Final Frontier (#408)
Parents are now managing their kids lives into adulthood. We need an intervention.
Once upon a time, a key goal of parenting was to equip kids to navigate the real world as independent adults. Going to college or university was an important inflection point on this journey for many kids, who were expected to manage all facets of their lives for the first time. In fact, providing a safe environment for kids to exercise this newfound independence was considered a major benefit of college.
Today, however, this goal of preparing kids for independence at 18 has evaporated. Instead, we’ve seen the rise of a new parenting style I like to call permissive and over-functional parenting, or P&O Parenting for short.
Practitioners of P&O Parenting seem willing to go to any effort or expense to make their kids’ lives better and easier—and they do so even after their kids go to college or enter adulthood. This well-intentioned approach is causing kids to be less independent, less resilient and more anxious than ever before.
Last week, I came across an article that explained this phenomenon perfectly, titled “The Final Frontier for Helicopter Parents.” The piece detailed the rise of WhatsApp and Facebook groups where the parents of college students arrange roommates, set up playdates, strategize about classes, discuss how laundry will be done and generally find new ways to micromanage the lives of their adult children who could be learning how to manage themselves.
It’s really hard to overstate how disempowering this behavior is for a developing adult. Naturally, I find the best way to illustrate the problem is an analogy between parenting and leadership.
If any leader attempted to micromanage a professional team with the level of officiousness we see in many of today’s parents, they’d find themselves with a frustrated team and in a tough conversation with their boss or human resources (HR) about necessary remedial action.
We understand clearly that micromanagement in the workplace detrimentally affects employees’ well-being. Research from Harvard Business Review found micromanaged employees experience heightened levels of stress, anxiety, and despair (just like today’s teens), leading to higher turnover rates.
Exceptional leaders don't micromanage to avoid errors; they encourage autonomy and empower their team with the freedom to innovate. Rather than intervening at the first sign of trouble, they adopt a coaching stance, allowing employees to navigate challenges and extract valuable lessons from ambiguity and setbacks.
Micromanagement is clearly detrimental to employee development in the workplace. Why don’t we consider rooting out this same behavior in parenting and replacing it with something more empowering?
For example, consider two approaches a parent might take when their child forgets their cleats for soccer practice (again) and calls asking for help.
P&O Parent: This parent jumps into action, dropping what they’re doing to rush to the field with their kids’ cleats. This solves the immediate problem, but the child learns that they can forget their cleats in the future, as they know the parent will simply bail them out.
Empowering Parent: This parent empathizes with the child but explains they can’t or won’t bring the cleats. The child then will have to find a way to borrow a pair, miss practice or practice in whatever they are wearing, which will likely result in some embarrassment. Later, the parent kindly, but firmly reminds the kid that forgetting equipment has consequences and offers up some tips to remember their cleats next time. The child connects the dots between actions and outcomes and implements the suggestion to write a note and post it on the side door that they leave from each morning for school.
The difference is clear: the P&O Parent solved the short-term problem, but the Empowering Parent’s kid likely learned a vital lesson about preparation and responsibility beyond the cleats.
Today, we aren't raising our kids to be independent, resilient adults. Instead, far too many parents make themselves the superheroes at the center of their kids’ lives, clearing every obstacle from their paths and raising their children to be dependent, fragile, and ill-equipped to navigate the inevitable adversity of adult life.
Maybe if these P&O Parents got more 360 reviews showing the poor outcomes of their approach they’d be more inclined to ease up and let kids have more agency. But just because there’s no HR for parenting doesn’t mean it’s too late to evaluate your approach and make changes.
To let go, you actually need to let go. In parenting, as in leadership, we should aim to be bird launchers, rather than nest builders.
Quote of The Week
"We must prepare children for the path, instead of the path for children." - Tim Elmore
Have a great weekend!
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Thanks, Robert. You did a great job of highlighting this issue for your readers. It's a topic that I believe will gain traction as the products of this type of parenting become more and more problematic in the coming years. No doubt you have heard of Greg Lukianoff and Johnathan Haidt (who also has a substack called "After Babel.") Their book, "The Coddling of the American Mind" takes a deep look at the implications of this problem. A must read for parents and anyone who cares about the mental well-being of tomorrow's adults!
I agree 100% ROBERT. I was rather appalled when I first started hearing and reading about helicopter parenting many years ago and wrote several articles and spoke about it in my programs. Then the phenomenon got worse. His younger generations of parents adopted it, and the snowplow parenting got worse. I like your analogy to leadership in the workplace. That whole mindset has the affected managers and requires new manager training mindset in order for direct reports not to want to leave the organization because of their managers, which becomes a toxic relationship.