, a period of sacrifice and hardships.
25
My mom did everything for me. When I moved out I didn’t even know how to buy groceries or cook a meal. It was as very difficult and I raised my children much differently. Doing everything for your child is crippling, not helping them.
34
As a clinical psychologist and part-time college professor for several decades, I don't find this column very convincing.
Although well-writtem, it relies on the usual journalistic tools
of anecdotes related by pop-book authors and dubious surveys with small sample sizes.
Frankly, I'm more worried about parents I see texting their friends while their kids sit ignored and bored in strollers, or parents giving cell phones to their 10-year-old kids to use whenever they want.
55
@WiseNewYorker The flip side I guess. You need to parent somewhere in the middle. Guide your child, spend active time with them, but don’t take over their lives. You shouldn’t be the center of their universe when they are headed out into the world. But offer support if calamity hits, just as they should to you when they are grown.
5
I agree. Or texting as they cross the street and their children saunter well behind them. Where I live, I see this daily.
2
I call them phone mommies and there are a lot of them.
1
My children jokingly refer to me as "cold and heartless".
One often missed the bus in HS. After the first time when he did get a ride, he walked the 2+ miles to school. Their schoolwork was their responsibility. I already graduated HS, not my problem. Although money was not an concern, due to unacceptable school performance, we only offered community college. The Air Force became the remaining option for the one that even squandered that opportunity.
Yet, today they are all responsible, functioning and contributing adults. They can cook, clean and do their own laundry. Another was totally independent when applying for college. She did everything on her own. My contribution was the week long trip visiting potential schools.
They have all thanked their father and I for raising them the way we did. They see many of their friends that have struggled as a result of bulldozing parenting.
23
I am the first-generation offspring of immigrants. Education was always a priority. To that end, my parents felt it was their duty to save money for my and my sibling’s education. We still had to do the work of applying to schools and programs we were interested in, and of doing the work to earn the degree. But their philosophy has always been “better to give you the help when you need it, we can give it to you, and we can see you make use of it, rather than when we are dead.”
When we went to school, my sibling and I were fully equipped to take care of ourselves, do laundry, cook, etc. We had never been expected to work when in school, because school was considered to be our main priority: to focus on doing well so that we would create options for ourselves going forward.
I see a few things being conflated in the comments: parents giving lifelong support in one way or another, and parents enabling their kids such that the kids never do for themselves, and to the real end of burnishing the parents’ reputations. These are not the same things. Each child is different, and parents don’t always view their obligations as parents in the same way as everyone else. Support is not the same as “snowplowing,” and it’s not the same as the extreme example we were made aware of this week.
You can support your children and at the same time teach them life skills, understanding and compassion and give them the emotional and practical tools to make their own way in life.
27
@RM
Well put, sir.
Families (with children) are a lot like overwrought Nationalism and soon stink to high heaven when unchecked and unbridled. My dad sent me packing when I turned 18 and simply said "out". He felt that a boy/young man needed to cut their own path using whatever intellect or brawn or cunning they possessed. He did not offer college support or ten cents: nothing. He did the same to two older brothers so my predicament was forewarned. It was normal and expected. Subsequently, I did get a University education (by working all night and school during the day) and I cannot even remember sleeping or needing to sleep. I had been a C minus student in high school but at University, -- perfect A pluses. No sweat as I had no backstop or bailout. In life, I competed with Ivy League graduates at every turn and progressed through ever corporate level ever imagined in giant corporations. Eventually, forming companies from scratch and divesting to Fortune 500 firms along with numerous patents and highly successful products. It all started as soon as I had to make my own way (including 39 years of spectacular matrimony with a spouse likewise educated using her own energy and gumption). Frankly, it was not that difficult if you choose to employ normal intellect (and apply yourself especially regarding great literature and the love of words and language) and understands morality, ethics and fair play and (mostly wanting success for everyone).
12
that's a very typical story for retirees. the "bootstraps" stories don't wear well in this era. it was a different time, one in which middle management jobs were abundant and one salary supported a family. there was no labor competition from third world countries, limiting entry level work to the restaurant and retail world. men with little education had plenty of opportunity. and once people like you achieved your dazzling retirement with wifey by your side, the social services were depleted leaving scraps for younger people to fight over.
so bully for you and congratulations for being born into the era where what you achieved was possible. that was your wisest "choice."
7
@just a mom: Your expressions here of apparently feeling bitterness toward a different generation working within a much different set of circumstances are very much understood. However, I would suggest that the economic realities known to "terry brady" and those lived through by yourself, "just a mom," were out of the control of either of you, yes? Perhaps a bit more understanding (or even compassion) toward the "terry brady's" of the world would help ease the way for us all. Just a thought.
@Cate
The facts are that I'm still doing back of napkins companies with profound success. Nothing has changed and young people might step out and be challenged to think. The extraordinary power of human creativity can only be released if the organism is free to excel. If you need to telephone mom you might as well stay in the nest.
In my work with children I often tell parents that I am initially less interested in their child successeeding than I am in them learning how to fail: how to manage the feelings and consequences of failure, analyze what went wrong, figure out how to fix it, and most importantly, learn how to pick themselves back up after and keep on with it. The idea is pretty basic: if you know how to fail and can cope effectively with it, learning how to succeed will be a comparative cake walk.
The children who are the victims of snow-plow parenting will never learn these skills, and as long as it continues are not adults, no matter their chronological ages.
11
There are a lot of ways to abuse the power of parenting. My experiences illustrate an alternative pathology in parental dysfunction. Without intending to boast (mostly) about the abilities I was born with, I didn't need somebody to take the SAT's for me. Nobody paid for me to attend private schools or for test prep courses. I successfully navigated my "accelerated" (top 1%) high school curriculum by ignoring most homework assignments. My study habits were even worse than you think! Still, I was never tempted to cheat. I got my A's (& B's) just showing up for my AP classes. I was smart, naturally curious & an insatiable reader. My athletic abilities were even more conspicuous than my academic talents. An athletic scholarship in my non-revenue sport was a foregone conclusion. So, you are wondering how my genetic good fortune relates to snow-plow parenting. My parents seemed envious of my opportunities . They took my success for granted, dictating both my choice of college & my major; deciding I should be the lawyer that my Dad had wanted to be! They enforced their decisions using conflict & rejection, with physical punishment as a last resort. I retreated, cutting class to avoid the political science course work that led to the law career that I never, ever wanted. Without a degree relavent to my interests (medicine) I never achieved the professional success, financial comfort or personal happiness that my family & my peers told me was there for my taking!
17
I teach university-bound students ages 17 to 20 in Quebec's CEGEP system ('middle school' between a shorter high school and a shorter undergraduate degree). What I see as the result of ALL this over-parenting is these young people's beliefs that they are still kids, even in this age range.
The hovering and obstacle-removing has taught them that they are incompetent and that failure of any kind would be a disaster dooming them to misery. They have no confidence in their abilities to make their own choices, and zero faith that they can bounce back from adversity. Yes, some are terribly entitled, but most are just super anxious and stressed.
I can't blame the parents; they receive constant messages about how hard their kids' lives will be if they don't do ALL these things, in this hyper-competitive, increasingly unequal society. And they want, more than any previous generation, I think, to raise kids to become happy adults. Perhaps a result of having fewer kids, and usually 'wanted' ones?
It may all still work out, I hope it does. But maybe we can focus more on creating a culture where 'average'doesn't mean you'll have lousy life, and reduce the parent-blaming.
15
@Karen White Thanks. I agree, I am a teacher too, seeing the same things... I think if there was actual living wages out there for young people that were not college-bound, it would take a lot of pressure off everyone.
10
@Karen White I think the USA is losing place in the world by the simple fact that other countries are gaining. We all essentially suffered from "helicopter parenting" by dint of our grandfathers and great-grandmothers having won the second world war and the industrialized nations of Europe having been left in shambles by bombs.
Through the magic of telecommunications, overnight air, and massive shipping of goods, average kids in the USA are competing with average kids in, say, China or India, or eastern Europe, and finding out they've been overpaid.
I do not understand. Are you saying it is society’s fault? No one is held responsible? I think that lack of personal responsibility is what got these families into this situation.
This is not parenting in any way. It is instead life-long bottle feeding and its results are stultifying. Our culture appears to be in an unstoppable death spiral.
12
Here’s why all of this “people ought to” won’t work. The system will adapt to the powerful, rich, and wealthy. Those who are merely self-confident and industrious will be sad to find out that, really, you don’t have to work that hard if you come from money and influence. Capitalism, in all of its glories and horrors, is based on capital.
12
I wonder how many of these over-involved parents are stay-at-home mothers.
My sister, who has never worked outside the home, sees motherhood as her primary mission in life. She dropped out of college after her freshman year to get married. Her only child is now in her mid-forties and my sister lives vicariously through her.
After paying all their daughter's education and living expenses until she finished her PhD in Creative Writing, my sister convinced her husband to relocate his career so she could provide free babysitting, housework and laundry services for her daughter in the city where she now teaches at a university.
My niece's marriage lasted only a few years, possibly because her husband was driven away by his over-enmeshed mother-in-law. My sister has moved on to helicopter-mothering the grandchildren, freeing her daughter from most parental duties.
It's disturbing.
28
That a stay at home mom has engaged in such activities doesn’t automatically translate into that being intrinsic to stay at home parenting.
6
@From Where I Sit
I believe the point is that intensive snow-plowing is ONLY possible for those parents who do not have to work. Managing one's child's every activity takes time, and working parents may not have it. It is possible that being a stay-at-home-parent is a necessary - though not sufficient - condition for extreme snow-plowing.
3
Most families in this country with a stay-at-home parent do not have the money for the activities and enrichment described in this article. A lot of women work precisely so they can afford these “benefits” for their children.
5
Who are these parents who have such needy, compliant children.My four children made it clear what they were interested in and what they considered a waste of time.A class in ceramics was nixed, also intensive study of woodwind instruments.They did all go to a Quaker School and understood that their experience there was our contribution to their education.We counted on this experience to instill worthwhile goals and the energy to pursue them.It worked!
9
“A college degree has also become increasingly essential to earning a middle class wage”. For some. For others it’s a waste of time and money as evidenced by those scraping by in the gig economy all the while buried under school loan debt.
Perpetuating this myth is one reason parents will spare no effort to see their children succeed at the admissions game.
The trades and their associated crafts can offer a good middle class wage, or more, and a sense of self determination, and self satisfaction . Parents owe it to their children to explore this option. Working with one’s hands does not preclude the use of the brain and offers more gratification than a cubicle ever could
20
Let's get rid of the parent labels and start talking about how to help kids navigate in an unfair world to make it more fair.
It is not to allow them to get run over while crossing the street, nor to insist that they always cross with you.
It is to neighbor them and teach them how not to get run over while also hewing to the values which, when widely proliferated, will finally create a world which everyone can navigate more easily.
Parental neglect in the fact of clear hazards is at least as contemptible as "snowplow parenting," which is simply the way we are using this week to feel that we are better than THEY are - whoever they may be.
8
Rule 1: Life isn't (and probably never will be) fair.
1
As a teacher to low-income 8th graders ( translation: deep poverty ) with parents working multiple low-wage jobs and graveyard shifts, I am continually impressed with students' strong backbones, despite lacking necessities and frequent mid-year moves.
Facing hard realities early on gives them a deep thoughtfulness. Not to romanticize their situation, or rely on the resiliency buzzword, inadvertently they may be better prepared for real life. That said, the US would benefit greatly by ending misguided trillion dollar wars, funding education for all at the top of priorities.
52
@kat perkins apparently, if you've got the necessary robot of the common cliches writing your college application, for the right amount of cash, you can buy "resiliency" too.
As a high school teacher in an urban neighborhood high school (not magnet, not selective enrollment), most students who attend college will be the first in their families to do so. They navigate the college application process alone, and also receive minimal support or reminders from their parents (not from a lack of care, but because many parents work multiple jobs). These students make lots of mistakes. They fail, a lot. But I'd also consider the seniors I teach to be unmistakably adults. Some of the details in this article could easily be taken for satire and could appear in The Onion without edits.
37
This speaks to my experiences as a professor at a private liberal arts college where too many parents seemed one step away from sitting in classes for their children! Hmmm, one mother telephoned me to ask that I give her son a wake up call every morning so that he wouldn’t oversleep and miss his first class! A father went to a dean flummoxed as how I could flunk his brilliant son. The son apparently failed to mentioned his grade - an overall 28% grade meant his son EARNED his failing grade. These parents - who pop up far too often - are professors’ nightmares. They aren’t good for their children’s growth and development either.
34
In 2001 I had a new hire in my dept., a 27 y/o CPA . About 3 months into the job, one morning his mother called me to say he wouldn't be at work because he wasn't feeling well. I thanked her for calling, but when the man returned to the office the next day, I asked that in the future he call in sick himself (barring extenuating circumstances when he could not make the call).
The next day his mother called me and wanted to set up a meeting away from the workplace with me, so we could discuss this policy. I declined to meet with her.
115
I would have set up the meeting with her for sheer entertainment purposes.
14
The parents implicated in Operation Varsity Blues should spend some time in jail, even if it is for only six months. Their children need to be pulled from the schools they are in. If they really want to get a degree, they can go to a city college. This is completely unacceptable and unfortunately a sign of what America has become.
31
@WGS And, in the long run, it would be the best thing that could happen to these kids. I honestly pity them, they are being robbed of a full life with the opportunity to fail and become a better person for it.
2
I'm not so sure that failing to learn to fail is going to be the biggest problem for these kids. How are they going to learn how to succeed? Not being able to fail will mean they must always play it safe and be very good boys and girls in the corporate world, doing exactly what they are told. They will be ill-equipped for leadership or innovative thinking.
17
I was enjoying the article until this ridiculous notion that kids are “enrolled in after-school activities so they wouldn’t have to feel bored.”
Huh?
There are many good reasons parents enroll children in these activities:
- (for younger kids) childcare is needed, because all caregivers work
- (for older) provide other mentors and role models, and a safe space
- encourage physical activity
- provide guidance for natural interests
- encourage artistic expression
- diversify the peer group
... and so on.
There are some less pure, more complicated reasons, e.g., “colleges will like it” or living vicariously through accomplishments.
But no one, I repeat, not a single parent I’ve ever spoken to, enrolls their children in an after-school activity primarily to protect them from boredom.
34
@Al T Thanks for this comment. I was flummoxed to think that I was a bad parent taking advantage of my (somewhat limited) affluence to enroll my children in gymnastics, ballet, soccer, and other after school activities. My children have commented on how much they appreciate being exposed to a wide range of experiences. Why wouldn't a parent want to offer a child a wide range of opportunities? Just so that child wouldn't have any advantages over someone else????
10
@Al T. Excellent points. Periods of unstructured and unsupervised time can be frightening to dangerous for kids under 12 or so. After that, gradual increase in time alone or with friends with looser adult oversight (and holding teens accountable for their decisions) is the way to prepare them for moving into the adult world. But if kids don't learn how to work together and resolve problems in early elementary grades, it gets harder and harder for them to develop into
accountable adults.
3
@mary
Periods of unstructured and unsupervised time can be frightening to dangerous for kids under 12? That's the most astonishing assertion I've heard. Have you seen pictures of kids growing up in New York City in the 1920s, 1950s, even 1970s? They were outside playing in the street, organizing their own games. I was babysitting at age 10. We spent long vacations with family with zero structured activities and if we complained, were told "go do something" or "go read a book". If your child cannot figure out at 12 how to operate without adults dictating every minute's activity, that child is not going to gain life skills on schedule, or perhaps ever.
Being bored is good for kids - it lets them figure out how to develop activities that are not boring. We used to call this "play" and for thousands of years it was considered an essential part of childhood.
21
Good parents realize from the time their babies are born, you’re not raising children, you’re raising your sons and daughters to be adults.
