Safe And Unsound?

Our kids have never been safer, yet we still micro-manage their every move. Sarah Catherall looks at the phenomenon of helicopter parenting, and asks, is it doing more harm than good?

The morning after my eldest daughter leaves home and moves into a university hostel, my phone starts beeping. “My wallet has been stolen!” she cries. Texts flood my inbox. “I’ve had things bought on my card!”

I had planned to spend my first morning without her by meeting a friend for a coffee. Instead, I reorganise my day to help my daughter. I pick her up from her hostel, and rush to the police station to help her file a police report. Reparking the car, I help her get a replacement bank card. While she is applying for another driver’s licence, I fill in an insurance claim for the stolen items. After buying her lunch, I drop her back at her university hostel, hoping she has learned her lesson.

A friend laughs: “My mother would never have spent her day doing that for me.”

My mother would also have left me to cope on my own. Instead, I was being a ‘helicopter parent’ – stepping in to try to fix a situation that my daughter could have managed on her own.

THE AGE OF ANXIETY

I grew up in 1970s Napier, with parents who didn’t have the same anxiety around parenting that my generation has today, when terms like ‘helicopter parenting’ had not yet been coined. I regularly jumped on my three-speed bike and explored the city, and roamed or played in my neighbourhood until it got dark. My parents didn’t pore over parenting books, analysing how they were raising me. They didn’t spend their evenings whizzing their children between after-school activities, of which there were few. When we left home, we were pushed out into the adult world, left to deal with our own crises, although we always knew we were loved.