Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation • Hacker News Board

Re: Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

#11

Post by tetraodonpuffer » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 2:45 PM UTC

hubridnoxx wrote: post #6

6d0debc071 wrote: post #3

It seems a bit rich for the Dean of an educational institution that demanded, during her tenure and after, the sort of qualifications and CVs that encourage this behaviour to protest it. If you don't want it around, stop providing the incentive for it.

Of course it's not quite so binary. The dean wants a strong applicant pool as well as to dissuade helicopter parenting. I don't believe it's a contradictory stance she's taking.

if "strong" applicant is defined by things that are not possible unless they have an helicopter parent it is fairly binary...

What teen would be able to have the breadth and variety of experiences that seem to be required nowadays to stand out in a university application unless they have a set of parents that make them possible?

Re: Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

#12

Post by sagichmal » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 2:48 PM UTC

Gotadime wrote: post #10

gotothrowaway wrote: post #5

Universities love to complain about needing to react to what parents are saying, but this seems like something they bring on themselves. With such expensive tuition, a student's choice of college often cannot be made independently, and parents feel like they are buying their right to hassle higher educators. I would love to see a world where students truly decide on their own university and the ability for parents to…

You just tried to spin a cultural issue (that is, by the way, highly tied to liberal thought) to support your liberal political agenda. These helicopter parents are the same people that protest when their kids don't get a trophy for losing a soccer game. The "no child left behind" / "no hurt feelings" / "safe place" crew. To say that more of their ideas will help to solve the very issue that they created is simply la…

> These helicopter parents are the same people that protest when their kids don't get a trophy for losing a soccer game

Facts not in evidence.

> The "no child left behind" / "no hurt feelings" / "safe place" crew.

No child left behind was a Republican (conservative) initiative.

Re: Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

#13

Post by m_fayer » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 2:50 PM UTC

The idea that "today's youth" are more fragile than the youth of yore seems to be a growing meme. I do believe that there is a rise in mental health issues among young adults, but there are many potentially interacting causes. I haven't read the book in question, but I hope that anyone who tackles this subject addresses all the possibly relevant social phenomena before pinning it all on one root cause. Some things I hope would be factored in are:

- The tightening economic climate and increasing difficulty of staying in the middle class. Especially when it relates to the panoply of difficulties young people face: student debt, high cost of housing, the gateway of unpaid internships, the declining number of professions that can support a middle class existence, the clustering of opportunity in a few high-cost urban areas to the detriment of the rest.

- All the new systemic and political sources of anxiety - climate change, destabilizing politics in North America and Europe, mass migration, ambiguous wars, extremism, etc.

- Increasing diagnosis of mental health issues and occasional pathologization of everyday troubles.

- Decreasing stigma of mental health issues resulting in more young people seeking help.

- Weakening of existing family structures and modes of monogamous relationships, along with the appearance of a multitude of new family and relationship structures.

- "Helicopter parenting".

- The decline of the "traditional job" and all the security that came with it.

- All the various information overloads, distractions, and paradoxes of choice that come with the internet.

I'm sure there are plenty of things that could be added to this list. But generally, I think we are exiting a period of relative postwar stability and returning to a more chaotic status quo. But now a majority of people of all socioeconomic brackets yearn for a middle-class existence, and without the support of old rigid-but-secure (for some) social structures. The millennials-and-forward generations are going to manifest the stress of all these things in many, frequently-unexpected ways. Pinning it all on "helicopter parenting," IMO, is cruel and facile.

EDIT: Formatting.

Re: Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

#14

Post by supercanuck » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 2:51 PM UTC

You know what. Those parents got those kids into Stanford. Obviously helicopter parenting is working for them.

90% of the decisions people make are based on the environments they are in. Today's environment is extremely competitive and the margin for error is lower. Nobody wants to be the parent of the most mentally stable Starbucks Barista... Get them into Stanford, then they have the rest of their life to "fail"

Re: Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

#15

Post by vezzy-fnord » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 2:56 PM UTC

Gotadime wrote: post #10

gotothrowaway wrote: post #5

Universities love to complain about needing to react to what parents are saying, but this seems like something they bring on themselves. With such expensive tuition, a student's choice of college often cannot be made independently, and parents feel like they are buying their right to hassle higher educators. I would love to see a world where students truly decide on their own university and the ability for parents to…

You just tried to spin a cultural issue (that is, by the way, highly tied to liberal thought) to support your liberal political agenda. These helicopter parents are the same people that protest when their kids don't get a trophy for losing a soccer game. The "no child left behind" / "no hurt feelings" / "safe place" crew. To say that more of their ideas will help to solve the very issue that they created is simply la…

"Liberal political agenda" and "Bernie Sanders bill" in the same comment. I also learned NCLB is an integral part of liberal thought. Truly a better detachment of semiotics from words has never been foisted.

The butchering of the English language done by U.S. pundits after the New Deal era to redefine liberalism (or, really, to eradicate all meaning out of it) is unfortunately spreading all across the globe thanks to the web.

