Helicopter parents: too much of a good thing?

A mother who attends university lectures with her adult son. A father who goes to court to be able to attend his child's school trip. Parents who take their daughter to the doctor because she is never ill. We marvel at stories in which parents behave towards their children like employees - service-orientated and always ready for action.

We call them «helicopter parents» and always mean the others. Don't we all want the best for our own child and therefore worry about their development from time to time? Isn't the helicopter gene in all of us, at least to some extent?

If you comb through scientific sources and talk to educational experts, you come to the conclusion that instead of laughing at others, we would be better off questioning our own behaviour.

Even in the days of our grandparents, there were sceptical or anxious parents. However, something fundamental has changed, as the sociologist Frank Furedi discovered. He compared letters to the editor that parents used to write to specialist magazines with those of today. And realised that the tone has changed. «If you read the letters to the editor from the 1920s, you get the impression that family life was just fine.»

Three phenomena characterise the helicopter parent generation: material prosperity, social pressure on parents and a culture of fear.

Parents would have only asked for advice on individual parenting issues - thumb sucking, jealousy between siblings or nail biting. Today, on the other hand, parents turn tiny things into big problems. A widespread lack of parental composure is to blame. Frank Furedi: «Many mums and dads seem downright overwhelmed by the huge amount of problematic issues they are confronted with.» Accordingly, the letters to the editor sound like cries for help.

Social change

When asked about the causes of this change, experts cite three social changes.

1. Firstly, material pampering has only become possible thanks to our prosperity and the trend towards nuclear families, as psychologist Jürg Frick says. As a result, parents have more time with their children than before.
2. Secondly, social pressure on parents is increasing, as a German study commissioned by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation shows. «Today, the guiding principle is that you only bring children into the world if you can look after them «well»,» write the authors. Educational pressure and early education are so popular because family values are being adapted to those of the competition-orientated economy.
3. Thirdly and finally, many experts such as Frick or the emeritus professor of education Margrit Stamm from the University of Fribourg speak of the zeitgeist of a «culture of fear» in which parents prioritise the safety of their children above all else. The term «helicopter parents» was first mentioned by Israeli-American psychologist Haim Ginott in 1969. However, it only became popular around 15 years ago.

Professor Margrit Stamm doesn't like the term; she prefers to talk about «parents who want to be perfect». They would do anything to avoid making any mistakes. Three criteria characterise them:

• They give their children above-average support.
• They spoil them, fulfil their every wish and do everything for them.
• They are constantly worried about their safety.

Who typical helicopter parents are and how many of them there are is relatively poorly researched. According to Stamm, it is mainly the well-educated middle class that is affected. «Around half of well-off parents belong to the group of helicopter parents,» she estimates. Experts who deal with fathers and mothers on a daily basis, such as Ruth Fritschi from the Swiss Teachers' Association, also observe that helicopter parents are more common in cities than in rural areas.

What's so bad about helicopter parents?

Overall, around 10 to 15 per cent of mothers and fathers in Germany could be described as helicopter parents. This means that they are about as common as the so-called «zero-buck parents» who neglect their children. This is according to Josef Kraus, former president of the German Teachers' Association and author of a book on the subject. The remaining 70 to 80 per cent have an unproblematic parenting style.

Economists at the University of Zurich presented an even more precise figure two years ago. In Switzerland, 19 per cent of all parents would adopt the helicopter parenting style. However, this figure is not based on actual survey data, but on economic analyses. The international comparison made by the economists is also interesting: They were able to show that helicopter parents are significantly more common in countries with higher wage inequality, such as the USA, than in Switzerland. The explanation for this is that parents are more likely to push their children to achieve more if those with lower qualifications have a difficult time in the respective country.

A parenting style with consequences

Helicopter parents therefore seem to be a recent and increasingly widespread phenomenon. Now you may ask yourself what is so bad about bringing up your own child in a particularly caring and gentle way.

10 to 20 per cent of parents in Switzerland are helicopter parents. They raise their children to be incompetent.