There is a difference.
28
I don’t know what circles the author travels in, but I don’t know any parents like the ones described in this article.
The parents I know let their kids fail knowing they will learn from it, but love their kids and will have their backs when they need support.
Their are extremes in all things (some parents beat their kids), but not the norm.
8
@Sam Kanter. There is a difference between always having your kids' backs and preventing them from the consequences of their behavior. Approaching a coach, teacher, police officer, professor, or employer to make 'special arrangements' for your child's benefit and comfort is helping the parent who has not learned to tolerate their child's distress.
5
@SamKanter
Talk to a teacher. They will tell you this behavior is quite common.
2
@Sam Kanter
Try teaching for a bit...they will emerge.
1
My parents didn’t go to college and didn’t speak English. They had high expectations and supported me emotionally but couldn’t help me with anything else. Now I am in a position to help my kids much more. I like to read these articles to learn how not to go overboard. It’s ok to let kids make mistakes and not do everything for them.
26
I’m an elementary school teacher in NYC. I often allow students to resubmit writing assignments or correct test questions to encourage them to learn from their mistakes. You wouldn’t believe how frequently corrections are made in parents’ handwriting, or are clearly dictated by them. All for a few points on an assessment. I wish these parents could see how their children resiliently recover and learn from their errors, and how happy and proud they are when they figure something out on their own.
22
These "snowplowing" parents are doing their children a major disservice. Both of my parents attended good colleges but lived home - and both went to the only school their parents let them apply to. My parents could afford to send me away to school but did not really know the process - nor did they learn it from their friends. Instead, I had to figure it out and ASK them for assistance. It was my first step towards adulthood. I then went away to an elite college where huge economic/cultural/experiential differences existed within the student body. Again, I had to make my own way. As a result, when I started working in a global corporation, I was better equipped to work with people from all over the world. What are these children going to do when mommy and daddy are not physically or mentally able to help them?
8
Each apparent individual arises with different proclivities and abilities. We want all children to be able to utilize the artificial and arbitrary structures of our society. That said, not all children come into existence "wired" for the educational system . Cheating to beat the system can be simple cheating or it can be the cheated cheating.
2
Some problems are just too expensive for the majority to suffer from, but this is an interesting insight for the 90% to learn about the values and priorities of the 10%. It's a whole different world up there. I worked my way through a public university, as did everyone I knew then. I do not recognize any of the people in this article, but I believe it is true.
12
Whether raised by helicopter or snow plow parents, these kids never learn to fail or learn that failure is a part of the learning process. These parents cheat their children of a tremendous learning tool, and how to overcome the failure, if possible, and succeed in what they want to do, on their own. The parents might mean well but they retarding their children's emotional maturity and intellectual development.
I have a brother who pushed his oldest daughter to be pre-med and go to medical school. In the end, she earned her undergraduate degree, gained 30 pounds due to emotional eating, and decided that med school wasn't for her, but she had never wanted it really: her father had. Same with her brother: he was the next med school candidate and he failed he classes, also gained 30 pounds due to emotional eating the first semester of college, but he never wanted to be a doctor. My brother apparently wants to be the doctor, but do it through his children.
10
The town I live in (and the nearby one I work in) have really changed in the past 25 years.
Many snowplow/enabling parents have moved in, talking on cell phones while driving in their black Escalades and Range Rovers, shuttling kids to practices, lessons, and tutors before picking up pre-made dinner at the local pizzerias, sushi bars, or the nearest Whole Foods.
They email teachers after seeing a bad (read B- or lower) grade on the on-line portal, ask about extra help, ask for extra time on tests, call the coaches to request certain positions for their kids,
and have an attitude we're now used to seeing.
The kids, many as young as middle school, KNOW their parents will come through for them, it is expected and typical.
The days of shoebox dioramas and clay figures are long gone.
Evidently, when you think you're better than everyone else, you invest mightily to prove it.
26
I was on the board of a preschool, and this stuff starts early. There was a parent not happy that his child wouldn't be moving to the next classroom because the teachers believed a little more time with the two-year-olds would be better. My gosh, the drama.... I've thought about that child over the years and wondered what he must have had to endure from his "helpful" parents.
15
When I was teaching I remember one parent who explained her failing students lack of work with “he doesn’t like your class”. I said ‘actually it doesn’t matter if he likes it or not he still has to do the work if he want to pass my class’. The thing is she herself probably thought ‘not liking it’ was a perfectly reasonable reason for not doing something. No sense of responsibility at all. If parents themselves are developmentally children how can they raise offspring to be adults?
27
I agree that there are parents who go way and above the norm. But there is a big difference between an 18 year old who may still be in high school and a 28 year old. An 18 year old is still an adolescent; a 28 year old should be living as an adult. You really shouldn't be treating them as though they have the same level of maturity and should be living the same way. As for greater communication between parents and children, hurray for that. I think you can attribute that to cell phones. Back in the day, you had to wait in line at the pay phone and everyone heard your conversation; now students and parents can stay connected. It's ironic but once upon a time it was the students who didn't go to college who remained most connected to family.
And yes, there are parents who micromanage their children's college experience and, as a professor, I interacted with a few. But it was not the norm. After all, it is illegal to share academic or personal knowledge about a student without their express permission. I do have a friend who once tried to intervene when her son wanted to (sensibly) drop a course after a deadline (something which is possible in most schools if there are extenuating circumstances). I told her it would be the kiss of death. It was. The dean told her to mind her own business. Her son failed the course and had to retake it. It was not the end of the world but he would have been more likely to be able to drop it if she had not intervened.
9
A couple we know (the wife mostly) are bulldozer parents. They did everything in their power to get their son into law school. They shopped the country for a law school that would take him. Finally he got into a small school and, of course, the parents paid every penny of his tuition and rent.
He graduated with some help from paid tutors in the legal profession.
His mother supervised his resume building and got him a government job as a prosecutor.
Within a year he quit the profession. He told his parents how angry judges became when lawyers weren’t fully prepared when representing their clients. Apparently, the work in the prosecutor office was very intense and stressful with many files to study and cases to prepare.
The young man is now fitness instructor, which is a good fit for him. His parents still refer to him as a lawyer.
106
These parents are hyper-competitive with other parents---it's really not about what is best for their child.
In my town, they are also the ones with BMW suvs, mcmansions, and go over the top with their children's sports.
Like cars and houses, they believe people judge them on how smart/talented etc. their children are.
Maybe we should stop doing that.
47
@SLBvt. I always asked my elementary aged son about how he enjoyed the game, and let him tell me who won. or lost, and what his experiences were. As a teen he was furious not to be allowed to buy a TV for his room with money he earned. When he graduated from college, he told me two things that made me realize we had done a good job as parents. "Thank you for not letting me have a TV in my room" and "Until last month, nobody realized that I am an only child."
12
this ever increasing pressure to compete for a place in the sun is directly linked to our shifting society where the top one or 2 percent hog more and more of the resources. no amount of SAT prep, petty bribery, or snow plowing will have an impact on a larger scale if you have a shovel and the ones on top commandeer a fleet of John Deeres. We all agree to backstab each other in the lower ranks and the financial elite is amused: less competition for them and their coddled young ones.
17
It is a more competitive world and the stakes are indeed higher for failure. I sympathize with some of the snowplow parents - although not with the extremes like the salad bar mom, or the sauce girl. With our kid, we urge her to contact teachers to check in after an absence or when she thinks they have forgotten to enter an assignment she hasn't turned in and that sort of thing. (which has happened of several occasions). So is that snowplowing, or is that encouraging our child to advocate for herself? What is the difference between passing the ball to your kid as they grow older, and simply dropping it?
12
I stopped teaching high school in 2004. At that time there were approximately 30% percent fewer teachers in my school district than ten years earlier. Given the social emotional bombardment on the developing emotional psyches of our children by social media, this neglect amounts to child abuse. Children develop best when they have many strong relationships with thoughtful caring adults i.e. qualified teachers. Snowplowing is part of a complex reaction to society's lack of support for children and families AND well paid teachers.
20
@MsMazzi Hold on a second. Your comment that teachers are "well paid" is way off base. Considering the credentials they must earn and the responsibilities they take on, I don't think teachers are even adequately paid, much less well paid.
6
@MsMazzi Same here in regards to leaving teaching and the amount of people leaving the field. However, for me, I was fine with my pay. Regarding well paid teachers, I wanted to be treated as a professional, not as a janitor, lunchroom monitor, traffic director, after school club leader etc. While the Texas Teacher Union belated about more pay, I would have liked a much better support system in the classroom and within the school. With overcrowded classrooms, I had no aide. I spent hours after school copying material for my students because the school did not enough textbooks, or curriculum, and this was the case in four different schools in four different districts. And there was that whole the "it's always the teacher's fault" thing. Teachers are not given the respect they deserve in our society. I still can't believe how many people see this as an easy job when it practically put me in looney bin. I had to quit for health reasons brought on by stress. It was honestly not the students or parents, but the system itself that did me in.
6
Pretty sure you responded without actually reading the comment for context. It’s pretty clear that she didn’t say teachers are well paid but rather that a lack of well paid teachers is part of creating these parenting models. Are you a snowplow or a lawnmower?
There are all kinds of parents. Those that hover, those that neglect, and those that fall somewhere in-between. And their are children to match to some degree. What I find more ironic on the comments section of this article is the people of all ages who feel the need to chastise today's youth and today's parents and to make broad generalizations. I find the majority of kids I am around are fairly well-adjusted, very human in their responses to most situations (rarely perfect), and are well aware of the world that the current generation is leaving them. The marches yesterday across the world by the young people tell me all I need to know.
30
I became more involved than I would have preferred initially because from elementary school on, it was impossible for my kids to walk to and from school. The second structural impediment to self reliance was how their interactions with the world became very web based and they did not have an interest or instinct for being their own admin. I morphed into IT support to facilitate keeping up with school websites and medical appt websites and SAT websites and college app websites. Finally, the elephant in the room, changing economic landscape: the question of a good job and remaining in the middle class. Our kids have gone to good state schools, they probably would have anyway, but in our minds there was no choice, and, so, yes, we "facilitated", picking up the homesick one to come home weekends and myriad other chores that have robbed us of developing our own lives as adults.
9
Why pick on Musical Theater parents? MT admissions are more competitive than Stanford and have a much more complex process.
Believe me, I was pretty darned hands-off for one of my children's regular applications, but the MT candidate needed a manager.
You think a 2-hour high-stakes exam is stressful? Try a 5-minute in-person audition. Try traveling to many of them, without getting sick, while you are still in high school and probably also in a show. Each audition has different requirements for memorized monologues and songs. 2-minute dramatic, 3-minute comedic, 17th-century but not by Shakespeare, et cetera. Monologues must be age and gender appropriate but not overdone. *Is there* a monologue from a contemporary published play that is 2 minutes long, dramatic, and suitable for an 18-year-old male that isn't overdone?
Then the song. Prepare cuts of varying length and different styles. Sometimes you must bring a backing track, sometimes you work with a professional accompanist who will be sight-reading 50 different songs that day. Songs need to show off your voice and range but not require too much warm-up, because you're going to be waiting around for a long time. If you have a sore throat, forget it.
This is the tip of the iceberg. So don't you dare criticize a parent who takes on some of the organizational aspects while the student focuses on the artistic end.
And getting into a good program is the easiest part. MT students work harder than anybody.
15
@Prodesse: When I was in high school I maintained an A average, worked a part time job, took piano lessons, did dance, music and school plays, and still prepared all varieties of song and monologues for competitions all over the state. I drove to all of them on my own, eventually earning a full- ride scholarship. Mom was recently divorced and too busy at a new job to help out.
2
@Prodesse
" don't you dare " ?
nice
2
"Snowplow" parents who raise kids who apparently can't face adversity or do anything for themselves are actually making my own child's future easier. As a parent who believes it's ok to let my kid face adversity, fail sometimes and learn from her mistakes, I reckon future employers will be more likely to take her on board rather than kids who need their parents to manage their lives.
21
At least a fair amount of opposition to using SAT scores in college admissions comes from wealthy families who see the SAT as an obstacle to their child's admission to an elite college. They can provide all the connections, opportunities for extracurricular activities, and foreign travel, but can't guarantee a high SAT score.
So the SAT is one of the few meritocratic criteria for college admissions. Yes, rich parents can pay for tutoring and SAT prep courses, but much of this is available for free or at little cost to all students. And no amount of prep is going to change a 500 to an 800 score.
21
It sounds like an outsize percentage of parents have lost sight of one of their primary responsibilities -- to prepare their children for the day their parents are no longer around to do everything for them.
As the late Dr Joy Browne used to say, a parent's job is to give a child roots and wings... and roots are the easy part.
I'm of another generation, but when I was accepted to the university of my choice, I knew I'd earned admission on my own merits. I can't imagine having begun my freshman year with the lack of confidence, and doubt over my sense of belonging, that would have accompanied me had my parents finagled my way in. I think I would have felt like a fraud for the rest of my life.
16
"The more risks you allow children to take, the better they learn to take care of themselves. If you never let them take any risks, then I believe they become very prone to injury. Boys should be allowed to climb tall trees and walk along the tops of high walls and dive into the sea from high rocks... The same with girls. I like the type of child who takes risks. Better by far than the one who never does so.” -- Roald Dahl, My Year
11
@Zareen
Unless they fall out of the tall tree, break their neck and die.
2
In 1963 I taught 6th grade in a poor rural school in central Michigan. Most of the students were farm kids. Even at that young age they had responsibilities at home which they were expected to meet. There were no nannies, no play dates, no hovering. Over the more than 50 years since then we have increasingly witnessed parents running interference for their children to spare them every frustration. This phenomenon has psychologically crippled rather than strengthened many young people. Fortunately this is not universal.
13
Not so long ago, people didn't need a bachelor's degree to get an entry-level job in white-collar or service work. In many cases, they were able to work themselves all the way to the top without a bachelor's degree. In some goodly part of these cases, such ambitious people likely had cognitive skills that helped them achieve their ambitions in the workplace, but that held them back in school. I wonder how many of the parents who are now obliged to "helicopter" or "snowplow" their children to and through college are parents of children with learning disabilities, which are far more common than we realize (and arguably, growing in intensity and number due to an increasingly toxic, chemically laden environment). Children with learning disabilities may grapple to the point of despair with college reading and writing assignments, while quickly learning how to be excellent readers and writers in the workplace. The hyperfocus of an ADD/ADHD student is a stumbling block in school, but an asset in the workplace where such intensity of purpose leads to success. As capitalism sinks its strangling claws ever further into our culture, we are at each other's throats rather than asking the big questions, such as why this emphasis on education even as we see that our children are less educated than ever before? What are we doing to ourselves and our children, and why? When did we develop such a desperately vicious cookie-cutter mentality?
13
@Valerie
You're right Valeri. Not all children come in "wired" for the educational system. We want our children to have the same benefits of society as other children. Thanks for your sensitive comment.
1
Both of my children have legit learning disabilities, and it is because of this that I credit their success in college. Throughout middle and high school, had to work harder than their typically developing peers, learn how to learn and more importantly, develop relationships with their teachers as they advocated for themselves. They were part of the child study team meetings, where they were able to discuss their strengths and struggles and collectively design strategies for success. Parents do their children (and ultimately the world they will be thrust into) such a disservice when they remove obstacles. It is during childhood when young people have the most safest opportinities to make (and learn from) mistakes, when the stakes are low. Parenting is hard work - we need to do a better job giving parents the tools they need to become reflective and conscious of their hangups.
