02-07-2012, 12:43 AM
I'm hardly the first to point out that middle-class America has a parenting problem. This problem has been painstakingly diagnosed, critiqued and named: overparenting, hyperparenting, helicopter parenting, and my personal favorite, the kindergarchy. Nobody seems to like the relentless, unhappy pace of American parenting, least of all parents themselves.
'Pretty sure that I just read something about a metastudy that declared the exact opposite.
Supposedly, helicopter-parenting inspired schools to get online and open up avenues of communication like never before. Parents today have web-portals, PTA chatrooms, online homework assignments and instant-access to report cards thanks to all of that and it's often allowed parents to address problems before they seriously impair a child's education.
Strange stuff: The last week's news was loaded with absurd complaints about obsessive-compulsive parents showing up at their kids' employers' offices and trying to substitute themselves for their kids at job interviews. I don't believe for an instant that it's happening in any significant numbers. The WSJ piece seems to be related to that campaign. I wonder which wealthy corporation/lobbyist/political-candidate/PAC is blowing scads of money to get this BS in the press and what message they think they're promoting with it.