Re: Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

#16

Post by m_fayer » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 2:59 PM UTC

Gotadime wrote: post #10

gotothrowaway wrote: post #5

Universities love to complain about needing to react to what parents are saying, but this seems like something they bring on themselves. With such expensive tuition, a student's choice of college often cannot be made independently, and parents feel like they are buying their right to hassle higher educators. I would love to see a world where students truly decide on their own university and the ability for parents to…

You just tried to spin a cultural issue (that is, by the way, highly tied to liberal thought) to support your liberal political agenda. These helicopter parents are the same people that protest when their kids don't get a trophy for losing a soccer game. The "no child left behind" / "no hurt feelings" / "safe place" crew. To say that more of their ideas will help to solve the very issue that they created is simply la…

> your liberal political agenda

> protest when their kids don't get a trophy for losing a soccer game

It's great to respectfully debate across an ideological divide, but these kinds of propogandistic catch phrases immediately flag your comment as "looking for an internet food-fight" and shut down any thoughtful discussion before it starts.

Re: Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

#17

Post by anon4 » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 2:59 PM UTC

supercanuck wrote: post #14

You know what. Those parents got those kids into Stanford. Obviously helicopter parenting is working for them. 90% of the decisions people make are based on the environments they are in. Today's environment is extremely competitive and the margin for error is lower. Nobody wants to be the parent of the most mentally stable Starbucks Barista... Get them into Stanford, then they have the rest of their life to "fail"

That was my thought as well. The parents are making the rational decision that they can't afford their kids to fail, so they take every measure to make sure they get to a good start. A good start in this case meaning getting admitted to Stanford. It might have something to do with low-qualification jobs disappearing, which in turn means you have to have a college degree to be self-sufficient.

Once upon a time, you could be on your own when you were as young as 12 (yes, I mean ancient times). Not too long ago you needed only high school education to get a good job, so you're staying with your parents until 16-18. Now you need college.

Re: Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

#18

Post by ThomPete » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 3:02 PM UTC

As someone with children and living in NY, my wife and I are very aware of not trying to push our kids in a specific direction or to interfeer too much if they are having trouble solving something themselves.

The problem once we start coaching our kids in an early age is that we are denying them to find a lot of subtle things out on their own.

It's very easy to think you are helping your kids to learn by removing what seem like unnecessary obstacles and of course sometimes you are. But a lot of the time it's those obstacles that build some sort of character in the kids and allow them to find out things by finding out things. By being too proactive as a parent we can take a lot of motivation away from them.

Our kids have bruises all over their body because they are allowed to do things other kids aren't. Of course we watch over them and make sure they don't do completely crazy things but they are capable of much more than one might think. By allowing them to find that out they will hopefully learn that themselves too.

Raising kids isn't a science it's an art. The art of creating a canvas for them but not decide what they want to do with it.

I think this comic shows one of the big differences between our parents generation and ours (I am 41)

I am always reminded of this http://i.imgur.com/LglSapk.jpg

Re: Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

#19

Post by ThomPete » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 3:06 PM UTC

supercanuck wrote: post #14

You know what. Those parents got those kids into Stanford. Obviously helicopter parenting is working for them. 90% of the decisions people make are based on the environments they are in. Today's environment is extremely competitive and the margin for error is lower. Nobody wants to be the parent of the most mentally stable Starbucks Barista... Get them into Stanford, then they have the rest of their life to "fail"

Getting your kids into Stanford has nothing to do with helicopter parenting and I think you are missing the bigger point.

The failing that you do when you are 6 is very different from the one you do when you are 16 or 26, they all accumulate and you can't redo your childhood.

The things you learn when you are 6 and 16 are closer to the competition you are in when you are out of Stanford. Getting in to stanford is nothing compared to making it through life in one piece and with success.

Re: Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

#20

Post by analog31 » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 3:08 PM UTC

Gotadime wrote: post #10

gotothrowaway wrote: post #5

Universities love to complain about needing to react to what parents are saying, but this seems like something they bring on themselves. With such expensive tuition, a student's choice of college often cannot be made independently, and parents feel like they are buying their right to hassle higher educators. I would love to see a world where students truly decide on their own university and the ability for parents to…

You just tried to spin a cultural issue (that is, by the way, highly tied to liberal thought) to support your liberal political agenda. These helicopter parents are the same people that protest when their kids don't get a trophy for losing a soccer game. The "no child left behind" / "no hurt feelings" / "safe place" crew. To say that more of their ideas will help to solve the very issue that they created is simply la…

These helicopter parents are the same people that protest when their kids don't get a trophy for losing a soccer game.

Granted this is off topic, but I've reached a similar conclusion that "everybody gets a trophy" is an urban legend spread to promote a conservative political agenda. Most parents -- conservative or liberal -- roll their eyes at that idea.

A handful of anecdotes:

1. When my kids were little, they participated in soccer. For the smallest kids, it's apparently customary that they don't keep score. Well, the kids themselves kept score. Every kid knew the score, who won, who scored the goals, and who were the best players on the team.

2. My daughter brought home a ribbon for something. She said: "Oh, this is just one of those ribbons that everybody gets for participating." So this apparently liberal agenda can't have had much of an effect.

3. The most liberal parents in town put their kids into competitive or selective situations from a very early age. Through the fairly standardized repertoire for violin lessons, my daughter has known her exact rank as a violinist, since she was practically a toddler. There's no ambiguity about who can play song 6 from book 8, and who can't.