11
It is easy to pick out the extreme examples, like the parents involved in the bribery scandal or the parent (for real?) who intervened in a roommate spat over peanut butter, but the larger issue is buried in the article, which is that for the first time in recent history, children do not have a good chance of doing better than their parents, and competition for spots at good colleges is very high. Most of us regular parents work to raise independent children, but we also know that our kids are going to be competing against the kids with snowplow parents, and clearly college admissions officers can't tell the difference. It's a tough balance, but the dilemma is real. If you have a child who works hard and gets good grades and comes from a comfortable, but not super-rich, family, which pile do you think he or she goes into when applying to college -- the one with first-generation college students who battled extreme odds to get there (who should rightly be given special consideration), or the pile with the kids whose parents have gone to extreme lengths to get them into college?
24
"...preventing something from happening." is right.
This is described as several causes, boredom, etc.c but the reason is so obvious.
Our society has become casted. The children are exposed to every hindrance to success possible thru the media, and every possible diversion to the college education.
Perhaps the specter of a 'friendship' that 'captures' the child into a different lifestyle. Perhaps the lure of 'experimenting' diverts them.
College is the safest place for the child to become adult. Its in my prayers at night for my granddaughter. What are her chances without it? Without grandparents established in a community where they are property owners with like friends?
4
I teach second grade in an affluent neighborhood and I’m so saddened by the amount of anxiety in both parents and young children. I keep telling the parents that , “It’s only second grade and school is about learning and not getting it right and trying again.” I had a mom come into the class and her child had left a letter out of his name on a paper that was up on the wall and she was mortified and tried to pull it off the wall because she thought other parents would see it. I had to remind her that it’s okay...breathe, relax, laugh about it as an idiosyncrasy of a 7 year old.
24
@Kelly
My soon in middle school would forget to put his name on his homework so he would not get credit for the work. I kidded him, saying I could understand not doing the homework, but not getting credit because he forgot his name on it?
2
@Kelly "not getting it right and trying again" Spot on!
1
Nepotism is perhaps the worst form of snow plowing.
It is generally under the radar, but sometime it is blatantly
in the forefront. The parent is sometimes an employee of or even a member of the admissions committee. Yes, this happens.
10
Every article I read about this case refers to it as the extreme, the unusual, the far-fetched. In my not-brief-enough and unhappy experience as a low-income, single parent of a brown-skinned child in a prestigious educational program I would say that Operation Varsity Blues has revealed one tiny part of the tip of the iceberg. During Kindergarten year, another parent revealed in conversation with me that she'd been researching ivy league schools (lower case is my my choice) for her daughter. Following that I asked out loud (and naming no names) during a grade-wide parent meeting with school administrators if I should also already be researching colleges for my child. I assumed this was something we as a family would do together when my child was able to have the self awareness and informed opinions required to participate in these choices. There was little laughter from other parents in the room.
10
I guess I was lucky. My parents, mostly my mother, endeavored to be a snowplow parent but due to the combination her poor social skills and ignorance of how things worked, she usually failed. She often unintentionally created additional obstacles. Calling the dean of a medical school where I was not accepted and offering a donation was the last straw. (Considering current events, this would be a viable approach apparently...)
Most of the time I felt hurt she didn’t think me capable enough to succeed on my own. Snowplow parents should consider the message they are sending to their kids with their intrusive behavior. Kids resent parents who don’t believe in them.
114
@Pandora
Reading that one of the mothers in this scandle tricked her son into thinking that he was taking a real test while she was paying someone to take it for him in another place, I thought how she had just alienated her son for the rest of their lives. I don't see how he could ever forgive her
9
When I was 16 I bought a bike from my allowance savings and rode it from Munich, Germany, to London, England and back. I arrived in London just in time for the premiere of the Beatles' Yellow Submarine.
Children are very, very different beings compared to what we have been trained, brainwashed, taught to think and feel about them. Instead of learning from them we provide an extremely rigid mould of thinking and behaving - very far removed from what a child reall needs.
The "rebellion of puberty" for example is sold to us by the experts as "normal".
It is not.
It is an entirely natural impulse by a human being who feels: "If I obey them I will become like them. Who in his right mind wants that?"
12
Even the NYT seems to measure success by “doing better than your parents.” What does that mean? You are measuring success by the amount of money one makes. Millennials, while seeming to want to make money more quickly and easily, also seem to place a higher value on quality of life. Doctors are valuing specialties that may make less money but allow them to be home with families. It’s time for people to realize there is not a point in time when a financially successful person says, “I’ve finally made it.” Most people like this keep working towards the next thing. They don’t rest as if they’ve made it. Kids and parents will only relax when they understand that it is the journey, living in the moment and enjoying life as its comes. There is no place to get to. Just enjoy your life right now, you are lucky to be here.
52
@Jim Bellinson
For a lot of people not doing better than your parents simply means not having enough. They are that close to the line. It is scary.
1
It’s not just the parents - it’s their children, the university administration, and faculty that are dishonest. I lectured briefly at an expensive West Coast college - the extent of plagiarism was appalling. The faculty attacked me for bringing it to their attention and the students were not penalized. I quit - I refused to be involved in the dishonest department. The outcome of academic dishonesty is that the students in the were ignorant. They did not know their subject matter. And with wealthy parents will get a job. And the cycle continues and society declines.
45
@Barbara
Absolutely. Your experience is now the norm. Universities are run by administrators for the benefit administrators--otiose, overpaid time-servers who have metastasised in the last couple of decades. Their only concern is putting bums on seats; they stuff classes with no-hopers and triple-fee-paying "international" students whose English is so laughable they can scrape through only by cheating, to which admin turns a blind eye (and, as you indicate, it comes down hard on instructors who have the temerity to object). Bright students are short-changed by dumbed-down curricula, grade inflation and grade compression; many students graduate with degrees that misrepresent them as competent and then discover they can't get or hold a job because employers have wised up; and far too many students find themselves unemployed and in serious debt when they would have been much better advised to train for a trade. Parents and school counsellors should know better by now.
2
@Barbara
I had a similar experience as you. I was an adjunct professor at a Boston area private college for 6 years.
The administration and my Department Chair coddled the students. Administrators were terrified of complaints from parents. Students were not allowed to fail a course, nobody earned less than a C. Professors were expected to dumb down coursework and shrug off assignment deadlines. Any incomplete assignment submitted at any time was expected to grade no lower than a C.
Plagiarism was rampant. I found that the other faculty even suggested that individual students plagiarize to facilitate completing assignments.
I had 7 incidences of plagiarism in one course of juniors and seniors; one of my students plagiarized twice during the course, even after I'd admonished him for his first offense. I failed every one of those students for their plagiarized assignments - not for the entire course, as I would have been when I was in college - only for that assignment.
The Dept. Chair called me to his office for a meeting. Without the students who had plagiarized. He told me the students were very upset that I'd given them failing grades. He had no problem with the plagiarism. My contract was not renewed.
The attitude in education now;
Good grades, good student.
Bad grades, bad teacher.
This is the future of our country that we are creating. Illiterate, innumerate, lazy, selfish, unethical young adults.
7
@L
I teach my state college students how to research and write with academic integrity. If they insist on plagiarizing, not only will they fail my course but they’ll be reported to academic discipline.
Still, it’s tough to maintain. In Florida my compensation and the school’s funding is tied to pass rates, all but ensuring a dumbed-down course where the “customer” is always right. I continue to resist passing failing efforts, but it’s wearying.
The State, along with snowplow parents, coddled teens, and overpaid administrators, are all complicit.
2
It’s like a mini version of The Truman Show.
Once the adult children and the real world realize it’s all been orchestrated and their achievements are not their own, they may just crumple up and melt.
5
I would suggest to NYT readers (as a mother of 5) to read the book Free Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy. Parents need to step way back.
Try just letting them be kids. Let them do the unthinkable like ride a bike without a helmet or run with scissors. Try dropping them off at a practice or game and not stay...
16
Was the point of this article to remind us of a parenting style that’s been around for thousands of years, or was it to socialize a catchy new term, ‘snowplow parenting’?
12
@Maxwell
I first heard this term at least a decade ago--apparently invented (reasonably enough) by Scandinavians. And I don't recall any kids having snowplough or helicopter parents when I was growing up in the fifties and sixties--can recall walking unaccompanied half-way across our small town to visit a friend when I was five and then, in another small town, routinely cutting through a notoriously bear-infested gully to get to the library. As long as we showed up on time to set the table for dinner, helped clean up afterwards, and did our homework, our parents didn't seem to know where we were or what we were up to. When I went to university, we all pretended we didn't have parents; we would have been mortified if they'd shown up at all, let alone nagged our profs for better grades.
78
@Ruth Knight
So we have moved in a single generation from students that pretend that they do not have parents, to parents that pretend that their offspring has no will of its own.
1
@Ruth Knight
that's the ticket
When I look to hire somebody, one of the first things I ask is what serious, if not life altering direct personal adversity did they encounter and how did it affect them.
13
@Sane citizen-is that legal? Can’t ask about a job candidate’s personal life, only professional life.
This article reminded me of a recent NYT article on about the death of crime boss Frank Cali: ' "Prosecutors said Mr. Cali tapped his connections in Italy, importing many members and associates in his crew from Sicily ... part of a broader trend in the 21st century of crime families importing Italian-born men, the law enforcement official said. “They have what they believe are the old values, because the American-born kids don’t have the right stuff anymore,” the official said. ' it seems to me that there must be a connection.
2
@twefthfret No, wrong inference. Children of mafioso who can choose a life independent of crime often do so because it allows for a freedom and transparency that they feel is healthier than the secrecy surrounding them in childhood.
1
I think the case of the “bribering” parents falls into another category.
I believe those parents are more worried about status and image, than the “future” or “wellbeing “ of their children,
I think that the snow plowing, helicopter, lawnmower parents have good intentions , but are wrong in their means.
What they do have in common is that they both are from wealthy and privileged families. And I think the root of that is inherent to the college system itself.
7
I was going to send this article to my kids in California who just had their third child, but I resisted because it seemed like it made me a snowplow.
13
@Douglas Oliver - Well played, Sir!
@Douglas Oliver
Naw. It makes you a parent. They don't have to read the article, and you never have to broach it in conversation. If they don't want you to send parenting articles, they can tell you so.
I encouraged my kids to do homework on Sunday not Saturday to be sure they got some recreation under their belts.
I also wanted them to have as much fun in high school as I had—thank you CHHS—so I never pushed for them to develop college “resumes”
They are among the three most remarkable people I know.
18
Without a level playing field and occasional failure, how is a child to learn how to engage in an adult world?
"White" and "Rich" privilege, and as one says "snow plowing" for kids does not really help them in the long run. They must be encouraged to succeed under their own steam and taught to assume responsibility while being assisted in learning when necessary. The parent that does a child's homework or buys his/her admission into a privileged school does them no service. Those of us who are academics are aware of the failure rates of these kids due to their inability to compete. They are under undue stress to try to keep up with others who have made their way fairly and validly.
Take, for example, The Donald - his father bought his way into Penn undergrad, bought his way out of many miscreant actions and turned him into a spoiled, entitled, ignorant, irresponsible and feckless being. He has never worked a day in his life nor has he ever had to take non-court-imposed responsibility for his actions. He has ;likewise done this to his children - and just look at them!
If you want YOUR children to be respected and truly succeed in a competitive global environment, teach them to learn and let them fail - they will be much better people for it.
23
Snowplowing is a useful term for a phenomenon that also marks the privilege of whiteness in the United States. Let’s not miss that part of the metaphor, conveniently evaded here.
19
This article is bad in that it mystifies the target of our anger in this scandal. We, especially college-aged people like me, are not concerned with "helicopter parents" versus "snowplow parents." These are silly distinctions. It is normal and healthy for parents in the digital age to keep some tabs on their kids' lives. This is not the root issue.
Grotesque inequality in college admissions is caused by grotesque wealth inequality. The former issue cannot be fixed without addressing the latter.
38
@Brad McPherson
Keeping tabs on their kids lives is one thing, actively interfering with teachers, administrators, employers and so forth is quite another. As well, “kid” does not mean someone in their late 20’s and above.
5
Whatever happened from the good old days when kids were allowed to be kids?
3
This is absurd. All children have failures. You can send a kid to dance school, but you can't magically make him/her good at it. There's no wrong in giving your kids education and opportunity. People in countries without public schools could argue that our kids are coddled for having guaranteed access to a high school education. Should we stop?
8
my observation is that this so-called snowplow parenting is absolutely necessary in order for their children to maintain their 24 hour a day addiction to their smart phones. Good going parents! there is no time available for your special children to look up from their screens and Gasp! notice there is a real world out here that the rest of us live in
Someday when you and your snowplow are not around, we in the real world will give your kid a taste of reality!
Can't wait
4
So what's the difference between snowplow parenting and nepotism? Or even snowplow parenting and inheritance or legacy? Does the son/daughter who inherits the family farm have snowplow parents? I mean, isn't our whole civilization a snowplow civilization? I tell my students, stop whining, try to visit the world and see how good you have it, find some purpose in life aside from being critical of others, follow the rules, be fair, be nice, contribute, make use of yourself. Why is everyone competing? How much money do you really need? Not much. Be clean; cleanse your body and your heart; think just a little about what good you can leave in your wake. Just a teensy little bit, please.
17
My sons 19 year old stepdaughter has been groomed to be a complete loser never having to wash a dish, do a chore, or even clean up after herself. The mom is so afraid of her not liking her she’s enabled this and the grandma she lives with wants a friend so badly she pays for everything and cooks cleans up after her. They say “enough” regularly but all she has to do is say let’s go shopping I need blah blah and they get out the credit cards. Her best friend meanwhile is finishing up her first year on full scholarship at NYU. This while the girl lounges in silk robes all day pouring herself juice, leaving the mess. They all think she’s a good girl it’ll work out. My son is horrified at the influence on their other 2 young kids. This is a daily topic of analysis with us. What to do?
10
@MiND
The 19 year old girl needs to go to school far away and start with a dorm, then get her own apartment. She needs to learn how to be an adult.
2
@MiND your son will end up like me. I'm watching my husband shell out thousands every year for his 45 year old son's cable and cell phone and cigarettes and lawyers (didn't keep him from being a felon) and 'oh I'm short this month.'
1
@MiND
.........not to worry. You said it yourself, 'her best friend is finishing her first year on a scholarship.' I think it will work out.
Wait to worry when the cops and the social workers use coercive hypnosis to steal the grandparents time-in-place of 10 years in the community and their part-finished retirement home without even being alcoholics, drug users, or dog beaters.
Is it just success or is this seemingly over-attention also our affected by concern about the wanton nature of our society now? My son's school was blindsided by an epidemic of vaping, with JUUL and other companies peddling flavored tobacco right under parents and teacher's noses.
One of my wife’s friends, who got a bachelor’s degree from Yale, was devastated when she was rejected from Yale’s law school. She had to settle for Harvard. She was devastated because she had never experienced a rejection. She was not prepared and had a hard time with it. Needless to say, she’s been quite successful.
Our children need to experience failure and rejection in order to build character, coping skills, and persistence. My favorite saying is a Japanese proverb, “Success is trying seven times, and failing six.”
If these families want bragging rights, how about bragging about how they help others or the environment (even though bragging is vulgar).
10
My son’s high school won’t parents (moms) bring forgotten items. At the back to school parents’ night they call it the Walk of Shame...not that the kid is ashamed but Mom should be, for thinking her kid will flunk out or not become president if you don’t give him his English homework and she needs to bring it!
Most of the moms did not take it well...it was all I could do not to applaud.
9
Wait a minute; snowplow parents aren't exactly new, and have never been exclusively liberal for heavens' sake! All over the world, rich kids get snowplows to clear their way. Let's see:
trump was a millionaire by the time he was a toddler.
Elite schools? Check!
Continued financial bailouts by his dad whenever he was in debt, then pretending he's a genius? Check!
Bonespur diagnosis to dodge the draft, paid for by dad, courtesy of dad's family friend doctor? Check...