According to experts, this parenting style has many negative consequences. The conclusion is that «helicopter parents» raise dependent, maladjusted, mentally and motorically severely damaged children. «Neglect, ignorance and disinterest cause less damage to children's souls than narcissism, which wants to see the offspring happy and successful in order to feel competent,» says the respected Danish family therapist Jesper Juul in an article in the German news magazine «Der Spiegel». In short: helicopter parents raise their children to be incompetent.

The fact is that many children and young people today are increasingly suffering from psychological and social problems. According to a study conducted by the Juvenir Foundation in 2015, around half of all children and young people in Switzerland frequently or very frequently experience stress or excessive demands in their everyday lives. This and the fact that more and more children were calling the emergency number 147 due to serious mental health problems recently prompted Pro Juventute to launch a national campaign on the topic of «Less pressure, more child». The aim is to address the children's environment - above all their parents.

Too focussed to recognise the needs of the children

The problems often become visible at school, where clear expectations are formulated for children for the first time alongside their parents. Teachers experience day after day how more and more boys and girls are struggling to integrate into everyday school life. Many of them display conspicuous behaviour or suffer from complex learning problems. Such pupils are then referred to the school psychology service for assessment. According to Sara Fischer, a school psychologist from Meilen, these children often have little perseverance and a low frustration tolerance. «Although they are intelligent, they fail at school,» she says.

The connection between this development and parental education is relatively poorly researched. However, there are some studies. For example, Finnish psychologist Pirkko Niemelä presented a groundbreaking study in the 1980s. She showed that wanting everything to be perfect is not a good prerequisite for positive child development.

Perfect parents - dependent children?

Niemelä studied mothers and their children between the ages of one and four. And discovered that children of women who saw themselves as perfect mothers were more cooperative and well-adjusted than other children. However, they had more trouble concentrating, were more insecure and behaved more aggressively. According to the researcher's interpretation, the women were probably so focused on their role as mothers that they failed to recognise the needs of their children.

Further studies subsequently showed the effects of excessive control and protection in more detail. Only recently, the publication of a study from the USA caused a stir. Researchers followed more than 420 children for eight years. They analysed how parents played with their two-year-old children. Three and five years later, respectively, they visited the same children again.

The result: at the age of five, the children of controlling parents showed a significantly reduced ability to control their emotions and impulses. By the time they were ten, they showed more conspicuous behaviour at school, acted like the class clown or had difficulty concentrating. These results suggest that parenting behaviour led to the later problems. However, they do not prove it, because it is a correlation and not a causality.

Children of «perfect» mothers are more conformist, more aggressive, more insecure and have more trouble concentrating.

Like control and protection, early intervention is also a typical characteristic of helicopter parents. A study by Margrit Stamm shows that first-graders in Switzerland already receive an average of three support programmes per week in addition to school - from extra tuition to music lessons and sports training.

Studies show that too much encouragement can be harmful. For example, children who go through instructed programmes and learn writing, reading and arithmetic earlier than usual achieve better results in the short term compared to children who play more. In the longer term, however, they perform worse at school and have to repeat classes five times more often on average. In addition, children who often play freely are more socially competent, empathetic and creative. There is therefore some clear evidence that excessive control, protection and encouragement actually have negative effects on a child's development. However, studies have not yet helped the parents concerned.

What you hear again and again from experts is the advice to give your child enough freedom. Psychologist and family therapist Christine Harzheim, for example, says : «Only with enough freedom can a child build up a healthy self-esteem in the long term.» She encourages parents to become more relaxed. By constantly circling over their children and showing them how to play Lego, for example, children become passive; they wait until you put something in front of them. «Children don't find direct access to themselves and their feelings this way, but remain dependent on impulses and external judgement,» says Christine Harzheim.

Harzheim believes that the reason why many parents are so protective of their children and thus inhibit their development is that many parents get stuck in the formative early years, when the children really do need an excessive amount of care. However, this changes after just a few months: «Children need freedom to gain their own experiences and develop their own will,» says Harzheim. Many parents would not be able to adapt to the new situation.

If you always show children how to play Lego, they become passive.

