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Anya Kamenetz Generation Debt

Anya Kamenetz, Generation Debt

Attack of the Helicopter Parents

by Anya Kamenetz

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Posted on Tuesday, November 20, 2007, 12:00AM

Morley Safer raised the alarm bells for his fellow 70-somethings on "60 Minutes" earlier this month. "The millennials are coming!" he trumpeted in a typically damning segment that called our generation "narcissistic praise hounds."

This kind of unthinking condemnation of young people is neither new nor on target. In my experience as a frequent visitor to campuses across the country, young adults are confident, hardworking, pragmatic, and energetic. They are also highly social, have a global outlook, and are dedicated to service.

IMing Mom and Dad

One new tendency that does give them a bad rap, however, is the trend of frequent, even daily, contact by cell phone, email, and instant message with their "helicopter parents."

"My parents are divorced, so I talk to both of them at least once a day," says Christina Peters, a junior at Northern Michigan University. "They help me understand things that are going on with my life. I even ask my fiancé's mom about things to get her view on them."

Just like a chopper 50 feet overhead, overly concerned parents can be a noisy, disruptive force for young adults who are supposed to be learning to manage their own educations and lives.

This is a Generation Debt problem, because over-parenting may have negative consequences for young people while they're students and even worse effects when they graduate and start their first jobs. It may also have a Generation Debt explanation. Parents who are paying far more for their students' educations might be pushing a little too hard to try to get the return on their investment.

Researching the Phenomenon

Until now, there's been very little research on this phenomenon. But a few weeks ago, the National Survey of Student Engagement polled nearly 10,000 students at 24 schools on the topic, with results that surprised even the researchers. Seven out of 10 students reported that they were in contact with a parent or guardian "very often," usually the mother. Furthermore, one-quarter of freshmen -- and even 21% of seniors -- reported that their parents sometimes "intervened" in their educations in some way.

"The first surprise was that these students were not disadvantaged at all," says research director George Kuh, from  Indiana University. "They were as engaged or more engaged in college than their peers who were less closely connected, and they reported more satisfaction with the college experience."

But even though these highly attached students' self-assessments were very positive, Kuh found that they had "significantly lower grades." In other words, the students who talk to Mom and Dad every day aren't introverts with no friends and no activities, but they might be underachievers.

The weaker grades didn't surprise the professors I talked with. "I'm very familiar with the concept of helicopter parents," says Tom Grier, the information director at Winona State University in Minnesota. "For a small number of students, the hovering parent can be helpful. Perhaps the students with ADD need frequent, gentle reminders to stay on task. For most college students, however, the helicopter parent may do more harm than good. Part of the college experience is gaining independence, growing up, making adult decisions, and learning the consequences and trade-offs that emerge from each decision."

Grier says that some students turn up in his office tearful because their parents are applying too much scrutiny; some may even drop out of school.

Unimpressive Interventions

Professors, by and large, aren't impressed with so-called interventions by parents. Dr. Hope May, the director of the Center for Professional and Personal Ethics at Central Michigan University, had a student who always cut class and failed to even show up for the exam.

"His father called me and begged me to let his son take the exam. 'He has many problems,' blah blah," May says. "To which I replied, 'You are not helping him; you need for him to hit bottom and make a choice.' What was more disturbing is that this student's father is a professor!"

Even the best-educated parent can show poor judgment when it comes to his own kid. However, Kuh says what really surprised him about the survey results was that there was no parental-education effect. That is, first-generation college students were just as likely to speak with parents very often as the offspring of highly educated parents. But Kuh speculates that there may still be class differences in the kinds of conversations parents have with their students.

"Educated parents may be encouraging students to take full advantage of the college experience, which is something they understand well," he says. "First-generation parents may be talking more about money, how expensive this is. For many parents, sending a child to college may mean half of their income."

Even a well-off parent who's paying $40,000 a year might feel more pressured or entitled to make a little noise if the student isn't up to snuff. Just like an anxious investor calling her broker, this parent has got a lot riding on that student's performance.

May and Grier also both point out that it can be very difficult for parents to know just when to give encouragement and when to back off. Support that is necessary for a freshman, for example, may be overkill for a senior.

The irony is that parents who have the resources to do everything to help their young adults succeed may not really be helping as much as parents who, out of necessity, leave them to figure things out on their own.

"A lot of people from lower-middle-class backgrounds such as myself don't have the luxury of parents with the means to help them a whole lot after they go off to college," says Derek DeGraad, a senior at the State University of New York at Fredonia. "I can't relate well to some of these students whose parents take care of all their finances and banking for them and have a heavy hand in their academic choices.

"Maybe it's because my folks make a combined $30,000 a year and have their own finances to worry about. The more I can reassure them that I'm taking care of everything myself, the less stress I need to impose on them. They've done enough for me during my first 18 years."

This survey is just the beginning of inquiry into this topic. I'd like to see more of the negative stereotyping of millennials replaced with real research like this.

