There must now be adults who have been overparented. What is the result of all that overparenting? Are all those adults screwed up? Are they successful in life?
Honestly, I don’t think you can be over parented. At some point you ‘grow up’ and start living your own life.
Surely that is exactly the point. Some of these kids do not get to do that until they are 20. While others not overparented can start from 8.
Not to long ago NPR did a story on this subject or one pretty close to it. One of the things I remember was them interviewing human resources for major companies and finding that have had to change their policies to keep employees with methods they never had to consider before. Among the generation coming in it is necessary to provide constant positive feedback. Employee of the month or year programs are turning into employee of the day. Managers have to be retrained to constantly emphasize how important an employee is to them.
Well, you could wind up like my Great-Aunt, who was told when to retire by her mother, who she still lived with.
Only one of her four kids (the only son) ever left home, married, or even had a relationship (so far as anyone’s been able to find out). All three daughters only ever had the job she set them up with, where their mother also worked, from the time they finished compulsory schooling, (age 14 I think), until they died or, for the one that outlived her, retired. Anything Mother didn’t approve of, which was virtually everything, didn’t happen.
I posted this in another thread. For reference, I started university in 1996:
I saw plenty of ‘special snowflakes’ when I went to university who had never been on their own or responsible for anything. Guess what? Most of them washed out before Christmas. They just couldn’t handle the freedom (so didn’t go to class, drank too much, ran out of money). I don’t want that for my children.
Before we go too far down this road, let’s keep something in mind: there have always been some parents who were overly involved or smothering. Most of the stuff you hear about helicopter parents is a complaint about how kids today have it so easy and are so coddled that [fill in the blank].
But until we can develop some metric to argue about, this is all just hearsay. So what are we arguing?
Do you have some statistics that show over parenting leads to disorders later in life? Social disarray? Marital problems? Over eating?
And what exactly is overparenting? What are your metrics for that? Does it mean anything besides “more involved than my parents were”?
But is that because of “overparenting”, or because of how badly they’ve treated employees and how little reason employees have to trust them?
I was asking the question…
The story’s implication it was because of their parental upbringing and interviews with the employees seemed to confirm that.
I’m sure their are a lot of factors that lead to different behaviors between generations. I don’t think any conclusive data can be drawn.
I believe their is a higher percentage of parents that interfere with their children’s lives in ways that are unnecessarily invasive but again that’s a belief and we can’t establish reliable metrics for this issue.
The Wiki article suggests obesity as a possible risk.
If its correct, thats a pretty huge negative outcome, much harder to get rid of that, than to never have it in the first place.
The other is risk aversion, so that would presumably result in avoidance issues.
But there isnt really a helicopter parenting scale or even an agreed on measurable definition from what I can see, so its really just guessing. I guess in here is an implied assumption that its ‘overall worse’, when really theres always dysfunctional parenting going on, and this might not be as bad as some of the alternatives that are reducing as a result of generally increased parental involvement, evne if the outliers can seem pretty extreme.
And like Der Trish, theres always new HR ideas coming out, so you’d have to show its based in credible research rather than being a fad or coming from other causes.
Edit: And it wasnt long ago that you were in the family biz for life more often than not, so if anything parental independence is more the historical aberration than the norm.
Otara
Presented without comment:
The Ne Plus Ultra of Enraging Trend Stories
OK, I’ll highlight one line from the article: “We’re all mere pawns in a never-resting [media] machine which turns outrage into money.”
There have always been Jewish Mothers.
But a lot of it is technology. When I went to college I’d call my parents on the pay phone once a week, and maybe a tiny bit more often when I got my own phone. My kids can call whenever they want to, and often called when they were walking to class or something. When I went to college if for some reason I wanted to show my parents a paper or something, I’d have to mail it to them. Not too practical. Today it can all be shared instantly.
Hell, thanks to Skype we talk to our daughter in Germany more often, and cheaper, than I spoke to my parents who were 200 miles away.
Parents who know what is happening to their kids every second often want to make it better. Thus the increase. And it is a bad thing. Sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and let them screw up.
And in the generation before yours, people would live in the same town as their parents for their entire lives, and see them every day. *Your *generation is the aberration. Technology is just restoring humanity to its natural tribal state.
From my experience, the trend has been for companies (especially tech related) to “juvenilize” their employees by trying to make the workplace a happy happy fun time environment. Fooseball tables. Team outings. Field trips. Ultra casual days. I actually like wearing a suit to work or otherwise dressing like I have to look like I give a shit about my job. How about for a “team activity”, lets go up the street to Brandy Library, drink a couple of scotches and maybe hit a strip club like men?
While I am willing to accept (and really hope) that they were trolling, I’ve seen people claim that childhood now ends at age 25.
un-fucking-believable.
Or, these companies realize their employees are “people” and not just “resources.”
What does “wearing a suit” have to do with how well you do your job? Sounds like you’re more concerned with building your image.
how about you look at a calendar and realize it’s not 1968.
Actually its more that research has found brain development in some crucial areas is still occurring up to that age, which has implications for things like risk assessment.
And this isnt really breaking news.
Otara