Throwing money around to keep his 'reputation clean'? Check again! Tax dodge, cutesy playboy persona, high flying showoff. And he's in his 70's. And our current president. sigh
87
A lot of people seem to confuse what is inconvenient or no fun with actually threatening or harmful.
Any decent person, parent or not, wants to and by and see someone actually doing something dangerous or harmful. You would yell to a stranger to prevent them from stepping in front of an oncoming car they didn't see, or quickly warn someone to not touch something they didn't realize was hot.
But that is totally different from shielding "children" and young adults (adults being the operative word here) from normal consequences of bad decisions or laziness. When they're little, of course you do most of that for them, but as they get older they need to assume the responsibility of doing it all for themselves. No, missing a paper, suddenly realizing you don't have any clean clothes to wear because you didn't do the laundry or going somewhere where the dreaded sauce is on the menu (what a horror!) will not actually harm you, life will go on, the sun will rise in the morning and your life isn't over. But it will teach you that you - not someone else - needs to do something different next time. That's called personal growth and development, and no one can really gift that to you - it's learned, usually the "hard way" as the old saying goes.
4
Any of the 7 teachers in the close and extended family who teach at all levels will back up the statement about the “snowplows.”
1
This past week there was a news story of a young woman who climbed over a barrier at a zoo and stuck her arm through a cage so she should take the all-important "selfie" of herself looking daring and defiant right next to a leopard. The leopard, appropriately annoyed, reached out and scratched this nervy girl.
The path through life needs a few annoyed leopards along the way
12
Geez. From the comments it seems like everyone here is a “perfect” parent and everyone else is doing it wrong.
Stories from people whose children did no work and still graduated top honors. Others who gave their kids tough love and now those kids are CEOs.
How about the cherry-picked examples of children who went to the dance and also failed high school and never went to college? How about the kid who got into trouble once and kept getting into trouble for life? Those kids are out there. It’s not rare.
It’s nice so many of you have children who succeeded “independently”. But if your child was getting poor grades or at risk of failure, most of you would step in to ensure success. Check yourself.
12
Those parents aren't writing in. Mostly humble bragging......
2
The snow plow parent has been the birth of the high anxiety high school student. Stop it!
2
In trying to imagine the conversations parents engaged in intending to allegedly bribe various people to get their respective kids into a good school, it is a bit mind boggling. “Ok, lets have person X take the SAT for our sweet kid.” or “Let’s pretend our sweet kid rows crew.” And then take and pay off people—how does anyone even find the people to pay off? There is likely an underground that has yet to be fully discovered.
Imagine the gloomy atmosphere around the house now…Well, everything is toast and no one will trust us again and we might have to go to jail and pay way more money than the bribes. And our kids are still not smart...rats.
3
I guess my children are lucky that I am far too lazy to do their work for them.
52
You can't cope with college at Emory or Brown because you won't eat food with sauce? You don't deserve Emory or Brown, and they certainly don't deserve you.
9
Great article . I live in Silicon Valley and see the crazy things parents do . This hovering is also stemmed from cultural beliefs
2
This is something that concerns me about free college, I fear that college is just going to turn into extended high school.
How to square that with the cost of college? High schools have long offered AP classes, there is no reason that young people who excel in AP classes shouldn't be given a diploma that recognizes their achievements. We should have graduated diplomas, those who have excelled probably have the skills to enter jobs that require a more advanced base knowledge or excellent proficiency in subjects.
This unfortunately would make the issues brought up by the article worse since parent intervention at the high school level is much more egregious.
2
@erhoades
Along these lines I favor the development of a Skills Exam. It would be a day-long test where you have to write an essay on the spot, submit to an interview that includes questions posing ethical dilemmas, calculations, and problem-solving of various kinds. It would be administered at the beginning of your senior year of high school. If you pass it, you get a credential that can then show to colleges and prospective employers. It would be administered by a team under high-security conditions with blind evaluations of as many components as possible. It would be somewhat different from the national exams administered in other countries. With such an exam, you could then discern, to a degree we don't have now, who can function in society and who can't.
3
As a middle school teacher of "gifted" students, I live and breathe snowplow, lawnmower, and helicopter parents. Little Johnny and Jill can do no wrong! I can't count the number of times parents have attacked me this year alone, but here are a few:
1) You must have lost his paper; he told me he turned it in. You better find it, or I'll contact the principal! (I started photographing certain students' work and making them sign logs.)
2) How dare you write up my child for disrespect and being out of area! You were disrespectful to her! I'll talk to the school board and see that you face punishment for telling her she was wrong and offending her. It's a stupid rule that you were enforcing anyway.
3)I need you to refigure Jill's grades; there's no way she could have an 89. She deserves an A. I need to see your math, and we'll discuss this with the principal. (They overlooked the 60s on tests.)
4) Do you realize my daughter has a C in your class? You are sending her to high school with a C on her transcript; she's really sad, and I'll just have to talk with the principal and the school board to see what we can do. (I teach a high-school credit course. This girl didn't qualify for the course, but her parents decided she should be in it for whatever ego-involved reason you can name.)
I really could go on, but you cotton the point that for parents who see a child as an extension of their own ego, no decision to further the education or career of the child is out of bounds.
1345
@MerMer Living it with you, MerMer. Our district has adopted "grade fixes" that lower expectations and remove consequences.
It's a capitulation to the pressure to ensure all kids succeed. In the end, it's doing the opposite.
101
@MerMer
And where I teach a middle school grade does not go on the high school transcript used for college admissions. So that C in middle school is quite a teachable moment for the student and family-a roadblock with no permanent damaging results. I teach high school now. To the freshmen I say ; " Now it really counts, every grade counts if you want to go to college. So let's find a way to work hard and get good results." When I taught middle school I would say : " You don't have too much more time before these kind of work habits are going to be problematic and matter more to your future. So let's try to get this under better control this year." I did not allow them to fall apart over a C. But I concur. it is the parents that you have to worry about. Because they will fall apart and try to maneuver. Unless they don't expect better which is another story. Teaching is very satisfying when it works though.
80
@Tom Wanamaker
I would agree BUT......the idea is to get the child safely thru what today is a gauntlet of misdirection. Yes, its a capitulation to ensure all kids succeed BUT in today's world, even tiny mistakes are not forgiven and can have major consequences. Remember they are children with incomplete thinking processes based on a sheltered experience, give them a chance in college.
11
Our son moved to France with his French girl friend, at age 20. Married at 21. Now he is 54, married 33 years.
I told this to my neighbor last night at dinner. HER son is 21, and she talks about him as if he were a child. She is micromanaging his last year in University and deciding what he will do when he graduates.
She asked me how we managed to let go of both our sons: to a large extent the last two years of high school, and just about completely once they entered University.
I told her that I just did it. It never occurred to me to manage their decisions after about age 16. I would be considered a neglectful parent by today's standards.
I am sorry for the young people who are helicoptered and snowplowed into their mid to late 20's.
And also sorry for the parents who cannot 'let go' and turn their energies to other things.
12
@elained Parents are feeling bad because they realize that they inadvertantly robbed their own children of a future. We're 20 trillion dollars in debt and Robots are taking our jobs, do you really believe that their is hope for the future? The environment is going down the tubes and their is no money because the rich stole all of it. The meek shall inherit the earth.
After an extended discussion, the parent asked the child's teacher, "How is my child going to get into the "The Bronx High School of Science?" "Through the front door," the teacher responded.
16
I am surprised that parent was willing to let the child go to Bronx High School of Science, since it is in the Bronx. I grew up near the Bronx Zoo and went to Bronx Science in the late 70’s. So I know the area. Is she going to drive her child to school?
1
@Sue is this a joke?
I’m personally unsure that I ever want children & this article illustrates much of why I remain ambivalent. I don’t think this world needs any more children that are born into such privileged circumstances. It will not make the world a better place.
My partner and I are late 20s, high earners, with degrees from elite schools, including advanced degrees. We both also grew up in working-class homes. If we had children, their whole lives would look drastically different. Not relatable at all.
I think we may adopt instead - not a baby - but probably a younger child. We need to use our good fortune to lift others up, not tend to our vanity.
16
It's easy to point fingers at parents. But why do they feel the overwhelming need to do this? It's because they've suffered the uncertainty of a rapidly-changing economy and the shrinkage of the middle class, and perceive high marks and "good" schools as the only route to any kind of security or success. The education system is framed as one huge competition, with only the front few percent winning the prize. The anxiety is huge, and the news reports about all the things that can go wrong with and for your kids only makes it worse. We will not lessen this behaviour by pointing fingers, as righteous as it makes us feel. The solution is a lot bigger and harder than that.
15
@Kate O'Donnell
I despaired of finding a comment that reflected the true conditions until yours. Its a cold cruel world out there without the protection of family friends, contacts, favors, and who hasn't heard of a family relation or business acquaintance hiring the college grad for experience?
3
@Kate O'Donnell
Or is it partly their own ego and imagined bragging rights to the “right” schools and such?
I always tell my students that their struggle is not a sign of their weakness or abuse on my part. It is a sign of growth and development. Fewer people seem to accept that.
The district where I teach (along with many others) has adopted "grading fixes" - basically policies that artificially raise grades. Full credit for work that is late, no academic penalty for "academic dishonesty" (aka cheating), homework doesn't count or counts for much less, students get an unlimited number of tries to reassess their learning, lowering standards so that students are issued passing grades...
The principle that a grade should reflect learning and that not all students learn at the same rate assumes the best intentions of all involved, but in practice, it instills behaviors that are counterproductive to everyday living and upstanding citizenship.
We are blundering down a dead end with this type of "snowplow" behavior.
It is not helping kids to put so much pressure on them to achieve academic success and then not allow them to learn how to deal with the struggles of life.
9
@Tom Wanamaker,
You have said it well and explained why I retired. Is it not unfair to students who achieve excellence, and doesn't it dishonor their work to artificially raise grades of those who can't or won’t fully participate in the learning process? I come from a California Community College which has a great many international students, who mostly want A's and expect to go to Berkeley. I felt somewhat unsupported because as these students pay higher tuition, administrators don't want them to be unhappy.
2
@Linda Lum Linda, I have been an educator for 33 years and for most of it, I would tell anyone who asked that I had the best job in the world.
I was entrusted to perform a worthwhile activity where I had the independence to use my own intellect and creativity to improve every year. I knew I wouldn't get rich, but the pay was enough to provide a modest living for my family, the benefits were good, and I had job security.
Over the last 8 - 10 years all of that has changed to one degree or another. I'm only 56, but I'm looking forward to retiring more and more every year.
5
I think this phenomenon highlights the flip side of Hanna Rosin's very disturbing article written for The Atlantic a few years back called "The Silicon Valley Suicides". In that article, it described such impossible pressure to be perfect academically to get that golden ticket to Stanford or Harvard (and the like), that kids were frequently throwing themselves in front of commuter trains to opt out. These kids are also from very affluent families and attend public schools in suburban San Francisco that are among the best in the state. Taking 8+ AP classes from sophomore year onward is not unusual.
With college no less competitive to get into, and with the admissions "arms race" bar ever higher to attain, I can understand the urge to alleviate some of the pressure on kids so they don't fall into a deep depression with the possibility of them harming themselves.
But that's where my empathy ends. Did these parents ever consider not buying into the madness? Did they ever think: this is crazy, and we won't participate? Feel guilty about doing their kids' work for them? Having sent 3 kids to flagship state universities in the last ten years, this scandal confirms my suspicions: elite admissions is rigged and applying on the basis of actual merit is for chumps.
Perhaps a sudden downswing in the number of applications received might send a strong message to elite admissions officers to fix what has been clearly broken for years.
16
@Sabrina
Yes, there are two different different aspects: learning the material , and vaunting the grade curve. They are separate.
I'm sure these outrageous anecdotes occur, but my daughter attends Stanford, and though she has met lots of kids who had the private college counselors and one kid whose parents created a charity for her to run, almost every student she's come across there has been independent and fully able to handle themselves. If their parents have ever complained about anything to university officials, she never heard of it. I've spend quite a bit of time there with students and have found them extraordinarily adept socially, more than at most colleges, as well as outstanding academically. A friend of mine was a TA there for years, teaching hundreds of students, and had only one parent contact her about his daughter's grade, and that was to say that she was very upset about her grandmother's death a couple of weeks ago that she didn't want to mention to my friend because she wanted to be strong. He didn't ask for a change of grade. Inappropriate for a college freshman? Perhaps, but not outlandish. I think it's worthwhile for the article to point out a really outrageous phenomenon, but this article goes beyond that, pretending this is the way of life at these schools. I do a lot of work with colleges and it's simply not what I've seen or heard.
11
@thinking
Yes, think the article was over the top.
As a college professor I have noticed in the past 4-5 years far more of this 'nervous' parenting, as I call it. The times that parents have called to intervene (sometimes with me, other times a dean or even the university president!) most students tell me how embarrassed they are, and how it makes them feel like a child rather than the adult they are becoming.
At a costly private school like the one I teach in, parents will begin an intervention with something like this : 'all the money we are paying....' As though a school that holds their child accountable for the quality of their work is somehow a faulty product.
17
@Jensetta
I am curious if grading in college has gotten easier over the last few decades. In my college days, as many will attest to, many students flunked out if the work was just too hard or the student didn’t have the focus. With college costs so expensive now, flunking a student will cause a loss of revenue.
Are some schools diluting the requirements for a degree to keep revenue coming in—and parents at bay.
4
@glennmr
I agree 100%. My freshman class at Vanderbilt in the late 70's was almost 1800 students. I was housed in a communal dorm like the army. Required freshman classes were over 250 students in an auditorium. By spring semester we were down to 1200 students and I was in a regular dorm room. When I started my sophomore year my class was down to less than 1000, and I finally had my own room and reasonable class sizes.
Millennials, get over yourselves. In my department at an engineering company we have less than 5 Millennials that are actually capable of doing their job, now several years out college. Pitiful. Colleges and universities are putting our country at risk by putting out degreed individuals incapable of doing the work. Think about that as you drive over a new bridge in this country.
10
@glennmr
I wouldn't put the issue quite as you have, glenmr, but what we call 'grade inflation' has been an issue for academia throughout my career.
Gradually, what was once the average grade of 2.5 (C+) became a 3.25 (roughly a B) so the average gpa has gone up.
But I don't think the primary cause for this shift in the scale is what you suggest--colleges protecting their bottom line. I suspect its more about changes in the culture like those suggested in this article.
Interestingly, part of the conversation where I work is about a different phenomenon: the 'under performing' make student.
4
This is not a phenomenon exclusive to wealthy white parents. I work in an "inner-city" high school and have seen this sheltering on many levels. I recently sat through part of a meeting with a mother who berated her 18 year old son's counselors and I for her son's failure. When I asked the young man if he had been reading the assigned material, he said "no," but his mother would have none of that. It was our fault, not his.
IEPs (the above student didn't have one) don't just allow students extras on testing, they also protect students from consequences of often violent behavior in school, preparing them for a life of entitlement, as if the cop or judge is going to look at their IEP when considering an arrest or sentence.
The instincts to protect and nurture are good and natural, but they're perverted by a culture of blame, permissiveness and consequently entitlement.
20
@Gustav Aschenbach . So you look at students with disabilities as "privileged"? What a shame.
2
Too many people on the planet competing for finite resources leads to many variations on the same theme. The number of slots at top tier schools cannot grow enough to meet demand. People with sharp elbows feel increasingly incentivized to use them. This isn't the only sphere where this kind of aggression is amping up. But because it's people's kids it's especially emotional and fierce.
14
I see it a bit differently.
Parents with means/wealth use that to 'snowplow'.
Their peers [in snowplowing] who do not have means/wealth often pressure/manage/force their kids to constant activities/sports and often get involved in league management, coaching, etc. to make sure their children are the 'star'.
These two are quite related despite seeming distinct.