Harzheim cites an example from her practice: it was very important to a parent couple that their child tasted everything when eating, but the child steadfastly refused. The conflict escalated until the child vomited at some point after being forced to eat a pea against its will. The parents then gave up and said: «From now on, you can decide what you can and can't try.» Not even a week had passed before the child asked: «Can I try everything?»

In her counselling sessions, the family therapist works towards helping parents examine and improve their approach to themselves. It is important to recognise what triggers their own actions. She says: «It's often our own fear, insecurity or a conversation with a neighbour that causes parents to worry and not give their child any freedom. For example, if parents don't let their child go outside alone, they should ask themselves: Do I really want to protect the child or is it the fear that I will look bad as a mother because my child is out alone and I don't seem to care?»

Once parents have realised that it's about them, they can change their behaviour. However, this is a major challenge for many. Like the mother who doesn't let her four-year-old daughter play alone outside her own home in a family-friendly, car-free neighbourhood. But she can and must learn to cope with this stress - for example, by leaving childcare to the more relaxed father more often.

Becoming more relaxed - but how?

More serenity, more freedom: when parents are given this tip in counselling sessions, it sounds good. But at the latest when they are back at home and their five-year-old son is climbing a tower they built themselves out of cardboard boxes, the question arises: When am I being gentle and when am I overdoing it? Where is the line between caring and overprotection? And where is the boundary between encouragement and excessive demands?

Example of overanxiety: Being afraid for your children is perfectly justified in certain situations - such as in road traffic. However, when it comes to manageable risks such as the example with the cardboard boxes, parents should exercise restraint. After all, children need to learn to assess dangers for themselves. If they fail to do so, the pain simply comes later - and more severely. Dentists report an increase in anterior tooth fractures because children today fall on their faces more often than on their hands - because they never learnt to fall properly as children.

Because they have not learnt to fall correctly, children today land on their faces more often than on their hands when they fall.

Ruth Fritschi from the Swiss Teachers' Association tells of twelve-year-olds who can't walk down a path because they are afraid, and of those who hold scissors in their hands for the first time at school because their parents thought they were too dangerous. «Children suffer in such situations,» says Fritschi, «and they can't help it because they have never learnt such things.»

Exposing children to stress

The concept of more composure is also suitable for over-ambitious parents who push their child (too) hard: If the offspring has absolutely no desire to take a swimming course, then the parents should abandon their suggestion - even if their friend already has her seahorse in her pocket and her parents are raving about the swimming coach's technique. Instead, they should trust that their child will learn to swim - during the next holiday, for example, together with mum and dad.

And how do parents avoid what is perhaps their greatest temptation - spoiling? School psychologist Sara Fischer says: "If their child comes home from school and complains about stress or being overwhelmed, many parents will relieve them of household chores completely. However, what children generally describe as stress does not mean that they lack the time to do their homework.

In most cases, this refers to the fear of not performing - on the next day at school, at the upcoming exam, at the next job interview. Fischer says: «At this moment, children don't need extra support from their parents, but compassion and confidence.»

Parents need to know what they can expect from their children so that they are neither overburdened nor underchallenged. Fischer says: «Kindergarten children can prepare breakfast for the family, help with cleaning and shopping. Primary school children are capable of travelling by bus or tram on their own, cooking or helping with the laundry. They should be able to do a large part of their homework themselves. From the end of middle school, it is even possible for children to do the shopping and cooking for the whole family on their own once a week. "Of course, it takes a lot of patience and careful guidance to get to that point,» says Fischer. «But when the child finally manages it, it makes them proud and boosts their self-esteem.»

Helicopter parents are highly committed parents - so the chances are good that they are willing to change their behaviour for the good of the child.

So there are good reasons why mums and dads should leave the helicopter on the ground. The good news is that there is a good chance that they will make it. This is because all the people we spoke to confirmed that they are highly committed mothers and fathers who are prepared to do everything they can to ensure that their child is well. Psychologist Christine Harzheim says: «I like helicopter parents because they are very careful, want to do things right and are willing to work on themselves accordingly.»