Helicopter Parents Most Likely to be Mothers

I’ve written before about the phenomenon of helicopter parents, but what makes someone a helicopter parent and who are these people? Well, most of them are mothers but it takes a lot more than being a mother to be helicopter parent.

Advocacy group College Parents of America and their partner Student Advantage surveyed parents to try to get to the bottom of this issue. Of the 1,727 who chose to respond, a whopping 81.5 percent were mothers, 17.7 percent were fathers, and the remaining 0.8 percent were grandparents, uncles, aunts, friends, and other adults who were actively involved in the lives of these college students.
The term helicopter parents refers to parents who are too involved in the lives of their children — the involvement can be so continual that the parents are often described as hovering over their children. Although many people think nothing of parents who hover over their infants and even toddlers, few parents of Baby Boomers or Gen X’ers would have dreamt of hovering over their children once they left for college. Yet one-third of the mothers who responded to the survey admitted to communicating with their college student child at least once a day. By comparison, only one-fifth of fathers admitted to the same level of involvement. Similarly, 45 parents of the mothers admitted talking with their student child “very frequently” via cell phone while only 32 percent of fathers admitted to the same level of contact. Some 70 percent communicate with their student children two to three times per week, more than 80 percent said cell phone discussions are very frequently or frequently the method of communication used, and more than 80 percent acknowledge that they are much more or more involved in the lives of their student children than were their own parents.
I’ve heard some parents defending themselves by claiming that their children want this level of contact. Yet when asked how often the parent initiated the communication, 56.5 percent indicated that they initiated the contact 50 percent of the time and 26.1 percent indicated that they initiated the contact 75 percent of the time.
So what are these communications about? Ten percent of the respondents indicated that money is very frequently discussed and an additional 23 percent indicated that it is frequently discused. Three percent said that career issues are very frequently discussed and an additional 13 percent said that careers are frequently discussed.
Parents: back off. You’re not going to be around to protect Johnny and Sally from lifes tribulations forever. You need to allow them to lives their own lives and to make their own mistakes. It is their lives that they’re living and not yours. Do not impose your value system on them. If they don’t want to take full advantage of their potential, that’s their choice and not yours. If they could do better in some of their classes, so be it. Do you do you best at everything that you do every day? Of course not. So don’t expect the same of them.