7
After 4 years of frustration watching my only child sleepwalking through high school, I am still pinching myself talking to this 19 yo college freshman with great grades, that works part time, does her laundry and eats cafeteria food without complaints.
What did I do to deserve this incredible young woman?
I did not complain to her high school teachers about missed homework or mediocre grades, I did not cover for her when she would oversleep in the morning.
I offered to drive to and pay for extra curricular activities but she didn't care for any of them, and her piano playing, with lack of practicing, drove me crazy.
Raising her ACT score? She told me to forget about it.
Still, she did well enough to get into a state school where she is obviously thriving.
In summary, my daughter is is taking care of herself, she is growing up into a independent and loving adult - what more can a parent ask for?
196
@Jay Tan Exactly! It drove me crazy. Nevertheless, my daughter enjoyed playing the violin (since the third grade) and was recruited by a highly rated state college to fill a position in the school orchestra. She was the principal violist for four years and graduated on the dean's list. Surprised me!
14
It is important that children learn to be disappointed at times. My parents provided support when I was a kid, but they didn’t make me do things I didn’t want to do or clear my way to make things easier. At most, my retired dad drove me to my college classes when I was in high school because I didn’t drive and I would ask him to look at my papers after they were done to get a sounding board, but he wouldn’t do the research for me.
4
I agree with this article for the most part. I’m not sure about the survey that showed that many parents enroll their children in after school programs to prevent them from being bored. The survey may not have been worded well. My 10-year-old goes to an after school program. That’s because both my husband and I have to be at work during those hours. Yes, it helps that she’s not bored there — she does her homework, shoots hoops in the gym, and they sometimes have optional organized activities. But she’s there because she can get there safely and there is some supervision. I’m fairly sure most parents send there kids there for the same reasons. The kids who have someone at home during those hours are going home.
15
I don't mind parents that do everything for their children into adulthood. The reason is that those young adults may (not always!) have issues that will make them less likely to compete with my offspring, so my young adults get a leg up on them. Indeed, if I could make all my children's peers to be dependent and fearful of the unknown as well as dysfunctional adults, then I'm good with that because my kids will just plow right over them.
11
Boomers always seem to tell stories of their unfettered childhoods. Summers spent leaving the house right after breakfast, stopping by home for lunch and then being gone again until dinner time. So much time spent alone or with other kids, without a parent in sight. I was one of those kids, and like so many of my generation I think I'm better for it. But, I wonder now if my parents would be different if I had been born in 2012 instead of 1952. Maybe they would be more worried about me. The country is a very different place now. I'm glad I had the childhood I did, and I think I benefited from it. I hope today's kids will also end up benefiting somehow from their parents' obsessive attention.
22
@Ms. Pea
My childhood as a pre-Boomer was like what you describe. Of course the country is different now, and many children are learning responsibility and self-sufficiency in other ways. It would seem that grasping for money and privilege is the goal for a certain subset of people who already have considerable money and advantages. But we have been mightily encouraged by the young people we've encountered over recent years who are working on political campaigns to make life better for their fellow citizens. They are empathetic, articulate, focused. Their parents did something right.
Our parents wanted us to be able to choose a life that would be satisfying to us. Their own example included work that had value and was valued, service to country and community, and a sense of obligation to help others less fortunate, as we ourselves were helped. I'll bet most parents out there want the same for their children; I'll bet that hasn't changed.
Talk about wringing the joy out of life!
Here’s a vignette from our house: my daughter started Suzuki violin at age 5. By age 10, she was getting tired of the regimentation, competition, and repetitive nature of this method. Instead of forcing her to continue, I asked if there was another style of fiddling she would like to try. She settled on Québécois fiddle and we found a great teacher. Now, the two of us perform casually in the Summer at Farmers Markets. Fun! No pressure! And we get little kids to dance in front of us.
Why force her to achieve? Why not let her decide? Value her voice and have opportunity for joy rather than more stress and competition.
58
You’re fortunate that she likes playing the violin. What if you had played tuba?
1
@KK As the mother and daughter of tuba players, it would have been just fine, thanks.
3
Is it any coincidence that the rise of helicopter/snowplow parenting has paralleled the rise of economic inequality? The rich get richer and willingly pay to insulate their kids from anything unpleasant. Repealing the tax bill of 2017 would be a good start. It gave a lot of MY tax money to rich folks who don't need it, so they can buy their kids' way into elite colleges, and it is enraging. Then we must overturn Citizens United that allows these same rich people to use MY tax money to buy elections. Enough is enough!
364
I see so much fear in parents. These articles bash the wealthy and affluent, but what I see are scared parents with no center, no moral compass, and no self awareness. The fear overcomes any common sense and becomes their engine for plowing away not just obstacles, but limits, boundaries, and guidance from other adults.
We live in a very scary world. One can understand the impulse to control what can be “controlled:” the lives of one’s children.
Educators, clergy, health providers must attempt to shine a light on this fear and the negative impact and toll it takes on the lives of our children.
Otherwise we will all be plowed down “.
18
@S marcus I am in sympathy with you. I have been teaching since the 70s. Parents seem so worried and unhappy today.
Fast forward 40 years, are these kids caregivers for these snowplow parents? Heaven forbid! I can’t begin to imagine that scene. Are they cashing their parents’ Social Security checks, have they learned to do laundry yet, are they shuttling their parents to their doctor’s appointments, have they learned how to do anything in the kitchen other than use the microwave? I’m wondering if an aspect of this whole phenomenon might be parents planning (subconsciously) for the day that they will need to be cared for themselves...?
5
One of the reasons it is so competitive to get into college is because almost 40 percent of admissions are reserved for foreign students (because they can be charged more tutition.)
If colleges were focused on accepting American students and more were admitted the pressure would be reduced as would the pressure to cheat.
18
@Skeptic
"almost 40 percent of admissions are reserved for foreign students "
There are about 1.1 million international students and there are about 17 million undergrads. Many colleges have looked overseas to attract paying students because applications from US students has declined due to changing demographics.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cha.asp
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/international-students-united-states
10
@Skeptic Without paying foreign students, American students will have to pay higher tuition. Be careful what you wish for.
5
@Skeptic
So relatively few Americans travel or have any interest in foreign countries or cultures that I think it's an advantage to have a large number of international students to help open the eyes of American students.
When I was 12 years old in elementary school in Alexandria, VA, in 1960 I was a school crossing guard--all the school crossing guards were 5th or 6th graders. Also, at about that age I spend some of each summer with my godmother at her cabin Greenwood Lake, NY. I told her I wanted to learn how to shoot so she had a neighbor give me some instructions with guns and got me a .22 rifle that I was free to use on her property. Also at about that age she got me an 8 foot rowboat I was free to use as I saw fit on Greenwood Lake. As an elementary school student I was free to trick or treat on my own with younger sister and as a cub scout I went door to door myself selling stuff to raise money for the troop. How many of today's younger parents would think my parents and godmother were crazy negligent??
One of the problems with teens today in America today is that they do not have opportunities to do useful work w/o strict adult supervision.
45
Your upbringing reminds me of mine. I have wonderful memories of those experiences of branching out on my own. Selling raffle tickets for my Cub Scout troop wasn’t easy at first. But I did it, and grew from that and many other experiences.
6
I can’t begin to imagine the legal bloodbath that would occur today if a student was injured under the auspices of a 12 year old crossing guard. Alas, those were much simpler times, gone forever.
7
@Jonathan Reed
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, we four kids grew up free-range in a rural area, walking to school (500 students, K-12), playing with a small cohort of kids in our little four-corners hamlet, running in the woods and fields with no supervision. No one had to supervise us; it didn't occur to us to be destructive, or that we might be hurt. We were outside much of the day, even in winter, and outside on school days after homework was done. We were expected to be home for supper, but otherwise we were responsible for ouorselves. We all had chores at home and summer jobs, and we worked our way through college. We weren't helped with our schoolwork or pressured to excel, but the example was set at home with a library and parents who read and read to us. We understood what kind of people we were. Our mother called it "genteel poverty."
Our parents' hope for each of us was not to strive for money, but to have our own idea of a satisfying life.
4
Friedrich Nietzsche. "Happiness is the feeling that power increases - that resistance is being overcome."
By depriving their children of the opportunity to overcome resistance, are not snowplow parents depriving them of the chance for happiness? And if it is the success of their children that makes them happy, have they not stolen that happiness (as well as their adulthood) from their children?
23
The privileged parents have perhaps never had to struggle themselves, so fear struggle for their kids. Maybe they cant answer for themselves "whats on the other side of this struggle" and so keep it at bay as hard as they can. Coupled with the pretension that there is a narrow version of a good life, that if their children dont have X, Y, and Z, they will somehow have a lesser life, and these parents are scrambling to grasp X, Y, and Z. Which speaks again to the parents own lack of life experience - for had they lived without, struggled, been faced with daunting obstacles and real lack, they would know that even this is not so bad. How else to account for the lack of understanding that struggle and independence build breadth of character, empathy, self-knowledge, values, and meaning in life? What anxious, narrow-minded, unadventurous, and incurious humans these parents are churning out. Sadly, makes me imagine how A.I. could turn out to be more creative and adventurous than the coming generation, and then take over the job of plowing that the kids have come to rely on. We're grooming our species to be ruled by algorithms. Yikes
9
In my experience, it’s been the parents who HAVE struggled to overcome a disadvantaged childhood that do the most snow plowing. It’s the parents that have never been to college who do the most to ensure that their kids have it all.
3
@KK
Perhaps. But in my [granted] anecdotal experience, I grew up with lack - financial and parental alcoholism - and a lot of responsibility, and while Im not advocating that, I am now raising 3 kids with a lot of privilege - cultural, financial, emotional, etc - and find myself forcing hardship and challenge on them so that they can learn to advocate for themselves. That is how I got here. Meanwhile, I am a teacher, and as others have said, the parents who complain the most are those with privilege. The working class parents respect my judgment and require their kids to meet my standards.
3
Good point. Those from underprivileged households seem to be more respectful.
I am a high school teacher in a very affluent and award winning district. The amount of cheating and parental interference that goes on is nauseating. I've even had parents confront me and try to persuade me to change grades while I was out shopping. Parents see their kids grades as a reflection of them; a status symbol to boast about at cocktail parties and charity fundraisers. They push and push for kids to go to a prestigious school. I tell the parents their actions will come back to hurt them and more importantly hurt their child. It' not about the college sticker on the back of the parents car but the fulfillment the student has doing what HE/SHE loves.
215
@AV
When I was teaching, many times I was more worried about interactions with parents than anything else--especially the parents that were convinced their offspring could do no wrong at all forever. (and school districts are sooooo afraid of lawsuits now making accommodation the primary path.)
30
@AV
Amen.
And, for the record, the college stickers on the back of the parents' cars are downright tacky.
13
@Officially Disgusted INDEED!!
1
If the number of spots for college, especially really good colleges has not changed since the 1970's, then maybe that is the beginning and end to this problem. What if there were more spots so that colleges had to charge less and accept more young adults?
There are so many stories of (mostly) men who worked at minimum wage jobs to put themselves through college and how great they have done. These graduated in the 1950's when college was cheap and housing was cheap.
And, my Father is one of these people and most of his retirement money actually comes from selling their house after it tripled in value, which was a 2X better investment than the stock market and 3X better than the great job he got from the education he was able to afford.
11
As far as I understand, none of the kids admitted through the cheating scheme have suffered any consequences. This is mind-boggling. If I catch a student cheating on a lab report, this is grounds for getting a failing grade for the entire course. These students, whether knowingly or not, gained their admissions through cheating. I do not understand why every single one of them was not immediately expelled. These snowplow parents have been charged with crimes, but unless their children finally bear some of the responsibility, they ultimately succeeded in getting what they wanted - a coveted spot in prestigious universities for their children. "But kids were unaware" is another excuse to shelter these kids and prevent them from growing up, only this time it is the university and police authorities enabling them, not the parents.
63
@Maria part of me agrees with you, but the other part thinks these high-profile parents and their children have already received the worst (in their minds) punishment possible: complete and utter public humiliation. Even if these young adults move schools, people will find out who they are and how they got there.
3
@Deb
I agree with Maria. The child is taking the position of someone else.
1
You’re wrong. Olivia Jade, Lori Loughlin’s daughter is being demonized on social media. She and her sister have both said they intend to quit USC for fear of all the vitriol that has descended upon them.
1
At the other extreme are parents who see no value in education, do not care whether their children study or not, do their homework or not, fail or not. As long as their kids are out of the house, that's all that matters. Many of these kids will eventually become criminals, because they can't read, can't do basic math, and have little in the way of marketable skills. It's tragic, and the damage isn't confined to them and their families.
15
The article focuses on the children with the snowplowed path. The bigger tragedy is the kids who have had their paths piled with extra snow.
The bigger tragedy is that all the kids can't play together in the snow.
Childhood has lost something because other kids have to compensate for the one who doesn't like sauce on vegetables.
124
Father never finished high school. mother graduated from nursing school. No one in the neighborhood was a college graduate. The plan for me was simple: “son, you have graduated from high school, and the future will be what you make of it.” In my 80s, I can look back and say it wasn’t easy, but I made it through college, graduate schools, and had a decent career. My retirement has been an opportunity for me to help make the world a better place now, and after I die.
45
When I heard about this scandal, my first thought was (and remains) if these children can’t qualify for admission on their own merits, how are they going to succeed in a school with rigorous academic standards? I can’t speak for anyone else, but I would have been mortified if my parents called my college about an issue I was having (as if they would have—ha!).
43
@Barbara Long Possibly true about academic success if it's MIT. Depends on one's view of the predictive value of the SATs and ACTs. And there are plenty of very bright applicants who still don't get offered admission. No school has the capacity to accept every valedictorian in the nation. As far as the Ivies, there are students who matriculated because the parents donated a building, or because they are Olympic caliber athletes, and these students still manage to graduate (see: Jared Kushner).
5
@Barbara Long
The dirty little secret is that what you consider schools with "rigorous academic standards" usually aren't. They're oft-times schools with "rigorous admissions standards" that offer an easy path to graduation once accepted. Don't confuse the two.
9
I do wonder how these unqualified applicants manage to compete, but college seems to be like high school used to be---unless you are perhaps a hard science or engineering major. Courses are broken into easy bites for digestion and spoon fed to the paying customers.
The reality is that most parents want and work towards the survival of their offspring and want for their kids to be more successful than them. Obviously there is a vast spectrum on which this parent cohort fits in. Most parents also tend to hover on the more reasonable end of the spectrum. In today’s busy world, it is rare parents who can devote an unhealthy amount of time angsting about the toilet or food habits of their college age kids. Yes, more educated parents have realized the advantage of having parents as counselors, psychotherapist and guides for their family. Their kids are certainly emotionally more advantaged than the kids who are thrown into the world and expected to find their futures on their own. Why would a parent not contribute advice so that the kid does not have to rediscover fire is dangerous? A total waste of time.
This kind of research is quite wasteful. Instead ask what is changing about our world at large. Instead of relying on brawn, we are becoming a sedentary, cerebral community. The intelligence and adaptation for survival are different from a physical, pioneer-minded society. It is reflected in the panic that some parents feel in trying to feel their way ahead for their kids in this rapidly evolving world. Educational institutions are horribly backwards with respect to awareness of the world around them. It’s not parents, blame the unevolved world of education.
5
As someone who was an academic dean/ faculty at an elite American university, I could easily cherry pick examples of parents & students who fall into the author’s “snowplow” typology. however, they were, and remain, outliers. The vast majority of students that I encountered were hardworking, gifted and committed.
115
@Shane Goodridge I agree. I have a similar experience as a professor at a private university in the West. Yes, there are some privileged students who cheat or pressure me to raise their grades - but for the most part, my students are aware of their opportunity and the pressure that comes with it to make a contribution to the world. My students are bright, engaged, and come to learn and work hard - and are able to manage failure. All too often I hear "adults" trash this generation or their efforts, and it is not right. I know our future is in good hands; I see their potential every day.