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159 Comments

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  • . - Wednesday, November 21, 2007, 2:58AM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    Anya is right on the topic! It is very true. You see some wealthy kids who have every need taken care of, but in the end most of them are lazy, selfish, immature and hateful people. They did not have to work to earn anything, it's all given to them for free. Some retared wealthy parents, especially the first generation wealthy, have to cut the cord some time, but some never do. And as a result, they get blamed for everything that goes bad later on in life of thier treasued kids, which is the irony of it.

  • Christopher - Wednesday, November 21, 2007, 3:48AM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 3/5

    The 60 Minutes report on the Millennials was 100% accurate. I work for one the ten largest corporations in America and we have slowed hiring of millennials with newly minted college degrees over the past 5 years because the majority of them cannot be trusted to show up on-time, complete assigned tasks, employ critical thinking to identify problems (this might require them to stay late, so it is better to play dumb) or work independently. My advice to employers is to hire veterans from the Marines and Army that were Non-Commissioned or Commissioned Officers and train them in the required skill-sets for which your company needs employees, even if you have to send them to a four-year university. These people have served in combat and understand the meaning of loyalty as long you are honest and straight-forward with them. They were willing to die for our country; I suspect they will have no problem working a dozen weekends of overtime every year for a company that will pay them enough to feed and clothe their families.

  • Jim M - Wednesday, November 21, 2007, 4:36AM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 3/5

    Interesting comment about hiring military veterans. I am in Baghdad as a Captain and Company Commander. 9 of our 11 captains are getting out when we return, but all are either looking at corporate world or grad school. I am staying, but do have a grad school slot through the army for wherever I choose. Most of these captains will do well in a company as they think for themselves and try as best as possible to exercise common sense. To reiterate your comment, most of your commissioned officers and senior non-commissioned officers understand critical thinking, problems solving, and the idea of staying past 5pm, since many days we work until 8-9pm, especially here. What you also have is a team player - yes, we get pissed at each other, but we roll with the punches, no one man finishes the mission alone. There is also with critical thinking the idea of tasks - not only do we have a mission handed to us, but we have to analyze the implied tasks, what do we need to do that we don't need to be told to do. A key thing as well in this topic is that most of your officers and NCO's have not had mommy or daddy pay for school - most earned it through the Army, whether tuition assistance or ROTC, and did not have anything handed to us. However, you also have some bad things with NCO's and officers - sometimes you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Some ex-Soldiers have some bad tempers that flare up, and some things you can say to a subordinate in the Army will get you fired as a civilian. All of this is in my humble opinion, works both ways in the hiring process.

  • dubyaw - Wednesday, November 21, 2007, 4:54AM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 1/5

    Whining in college about your grade works, as a friend of mine could convince a professor to add an extra credit project at the end of the year to boost grades. It works especially in the real world, where the squeaky wheel always gets the grease. Whining about financial aid will ONLY work if your parent is there, as they do not take you seriously and give you an extra boost in your grants when you need them. I know from experience. Two squeakers are much louder than one. Just ask any protester. I graduated college in 2004 as an aerospace engineer, and work for a large aerospace company in Seattle (guess which one). Why do older people hate on us, can be answered easily. They are in fear of there job, because we can learn faster, and do it better, and question everything, processes that they have been following for years I tear apart. How would you like some new guy to tell you that you have been wasting your time doing steps 1-10 for the last 20 years? And of course parents don’t want to see there money go to waste, who would? Call me and I’ll gladly accept your money if your not constantly checking up on your investment. The biggest set back for being a new hire is lack of documentation, in which gaining tribal knowledege is like pulling teeth. Welcome to the real world, where rent is high, pay is low, and your competing against your co-worker for the same raise.

  • Yahoo! Finance User - Wednesday, November 21, 2007, 5:07AM ET  Report Abuse

    • Overall: 5/5

    Interesting comments regarding the military. If any company had failed as often as the US military has between 1950 and 2000 (the helicopter generation) no one would want to hire anyone from that company. Is it possibile that many if not the majority of men in the army do not join to serve their country, but rather as for the bennifits that you so readily mention. Is it possible that "the greatest generation" born from 1920-1940 made the mistake of pampering their children too much, and catering to their needs too individually. Could this be how they raised "the weakest generation" born from 1950-1970? This is the generation that ecouraged the belief that the importance of the individual is greater than the importance of the majority. Never has a generation so systematically & utterly destroyed the middle and upper middle class as this "weakest generation". Their misguided ethics have propogated the idea that the minority has rights above that of the majority and that the extremely rich are somehow justified! Let the new generations, regain what they have squandered and destroyed! Governement for the many, not the few!!! Let the "weak" cower, the strong, the many, the new will lead!

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More from Anya Kamenetz

Read the Generation Debt Book

According to economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, Generation Debt offers "a truly gripping account of how young Americans are being ground down by low wages, high taxes, huge student loans, sky-high housing prices, not to mention the impending retirement of their baby boomer parents." Generation Debt will inspire you to take charge of your financial future.

Read more from Anya Kamenetz here and here.

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