13
Our parents weren't helicopters or snow plows. But our mom was overly generous financially to our youngest siblings and contributed to their dependency until those two younger brothers were in their 40s. It was disastrous. My kids too expected financial support into their 30s. I did so for a little bit but then cut it off. It was the right thing to do. They had to solve their own problems and think about the outcomes from their actions. It was painful to say no and incur their wrath and resentment but it worked. Both are now successful (A lawyer/organic chemist and the other, chief speech pathologist).
In the meantime our youngest siblings went from disaster to catastrophe to biblical apocalypse. Our middle brother recently lost the last of his invested retirement funds and lives in misery and great debt. The youngest who chose a career he loved, struggled for years making poor financial decisions and always looking to mom for help. He's ok now but it took until his middle 40s to figure it out. The other one, now 62 still hasn't.
No one really helped my closest sister and me. We tried, failed, failed again and finally succeeded without help. Getting into college and staying there was our responsibility, our duty and obligation. We paid our way.
Making children self reliant, independent and responsible for themselves is the best course of action for most parents. Some kids do need help and guidance above and beyond. But, if they're capable, let them stand on their own.
46
@Jay
That is my story too. As a "girl" I had no value except as somebody's wife; when I didn't choose that route I was basically cut off from any help, financial or emotional. But my life is a success. My brother was bought and paid for his entire life. He never had to go out and discover what a world-beater he could have been, because he didn't have to. It's a type of murder to infantilize a child for life.
1
@Ravenna
You're so correct! Two of younger siblings were spoiled by mom after dad passed away at age 49 in 1971. The youngest was 9 and the next was just 14. So, mom felt sorry for them because they had no father. My sister and I were in college and on our own. We're just 3 years apart. But, we were brought up when there was no money. So we knew we were on our own. My wife and I have five kids. We gave each of them $500,000 in trust and they're angry that we didn't give more! Totally nuts. So, no more! Four of them refuse to talk to us. Too bad...for them. We live comfortably in retirement. Our home is paid for and we never have to worry. If we had caved in to the kids demands we'd be broke! When we pass on there'll be several million to distribute but it will never, never go to our adult kids. We're gifting half to a trust for our high school for kids headed to college. The balance will be distributed in trust to our grandkids. They'll each get 1/6 of 1/2. We don't reward our rotten spoiled kids. Oh, we (my sister and I) help our 96 year old mother and it's our pleasure. We love her.
As for our younger brothers, they're on their own for better or worse and we don't help. We will help our grand kids get to college if necessary but we won't help with all of it. Work and borrow as required. They have to have skin in the game or the education will be meaningless. And we will pay the school direct but only if grades are met. Tough aren't we! But it will pay off.
1
I have two children. One had a documented learning disability and confronted some significant disappointments along the road to adulthood. For some reason, the second confronted very few disappointments growing up...we were always concerned that everything just seemed to fall into place for him.
Both worked very hard and are happy successful adults today.
But the son who had to deal with challenges in his early years is much more independent, has far better coping skills and is definitely a better adjusted adult.
43
When our first child was in 5th grade we began to see that the projects were being done by the parents. So when our next child came along, we suggested that we help him with his 1st grade diorama project. He refused help. We explained that the other dioramas will look much better than his because of the parents' involvement. He absolutely refused and submitted a project clearly done by a 6 year old. Later, when we attended an open house, the teacher told me that my son was the only one who worked on the project by himself. All parents want the best for their children. But when the parents do the work, they raise the bar for the others and put pressure on all parents to do the same.
364
@nowadays
Kudos to your son for having the integrity to want to complete the project himself, as was the right thing to do. I'm sorry you tried to help him cheat by doing it for him.
15
@Ravenna
Cheat is the right word. These parents are neglecting their duty to raise children who are not a danger to themselves or others. People who have no moral underpinnings are a danger to others. Encouraging your child to learn how to cheat is encouraging your child to become a sociopath, putting his own benefit before everyone else.
If you don't want to raise a Donald Trump, stop encouraging your children to cheat. It is immoral and dangerous to society. I want my children to be good people with moral intelligence and compassion. Why don't you want that for yours? Have these parents no moral compass?
15
Growing up in the 50s and 60s in a fairly well-off family, my siblings and I COUDLN'T WAIT to get out of town and away to college. There was no question of us ever going back to live in our boring, conservative hometown. Good thing, since the big city we lived near was well on its way to being rustbelt broken. Parents: don't do TOO much for your kids, or they'll have no incentive to move out. Let them work crummy, badly paid jobs. That'll help them conclude they want something better.
130
@Repat
My early jobs were harvesting field crops. It was hard back
breaking work. I worked with the intent of paying my college prep-school tuition, I’d make enough for each
of my four years.
The best feeling was having that receipt marked year
paid in full in my pocket from the registrars office In
my pocket.
My moms motto was always pay your own way, still
Helps guide me
12
@The Chief from Cali
Gone are the days when a kid could pay their own way through anything.
In the 90s I worked the maximum hours allowed throughout high school. I made enough to help my parents with bills, but nowhere near a high school tuition.
Paying for college was easy. My full and part time jobs covered all costs. I went to a city university and lived in a rent-stabilized apartment. I married my husband my sophomore year which further reduced my share of living expenses. We got 2/3 and half scholarships for law school. We were incredibly lucky.
Our son is six. He will not be able to pay his way through anything, the way wages can't keep up with rising costs. We will encourage him to start working early to gain those all-important skills. However, he will never know the joy of paid registrars receipts. Crossing my fingers he will experience paying off a mortgage.
13
And it isn't just with parenting. I run a business related to "women's crafts" and have a steady stream of ladies coming in asking me about "classes". For various reasons, I do not offer the chatty instant success, make it, take it sessions - but in depth one on one private lessons in whatever subject they choose. (Pricing is quite reasonable). It is quite amazing how many reject the idea, quite obviously (from the conversation) afraid of "making a mistake" or having to stretch when it appears to be a meaty lesson.
Let's include adults - right up to old ladies in this group of folks practicing extreme failure avoidance.
17
@Sara
I understand that as a crafts artist you wish to retain the integrity of your art. I think, though, that some of the older women who attend "paint parties" or instant success groups might be dealing with deep regrets about their life-long lack of independence, as widows or divorcees or empty nesters who were never allowed to make a mistake as a mother or a parent. Or even as a child. I would not criticize them yet again. Sometimes just picking up a brush or choosing their own project takes an act of courage they never had before.
24
@DiR Whatever the motivation, it is a waste of MY good time to give those stupid paint parties to make people feel good about nothing. It has little to do with artistic integrity and everything to do with my investment of time and effort into something "fluffy and fun".
@DiR. ...and some of those ladies just want to have fun and try something new.
Calling friends before going to their house for dinner, so the kid doesn't have to eat food with sauce? Setting up play dates IN THE DORM at college?
Whew. I had not heard of these extremes.
It's always good to learn there are parents who have done a far worse job than I did.
But honestly, if the kid really did not know the parent bribed someone to get him or her into college, okay. But if the kid DID know - and I'm sure some of these kids in the latest scandal did - I'd like to see the kid prosecuted too, at least if he or she was 18. This has to stop somewhere.
31
@DW
I agree with your point, DW. Except the hesitation about if the children knew about parent intervention. A young man or woman with mediocre grades knows perfectly well they won't get into Stanford or Yale. When they are accepted, it's hard to believe they wouldn't wonder how and why.
4
The head of HR in the firm where I used to work devotes a large portion of her day, during and after hours, to doing her sons' homework. (I know this because the staff is always fishing drafts of their assignments out of the photocopy machine.) By her own admission, her zeal is fueled by the fact that she and her husband, who both work full time, haven't saved a dime for college. Scholarships are central to their long-term plans, and I guess she doesn't trust the boys to get the job done on their own. (Somehow there always seems to be money for two trips to Disney every year. Do they give scholarships for that too?)
Seriously, how will her sons succeed in college, and in the careers that she envisions for them, when Mommy isn't there to do their work for them? What is she thinking? Am I missing something?
92
@Round the Bend
I suppose that some parents who do this just continue to do the work for them even when they're in college. Can they even do their jobs for them, when they get into the workforce? My question is what will these kids do when their parents DIE.
3
What's disturbing is the realization that these incompetent, immature “children” will eventually be in positions of power: sitting on the boards of Fortune 500 companies, administering trust funds, negotiating military contracts and possibly appointed to a president's Cabinet.
The future of our country will be determined by individuals who aren't ready for the responsibility they've been given. How well we fare – as a nation and as a people – will depend on whether they can “wing it”, can improvise while relying for advice on those whose achievements involve hard work and diligence.
200
@Kris Aaron
It's too late Kris, the people you describe are running America right now.
38
@Kris Aaron
LOL. It seems like it will have to stop somewhere - because these people, when they have their own kids, won't be able to do their kids' work for them, right?
6
@Kris Aaron
Isn't that what is in the White House now? It will take generations to fix.
7
I didn’t attend an elite college, but I did have one peer who’s parents were extreme snowplowers. They would show up at his dorm room on weekends to make sure he was studying and do his laundry. They would end up buying him three new phones iPhones when he lost or broke them over the course of three years AND a new car when he crashed his first one driving under influence. They called up professors to complain about his poor grades and kicked his roommate out of their shared room when they came by and found the roommate hanging out with a girlfriend. They gave him a large weekly allowance to pay for expenses, such as non-cafeteria food because he might not like it.
In case you’re wondering if this method of parenting works, it does not. The poor fellow in question ended up being forced by his parents to drop out in the first semester of senior year because they were not happy with his grades and decided he should start over at a new school. He is still in college - at an ‘easier’ school this time - and has yet to hold so much as an unpaid internship. The rest of my mid-20s peers have all found good paying jobs and lead independent lives. None of us have asked for parental support since college. Some of us are married now and my wife and I are looking to buy a house. All because our parents left us to find our own paths to adulthood.
99
@Mr. Adams, those folks aren’t parenting. They are eating their kid alive.
4
One of the many joys of teaching at a community college is that I seldom, if ever, encounter bulldozer/snowplow/helicopter parents. My students have seen it all, done it all and made their own way for years and it doesn't matter if I see them at age 18 or at age 50. They've known failure and they've known how to cope. It's a joy to help them become successful and to help them build skills for the future.
701
@Peter Now I know where to put my heart and mind.
These will be the people who build America's future, not those who need their parents' intervention to navigate alarm clocks, roommate disputes - and sauce on their food.
42
@Peter, what’s sad it that coping with failure was once considered a sign strength, now it’s evidence that you don’t know the game of successfully blaming others, the new foundation of American success.
44
@Peter
I work at a community college and I agree with you. 2/3 of our students go PT because they have full-time jobs. They are at the college because they want to be. You don't get the crazy parents at a CC
31
I was lucky, my dad gave me two snow shovels instead. One to clear my own path and the other to clear his for him.
228
@John Doe
Thank you Dad!
5
@John Doe
Good one!
7
@John Doe Hanging this up in Faculty Room Monday.
6
My daughter, now 26, works 40+ hours a week and takes classes part time to improve herself. So what if I clean her room, and do her laundry? This way she has a bit of time to herself and it lessens the stress.
She wants to go to nursing school. She offered to finance it, but I'd rather keep her out of the student loan mill so I'll advance the tuition and she can pay me back down the road.
I've allowed her to "stub her toe" but I see no reason to let her "break her foot" to learn a lesson in life.
14
@Retired Fed
Cleaning her room and doing her laundry will not "break her foot" - it's called letting her be an adult and learn to live independently. There is a difference between helping someone out in a difficult moment (giving a ride when a car breaks down, or doing that laundry when they're sick, for example) and doing the basics that they should otherwise be able to do for themselves.
Are those often tedious things fun? No, most of us would say not, but that's life. Your efforts also ignore basic human nature - if you keep doing something for someone who is quite capable of doing it for themselves, you create expectations of entitlement - a feeling rampant in our society - that often spills over into other areas. These are the adults we see who are totally lost when the slightest disruption occurs because they've never had to actually fend for themselves. An able 26 year old should not need a mother to do life basics for her. That's a disservice to your child.
85
@Retired Fed: while it's great that you want to support your daughter, one of the tasks of adulthood is learning how to balance all the things you want to do in a day, a week, a month, or a year. Many people work and go to school (and some also parent their children without a spouse) and still manage to do their own laundry. If your daughter can't handle work plus classes without relying on you to do basic life maintenance activities for her, she's doing too much and should cut back. You are teaching her that she gets to spend all her time doing things that are important to her and someone else will handle the drudgery. She needs to get an apartment and practice "adulting." If she doesn't develop these skills, it won't bode will for a future relationship with a partner who expects her to carry her weight.
70
@Retired Fed
At 38 I owned my house and lived alone, worked 40 hours a week and attended school 4 nights a week for 3 years to be ready for graduate school. I incurred huge student loan debt but my sense of accomplishment when I received my graduate degree was boundless because I knew I did it on my own. Your daughter might appreciate the same opportunity.
13
Snowplowing parents can't see through the blizzard of craziness they are in. Never allowing their 13 and 14 old children to spend even one night away from them "because they cared so much" has practically ruined the future for 2 young people in my world. Mom goes to pick-up Dad from the train and both are tragically killed in a single car crash. The very first night these two ever spend away from their parents is in an emergency foster home situation. And they continue to suffer because they had not developed any self-coping skills since parents did that for them. Sad that those -like the musical theatre mother in this article- cannot see this for themselves. No caring parent would ever subject their child to 26 auditions in a (most likely) 3 month time span (I say as one of those auditioners.)
32
@famharris - to be fair, there is no form of non-abusive parenting that would leave young teenagers able to "self-cope" through the sudden death of both their parents. I say non-abusive, because I guess that kids of abusive drug-users or some such might be better able to face it?
Have you tried to reach out instead of judging?
5
Instead of simply demonizing these parents and the rise of helicopter, bulldozing, etc. parents we should read this societal shift for what it really is - the loss of society's safety nets. Many parents remember the grandparents' stories of living through the Great Depression while at the same time have parents pulling money from social security to pay for golfing vacations instead of using the money for what it was meant for: not making our elderly live off dog food. Parents know what the future holds and lack of success doesn't just mean lack of consumer goods. Many parents such as myself know that it might mean the difference between our children and grandchildren going hungry in later years when social security is depleted, climate change disrupts 25 million people, crop yields are half of what they are today, and the US is crippled in debt.
39
@Veronica
So SS that I have paid into my whole life I can't spend as I see fit? Maybe if the repubs hadn't "borrowed" the funds years ago and paid it back SS wouldn't be in such dire straits.
3
@MJ Wilcox
Social Security will run out of money in 2034. Therefore, all the money I have put into social security will run out before my retirement to pay for your continued benefits. Tell me again how you should spend "your" money? I am living your ponzi scheme. Again, my generation has seen the previous generation grow up with the expectation of a safety net and my generation does not. Tomorrowland is benefit and resource scarce and it will be every man and woman for themselves and the elbows will continue to get sharper.
I have mixed emotions about this. I am broke, and I want my son to do better than I do. So I push him. According to this article, I micromanage. I am not paving the way for him with money, but I am manage his time and push him hard. I look at his calendar every day, am aware of every assignment, and I keep on top of him to get things done. I also drive him to his community service obligations. (I cannot afford lessons.) I even write to teachers on occasion because he is shy and I am not.
He has to do his own laundry, cleaning, and wash our dishes (we don't have one of those fancy appliances that does that for us). I also tend to get angry when things aren't done, and he feels a great deal of pressure to keep his average high. I know I intervene, and this article would say I'm being too helpful (he doesn't fail assignments because I don't forget to remind him, e.g.).
This might be how this concept works those of us who don't have money. I am paving his way, in a sense, though not with money. I want more for him than I have.
There's a lot of judging in the comments, which doesn't help wade through the difficulties of making parenting decisions and having productive discourse.
29
@JS
Everyone's situation is different. Their kids are different, their incomes are different, their neighborhoods are different, their prospects are different. We all have to figure out what works for us and our kids in terms straddling that line between independence and avoiding disaster. Micromanagement is in the eyes of the beholder. Letting your kid bomb out of school wasn't catastrophic in the 1970s. Today, it could be. It sounds to me like you're doing a great job.
31
@JS - you decide how you want to do things. But aside from the question that many comments have raised - how is your anxious, micro-managed kid going to fare when he fails or you're not there? - there is another - what if he's one of the many kids who choose to rebel against excessive pressure?
Everybody here seems to act as if kids are molded by their parents, for better or for worse. In my experience, a significant proportion of the kids are "molded" through their rebellion against the wishes of the parents.
As even Amy Chua of tiger parent fame found out, many, many kids react to pressure and anger through rebellions that can, incidentally, be much more destructive than the "simple" failures of the mediocre student. You're taking a significant risk with that kind of parenting. At some point, chances are, your kid will no longer be afraid of you. Pray that he still loves and respects you then.
8
@JS
Well … I hear where you are coming from, and although you didn't ask for advice, I can't help suggesting that you ease up a bit. Be sure he really feels that you are on his side. You are concerned about judgment: be sure HE doesn't feel judged by YOU.
That said, I don't think you are being a snowplow. There's a difference between clearing all obstacles out of the child's way while asking nothing from the child, and urging the child to succeed and requiring him to work for it. Still - be careful. You don't want to alienate him or lose your affectionate relationship with him, and if you're too harsh or unsupportive you could end up losing contact with him later in life. You are obviously caring, so don't let that happen. /off soapbox/
5
To cite 2 examples from my days as a college professor: In 1988 when teaching at an Ivy League college, a freshman student in my writing seminar came to my office one day after receiving a B grade on an assignment and yelled at me for daring to give him that grade because he’d always been an A student, he said. Then ten years later, when teaching a study abroad class at another university, after receiving a C grade for the class from a student from another institution who had enrolled in my university’s program, his mother called my department chair to complain about the grade (the C grade would not count as transfer credit towards graduation at the student’s college and the mother said she enrolled her son in my program because she thought a passing grade would be automatically awarded because of the fee she paid for entry into the program). My chair contacted me afterwards to offer support for my grading, but counseled that if it had been him, he would have given all the students B grades (which the other college would have accepted) in order to avoid such an interaction.
45
@Patricia Graham
My husband was an adjunct humanities teacher at a community college. Gave some students low or failing grades because they did not do the work or even failed to come to class! He was told by HR that if he became known as a demanding teacher, no one would sign up for his classes. Holding this job depended on the number of people who signed up for his classes. Finally, he had to quit.
26
@Patricia Graham
When I was teaching at the university, I use to have students in my office crying or hysterical because they had never gotten a C grade (or D or F) in their lives. I never had to deal with the parents because I never took a phone call from them.
2
This is about how people acquire knowledge and skill, with which they learn and grow. These parents are simply depriving their children of the ability to do that. We gain knowledge by attempting to falsify our propositions and practices. In so doing we discard or modify what doesn't work. If one never encounters failure, one never has the opportunity to evolve to meet the challenges posed by it. Yes, there are propositions and practices that parents must prevent their children from testing (e.g. running into traffic). But the extreme version of this is like trying to teach a person to swim without putting them in the water to try out what you tell them. If they fall off a boat, will they really be capable of protecting themselves, or will they be totally dependent? Finally, the children of the wealthy folk who resorted to bribes don't need a "leg up" in life. Ultimately, those parents, unwittingly perhaps, did what they did for themselves, not their kids. They wanted to be able to tell their friends, post on facebook, etc. "Billy got into Yale." They wanted the world to believe that they were good parents. That is different from actually being good parents.
22
Nothing new here. As a Science teacher since the early 1970's (now retired), I abandoned the long-standing practice of kids doing Science projects for competitive fairs. Got tired of grading parents' work. Also - couldn't bear to contribute to the lone child's pain and embarrassment who had made their own contraptions, did their own work, only to be overshadowed among their peers by some grandiose apparatus purchased and designed by overzealous parents. (happened to my own son as well). No, instead, like the HS teacher who said she required essay-writing INSIDE the classroom, I required Science project design and building WITHIN the classroom. I stated the challenge, provided a set amount of materials (think: "Houston, we have a problem." - there were just a limited amount of things on that spacecraft to use), and forge ahead the kids did! On - their - own. The learning was in the journey, as well it should be OUTSIDE the classroom as well. - - - Please do better, parents.
779
@Martin
I agree.
I suggested to the school that the teachers supervise the building of science fair projects by assigned groups and on school premises.
Kids loved working with their peers far more than their interfering parents .
76
@JM - way to go, JM! Based on my experience, this is the way to go. The more fruitful, studious, and yes, fun!!, learning took place those days as kids deliberated their solutions, independently, or at times in groups. Real science is in risk-taking, and what learning theory calls, "intelligent failure". Same goes outside the classroom too.
36
@Martin
I was ecstatic when the last science fair of high school was completed! It wasn’t that I had to do it, it was that I constantly had to be chivying my son to get working on it instead of waiting till the night before.
I know, I know - I should have let him bear the consequences...
It’s so hard even when you know.
13
The admissions bribery scandal offers Colleges the opportunity to reassess admissions policies in their entirety. The process should be based on strong ethics and fairness rather than the existing system that relies too much on Alumni and Donor Metrics. Creating an alumni and donor neutral environment is not difficult. Admissions personnel should have no knowledge of applicants relations etc to either donors and or alumni and application essays and forms should prohibit inclusion of such information. The process should include a Chinese Wall between Admission offices and fund raising similar to the government requirements for Traders and Bankers for investment banking. To take it a step further, the process could include prohibitions similar to SEC restrictions on insider trading. Donor's relatives could be prohibited from seeking admission within ten years of a donation. The playing field needs to be leveled and if the academic community wants to have clean hands and conscious they ought to get moving
10
@Chris
Colleges are missing a golden opportunity here. The number of parents willing to make a $250,000 dollar investment to have their child admitted is limited - why not have a limited number of admission slots reserved to be bid out to these parents. The school benefits from additional financial resources. If the kids make it - great - you have a satisfactory student. If they don't - great - you bid out the slot to another wealthy parent.
9
@James Johnson
Excellent recommendation! And the money collected from this bidding war should be used exclusively to help fund tuition of those students who don't come from wealthy homes. No one needs to know that the students got into college because of the highest bid; they should be left alone once admitted to succeed or fail on their own,
6
@James Johnson
As one who could not and would never pay such an amount, I agree.
1
I learned quickly the downfall of overzealous parenting when my husband, at the age of fifty, saw his international law firm crumble rather quickly losing his capital and his retirement. To date, he had never experienced a failure having risen to the top of his field after attending the best schools and working hard.
He did not handle it well having never undergone any adversity in his life. It was a very tough time as he simply did not have the skills to think he could jump the hurdle and come out successfully the other side.
Luckily, with time and help he did and regained his self confidence and stature in the legal community.
I vowed then and there to let my kids make mistakes, to figure out how to gather solutions to problems and to figure out that most problems can be solved.
Sometimes it was tough not to interfere. When they asked for help, we gave it. But only if they asked.
Somehow they managed to attend great colleges with a minimum of SAT tutoring which they requested ( as EVERYBODY was getting some) and the rest of the applications they managed to figure out themselves.
I think that’s how they were admitted...the admissions people figured they had actually done the work themselves. Mistakes and all.
Life is hard. Better to make those mistakes early and figure out how to manage them ( as age appropriate ), to cope, to overcome.
Better that than as a clueless college student or a middle aged person.
132
"Snowplows" as a metaphor for parenting seems a little soft... it only pushes some snow out of the way for a few months. Seems like "bulldozer" would be more accurate...it forcefully pushes everything out of the way and operates even when there's no snow... continuously, and, in the process dumps megatons of CO2 into the atmosphere which sabotages the very future "for the children" they are trying to protect. There are many unintended consequences inherent in everything we do... even if cradled in "love".
27
Yes, some parents behave abhorrently in trying to protect their children from any disappointment and ensure that they meet the parent’s vision of ‘success.’ However, I can’t help but observe that all because two semi-celebrity moms were caught doing this, we’re being subjected to an outpouring of resentment and an excess of schadenfreude over privilege and excess amongst the wealthy. Elite schools are not filled with white 1%’ers who got there only by parental subterfuge; my two daughters built their own resumes, albeit with certain advantages we were able to provide in extra-curricular activities, and both thrived in college.
Let’s keep it in perspective — there has never been nor will ever be a completely level playing field, and there will always be ridiculous examples of parental over-involvement (no sauce; wow!).
28
@CthrisM. These universities and this story serve to highlight a bigger story. The issue of snowplowing is epidemic in our local high schools. Families are driven by the college admissions process and the fear that their child will miss out. They stoke each other's fears, and it is internalized in their children's growing rates of anxiety and depression. While this story is about 1%ers who cheat, the reality is that the competitive college admissions process is requiring student resumes of ever-increasing breadth and depth, and families don't know how to cope.
2
There have always been parents who can't let go of their children. It's an old theme in literature. But the mobile communications revolution is new. Children can be living in another city and interested parents can micromanage every aspect of their day. So those parents who want to live life on behalf of their children can do so from the comfort of their own living rooms.
16
@Jonathan
Yes and these parents can continue doing their kids' schoolwork for them even in college.
At least in my day when you went to college, you were OUT. Mom and Dad never saw one single assignment I did in college, not one, it would never have even crossed my mind to discuss my studies with them, other than, "So what courses are you taking this semester?" and the occasional slightly worried, "So what will you do with this degree, exactly?" (which wasn't a bad question, seriously.)
11
if a 14 year-old kid leaves a major assignment he's worked hard on at home, and the parent has the time available to run it to school--and does not, because he/she thinks the kid needs to learn "consequences" by getting a poor grade-- that's not helping a child to learn-- that's being callous. This article neglects to mention the enormous pressure which not the parents but the schools and our culture put on middle and high school age children. My son, who is a freshman in high school-- works longer hours by far than I do in a full time job-- between his classes, the quantity of homework, and his sports and music commitments. He needs all the help and support from his parents he can get. And I'd much rather he was doing his homework or practicing his piano than doing the laundry or mopping the floor. He doesn't have time to do both.
63
@sd The world is callous! Better to let him learn to stay on top of things by missing a single (and ultimately, in the scheme of life and the world) assignment and take a bad grade in order to learn, from experience, not to do it again. I taught college and I can't tell you how many students couldn't keep track of deadlines or due dates, IN SPITE OF THE FACT THAT I WOULD ANNOUNCE THEM EVERY CLASS. And then when they would miss, they would plead with me - sometimes in tears - that they didn't know. It would have been better for them to learn sooner in life to stay on top of things or suffer the consequences than to discover it in college, a college or post-college internship, or a job.
167
@sd In general, the grades middle school and high school freshmen receive are not considered by colleges or universities. I believe they do this because middle school and freshman year are the times to make mistakes and learn from them without significant consequences. If a student leaves his project at home his/her freshman year, they will receive a lower grade which, of course, will hurt. But, they will learn not to do it again. Long-term success is worth far more than any short-term benefit they receive when a parent rescues them. As for doing the laundry or mopping the floor—I do not believe that any child is too busy to learn life skills. The lack of life skills is one of the many reasons we have so many young people struggling with anxiety and depression to such a degree that colleges cannot provide enough mental health services to keep up.
33
@sd. If he can do math, sports, music but doesn’t have the discipline to do basic cleaning, it is a fail for adulthood. My highly educated and well employed husband can do everything and anything around the house, fix toilets, fix cars, laundry, with no nagging from me or resentment from him. He said his parents always required him to help them at home first, then the schoolwork. I can applaud his parents for raising a well rounded and capable man.
51
My parents were first generation native born children of immigrants and had a simple formula. Though neither of them went to college, a four year college degree was a must for me and my siblings. They would pay tuition (only), provide room and board at home (meant a commuter school) and any spending money I had to earn myself. Once the degree was completed, a job was mandated. With or without the job, I had to move out and was welcome to return on Sundays-only (and holidays) for dinner. When I decided to go on to a Master's degree and then a Doctorate, they shook their heads, telling me it was a foolish attempt to prolong childhood, and then (since I was going against their wishes) they refused to speak to me for three years. Needless to say, no offers of financial help were forthcoming. I eventually became a university professor. At a small gathering some years later, someone commented (after I pointed to my recent immigrant history) that my parents must have been proud of me. I laughed, "Sadly, no," telling them the real story. A senior faculty member smiled at me, "And it made you a lot stronger, didn't it?" It certainly did. "Though it didn't do much for family relations."
157
@SurlyBird As a footnote...Not sure I'd recommend this extreme in parenting, but I can't see how approaches described in the article help young adults learn to discover/recognize/re-discover emerging interests & passions and the management of choice in their careers and lives.
8
When the parents have all the toys the next level of competition is the kids. Just the latest way to compete with one another.
158
@Mark Glowatz
Yep, it's just the age ole, "Keepin' Up With the Joneses".
2
@Mark Glowatz
Exactly! No need to coin new terms nor preach to the parents. When competition is replaced by cooperation as a social norm, then we can start pointing fingers. MEanwhile, instead of blaming the parents, we better each do our part and look for ways to increase social cooperation
3
The snowplows might not be so horrible if their influence was contained to their own kids. But they push and shove, and sometimes displace other children from families who don't live by a win at any cost philosophy. The change the atmosphere of the schools and organizations they infiltrate, and discourage cooperation and mutual support.
346
@cheryl Such a good point. Thank you.
21
It is interesting that the definition of success is invariably expressed in terms of income. If how much money you make is the only evidence of success in life, we have failed as a society.
301
@Bruce Johnson
Apparently we have failed as a society. Because we in the US don't have "royalty" or some sort of peerage, the only thing that discerns "class" is wealth. Unfortunately so many of the wealthy have had to face the fact that money can't buy class.
10
Let's adds sports with no winners to the list. The idea that everyone deserves a trophy is harmful in the long run too.
80
Or maybe competitive sports are just stupid in general. That’s also a possibility we could put on the table.
4
@Gofry I disagree with the harmful trophy idea. When I was a kid in school, there was a music competition program in the state called NISBOVA- Northern Indiana School Band, Orchestra, Vocal, Association. The presmise was simple - pick a song, go to the competition, perform the song in front of three judges, and await your score. Kind of like auditioning for the voice without the Simon Cowell sarcasm. You got a ribbon just for getting through a performance. If you did better, you were awarded gold, silver or bronze. If you chose a piece from a selected list of classics and got a gold, you could advance to the state level competition. This program was pretty popular and I remember competing in an acapella choir, a barbershop quartet, piano, and even a handbell choir. What's the old saying? You get an A for effort. At first, I was getting mostly "thanks for trying" ribbons. But by the end, it was mostly gold.
Now, do I think a kid should get a trophy for sports if they never showed up for practice? No.
2
Helicopter, snowplow etc. parents cannot, in my opinion, hold a candle to enabling parents.
These are the parents who allow their adult children to live at home far beyond the time when they should be out in the real world.
They do their laundry, still cook their meals, pay the utilities, the rent or mortgage while these so-called grown-ups invest in lavish trips, overpriced cars and costly devices.
My thirty-year old son, who has lived on his own since he was nineteen, has friends who have these enabling parents.
HIs three closest buddies drive overpriced SUV's or shiny new pick-up trucks while living at home.
His current girlfriend just got a job paying less than $35,000 a year.
She had an appointment to look at a car costing more than a year's salary because it was her dream car. She lives at home. My son, who is usually reticent about confrontation, suggested she put that money towards moving out of her folk's home.
The notion of plowing through barriers to clear the way to a bright future for your child pales in comparison to both these so called children and their enabling parents.
I'm aware rents are high and wages low but when does an adult child break free from the apron strings? Get a roommate, get three.
As long as these parents refuse to kick their offspring out, these stunted kids will continue to believe that there is no such thing as rent, mortgage, health insurance, electric bills, etc. the cost of being an adult in the real world.
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It's perfectly possible to live with your parents and share chores, expenses etc. Billions in Asia and Africa do this, billions in Europe and America did it before the 20th century. An advantage of living together is that when your parents age, you and your children are there to support them. It's not about living separately or living together, it's about how responsibly it's done. In India, where I come from, some children and parents do it really well, some do it badly. When I taught at a university in India, almost none of my students were married, and most of them lived with their parents. Almost none of them complained of depression. In the US where I now teach, I have large numbers of students complaining of or looking really depressed and lonely, being unable to keep up with their work because of mental issues, and significant numbers marrying and having children in order to combat this loneliness and then being extremely overworked, and frequently divorcing while they have toddlers. Ironic that India is supposed to be the home of child marriage.
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@reader Always this mention of other, better, homogeneous cultures. We are a mixing pot, we not all Asian, not all European, and in many of the countries you mention, it's strictly a practical matter. Ironically, in those places, where do many of the more well-off children dream of living or where their parents want them to immigrate to?
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@A.A. In many, many places around the world, and in many cultures in the US, it's perfectly fine to live with your parents. I didn't - I moved out after 18 because I wanted to - but who cares, really? You know what's really the worst: how judgmental people are of everyone else's choices. I think it's tied to the idea that we all want to be applauded for our own choices and successes, and the only way to really achieve that, is to imagine they are inherently better than what other people did.
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The most extreme example of over-parenting I have ever seen is, tragically, living in the White House.
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@Susan
LOVE this ! So true.
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@Susan: I think the opposite. Trump's extreme narcissism is a result of emotional neglect, and it has resulted in the severe emotional neglect of his own children. They're all psychological cripples.
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@Susan
My description for our WH resident would be “money parenting” rather than over parenting.
I’d also say he did the same for his own children.
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What a revelation!! Wealthy, high status, powerful parents and families occasionally use their wealth and influence to pave the way for their kids!!! Sometimes they even cross an ethical line!!! OMG!! I wonder if that has ever happened before in the history of humanity?? Perhaps if you read about some of the things that have happened over the past 8,000 years or so, you’ll get a bit of context. But here’s a hint: reading yesterday’s tweets is not the same as studying history.
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People want to have kids. And now they do,kids for life. 35 year old children. They raise these brats free of chores, responsibilities, failures, or disappointments. These children think only of themselves 24 hours a day. They are not even raised to be thoughtful of others. One day when these parents are 78, and none of their kids even bother to see if they have food in the house to eat, they will be sorry they didn't raise adults instead of kids.
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@Sharon I take issue with you calling the kids brats. They didn't choose this, their parents did.
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@Sharon
I'm in my late 60's and I'm already seeing the beginning of this. The kids only visit when they want some money
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As a high school teacher, I’ve had enough of parents “proofreading” students’ papers and defending their little cheaters. I now enforce self-sufficiency by requiring students to write some timed essays on paper during class. There’s a particular honesty in relying on nothing but one’s mind and a pen.
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@Lisa I have moved almost exclusively to having my middle school students create graded assignments in class only because they cheat off the Internet like breathing and their parents edit and write for them. I have to level the playing field.
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@Lisa
I am one of those parents who read their kids essays in both literature and science. My aim was to ensure that they were guided into analytical thinking. In our home, the grade was and is immaterial, in fact many of their creative thoughts were dismissed freely by teachers. But today, they have an uncanny ability to analyse anything thrown at them. And it is with enjoyment that I read papers that they still write, no proof reading needed.
Teaching today is rather paradoxical. Big brother kind of, regurgitated 'from my mouth to your ear' teaching at one end and an expectation of miraculous creativity at the other. In kindergarten, one is taught to shut individual thinking. You are indoctrinated with preformed ideas of the world around you. Except for maybe drawing or playdough, any academic instruction is streamlined. As you move on, it is more of the same. Very, very few teachers are wise enough to tease originality from students. It is an impatient world of 45 min periods, grades and punishment. Why do teachers discount parent input into their kids education? So some copy from the internet, but perhaps the act is still about learning. Imagine the survival instincts of this child, the searching, the copying, perhaps merging some ideas with their own words. The thing that is worrying is this rigid presumption that learning is accomplished in only one manner, teacher to student. The latter sounds more like religion, not learning.
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@Lisa
Yes, Ms Lisa, this protection racket begins at home.
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Both of my children, now adults, were not great students. High school was a struggle. College was an effort and not completed. I worked and couldn't hover. They are both working now in fields that they love. They are independent. Are they doing what I would have wanted them to do? No. But they are empathetic, kind, creative, socially conscious young women with many, many friends. They have traveled the world. They are happy. At their age, I was in a bad marriage, working at a job I hated on the other side of the country, "so I wouldn't l let my father down." Somehow, despite the upgraded dreams I had for my children, they survived and thrived. Some paths are not linear. All times, control is an illusion.
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a minute ago tiger moms were the thing. Not now? I doubt it. Good parents will help all they can. The thing is that self reliance and maturity are among the best things you can reach your child. And not breaking the law, of course.
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@Rhporter. good parents do not lie and cheat and pass along those values to their children.
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parents with means are always going to do whatever they can for the betterment of their children, that's nothing new. it doesn't make them horrible people. the circumstances of this recent College scandal and the general snowplow approach to parenting described here is really more of an indication of how perverse, unethical, and unjust our societal institutions have become. suing those two actresses isn't going to change anything, it's just misplaced anger.we're still not dealing with the real problems; how come there isn't enough schools? why does college have to be competitive to get in? everybody with a 3.5 average should never have to wonder if they're going to qualify for a college, they should just get in. those parents were just responding to the current environment realistically to maintain success for their kids. why is all of this legal? and how come the parents are the only criminals? that doesn't seem right either
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@LongIslandRee
There are plenty of schools.Actually some smaller ones have closed because of a lack of applicants.
Not all wealthy people have encouraged their children to cheat - that's a values issue, and different entirely from offering the best educations and cultural exposure.
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@cheryl the small schools that are closing are doing so because they are so expensive - that is why they have low enrollment. But there are plenty of state schools and community colleges, good starting places, esp if you need coping and life skills.
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Of course wealthy parents "snowplow" obstacles out of the way of their children. They have "disposable income" to do so compared to hard-working middle and low income Americans who can't pay to pave the way for their kids. Does this mean that all wealthy people tend to be less ethical and moral when providing benefits for their children? Obviously that's a generality, but those wealthy folks caught in college admissions investigation demonstrate there are lots of unethical rich folks.
Leonard Cohen's lyrics describe it best:
"Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows "
It is refreshing when the DOJ catches cheating rich folks. Sadly I doubt they'll do any jail time. The rich have lots of extra income to spend on fleets of lawyers paid to keep the out of jail whereas the poor go to jail. That's the never-ending American travesty that is the privilege of wealth.
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The rich also face judges who are as morally compromised as they are (eg., Judge Ellis) who see these criminals as compatriots.
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@Question Everything If I could, I'd make your letter part of the story. Perfectly sums up the mindset of the wealthy American capitalist.
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18-28 is a fairly large range.
I’m an older millennial. I never lived at home after 18, always worked during college, graduated magna cum laude in 4 years and never took money from my parents after graduation.
15+ years later, I have a busy career, young children, a fixer-upper and ageing parents who sometimes need help with their own doctors’ appointents. I enjoy doing things like making homemade tomato sauce for the week on Sundays (maybe that anti-sauce kid should try some) My life feels nothing if not “adult.”
But did my mom schedule my college physical as an 18 year old high school senior? Sure. I can’t say I feel particularly robbed and I know my mom will laugh when I inform her she was a snowplow parent
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@Amelia
There is obviously a range here. All caring parents continue helping out at least a bit. I certainly don't fault parents who give loans, or let an adult child live at home for a certain period as long as they are in school or contributing to room and board, or help them do things like organize appointments, if that happens to be a weak spot. They don't suddenly go from children to adults overnight at 18. That stuff is hardly on par with bribing your kid's way into college. I am sure there is nothing to fault your mom for.
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@Amelia
I think they meant scheduling appointments once the child has graduated high school, and most likely is out of the house. Yes, at 18 you were technically an adult, but still in high school and at home. I don't think your mom qualified as a snowplow parent :-)
Snow plowing parents parallels parents keeping the kids clean and germ free.
In the first case, they cannot cope as adults. In the second case, their immune systems are underdeveloped.
So have your kids play in the dirt. Have your kids stumble and fall. It is good for them.
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@J Fogarty, just pointing out that the Hygiene Hypothesis you are referencing is far from settled. My son has a food allergy and while we don’t know what caused it, I’m positive we didn’t cause it by keeping him “too clean.” We’ve lived with cats, let him play on and eat off the floor, and taken him regularly on public transit since infancy. We’re not fastidious housekeepers, don’t use anti-bacterial anything and let him play in the dirt as much as he wants. Our approach to managing his food allergy is basically to live our lives without fear so long as we have his epinephrine and won’t hesitate to use it should he need it.
I know this is tangential to the point if this article but I am so darn tired of insinuations that I caused his immunological condition. Cheating on behalf of your kids is actually bad parenting. Having a kid with a medical disease that affects their immune system is just bad luck.
6
@KimiChi, my grandson, now 5, has a peanut allergy that was diagnosed when he was 14 months. He is very responsible about knowing what he can eat and can't. If he's unsure he will ask if he can have it and accepts his condition. Hopefully he will outgrow it. I don't know why people would blame you for your child's food allergy. Stand firm and educate them about genetics then don't give their rudeness and ignorance another thought. Good luck.
1
@KimiChi
Surely you realize that the 100% of kids with allergies can be separated into those for whom allergies were going to be a problem no matter how the kids were raised... and those for whom living on a farm with animals, dirt and dung would have been a benefit.
So the "go play in the dirt" remains an effective strategy for many. But perhaps not your son.
And there may be nothing you could have done about it.
1
What happens when mom and dad are not around to help guide Junior? We just delay the inevitable. I am afraid we are creating unrealistic lives for our children. They won’t know what to do without guidance.
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My daughter had many friends with parents like this. She used to ask me why I wasn't doing everything that X's Mom was doing for her friend. I worked full time and traveled and we had childcare but the kids had to be independent. When they all went away to college my daughter breezed through - making new friends, having good grades and living pretty clean (for campus that is). Many of the same friends she used to be jealous of flunked out in first year, or did drugs and booze to excess as it was the first time out of their parents' control. My daughter sees few of them anymore. She has set her own path, seeing the world, and it's cool and exciting, and independent and we are very very proud.
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I excelled at bad/average grades in grade/high school albeit it was one of the best public schools in the nation that will remain nameless. Went to a party university for freshman year , quit and ended up at art school. ( not the envy of ivy leaguers) Managed to glide thru that and get a Bachelor of Fine Arts diploma that is absolutely worthless on all levels. Started my own business in selling jewelry and after the money got tighter segued into construction contracting and real estate. Everything I did after school had nothing to do with what the school taught, Actually the art school taught me what to NOT do. That's worth something I guess. Very happy in my life working for myself and I count a lot of interesting people in my circle of friends. Thank God I'm unemployable.
13
As an educator at an elite private high school, this is a thoughtful article in many ways, but unhelpfully conflates what it describes as "intensive" and "snowplow" parenting styles. Both are resource intensive and of course more accessible to the wealthy, but the intensive style _may_ be used to provide learning and growth opportunities, to help "prepare the child for the road." The article seems to mock the trend in encouraging practicing failure in education, but this is an intentional antidote to the "everyone gets a medal" mentality, trying to build grit and resiliency in otherwise emotionally fragile youth. The snowplow parents (and I know a few) take the intensive parenting idea as an opportunity to prevent their child from experiencing any short term discomfort or disadvantage, which of course does them a disservice down the road. Some parents use an intensive style instead for children to learn to fall down and get up again.
18
You left out the parents who rent or buy a condo to be near a kid during their college years. Allows them to continue actually doing the child's homework. Amazing.
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@poslug: My niece-in-law's parents packed up and bought a HOUSE on the same street when she married my nephew and the two of them moved south. She is stuck in her teen years, expecting everything to be handed to her while she posts selfies on Facebook and drinks wine. My nephew spent 12 years trying to make her happy, buying her new vehicles and the latest iPhones, paying for vacations, all while he was building a business, cleaning the house, doing the laundry, and raising their two kids. After she recently demanded a bigger house, he moved out and filed for divorce; still sees his kids every day, who miraculously seem pretty independent and do well at school all on their own (just like he did). Every day I hope that they turn out like their dad, and not like their spoiled-brat mother (who is in her 40s!). My prediction is that she will ultimately move back in with her parents.
21
Thank you for calling attention to this existential threat to modern American life. As you rightly point out, today’s children face significantly bleaker prospects than those of generations past. Perhaps we should spend less time with them, teaching them “tough love,” and how to fail better, rather than engaging them, inspiring them, and giving them our energy and resources so they can succeed. This would certainly free up more time for one to troll on social media, and drink with his/her adult friends (or don’t these ills compare with snowplow parenting?).
9
Are snowplow parents actually prevalent in this generation, or is this an anecdotal concept that's only relevant in the wake of the admissions scandal? I'm a senior at an Ivy-adjacent college, and while I know plenty of kids with helicopter parents (its own problem in and of itself), I've only ever met one or two whose parents are "snowplows" - call an employer to argue over their grades, or request alternate dining options. It doesn't seem that 8% of parents arguing with administrators or one-time anecdotes seem to point to an actual new trend of this kind of parenting; this feels like a reach to connect the news cycle to the current generation.
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@John L.
Perhaps the larger question is; do a significant percentage of wealthy parents "snowplow" using excess wealth (a.k.a. disposable income)?
It's also worth noting that the vast majority of Americans do NOT have extra money for "snowplowing" comparable to the 1% who were caught paying to get their kids past the college admissions hurdles.
12
I’ve been a teacher for 15 years. The parental intrusiveness has been steadily ramping up. Where I’d have one or two parents each year asking why the kid isn’t getting an A, now I’m getting emails every other day.
I think part of it is the perceived accessibility and ease of shooting off angry emails from your phone at 11pm to complain that there’s too much homework (when your kid left a 2-week project until the night before the due date) or that the kid “worked too hard to get a B” (code for the parent wrote the paper and thinks it should be an A).
Another part is the online grading system. Instead of getting report cards 4 times a year, parents can see every homework and quiz grade as it’s posted. The technology allows greater hovering.
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@John L. Couldn't agree with you more. Before I even read your comment I noticed the statistics they were providing were awfully low, as in not many parents out there "snow plowing". Good ole media, telling us things are one way when they're actually not.
7
The percentage facts quoted in the column undercut the premise of this article: 16%, 11%, 8% doing the most intrusive acts of protective parenting for college age kids. There were a couple notoriously protective parents in our neighborhood in my 1960s childhood. Here is much ado about a long standing issue.
11
@RRA: self-reporting by parents is unlikely to be accurate. When asked about behaviors they know are questionable, survey respondents significantly underrepresent their questionable behaviors.
3
Bravo! As a parent of children in their mid twenties, this is a conversation I've had with a number of young people. I believe your observations are spot on! Interestingly, as a parent, we've tried to pave the way for our children out of love but in doing so we have actually hampered them as young adults.
12