Helicopter Parenting: A Media Analysis

The topic of over-parenting has become increasingly popular in today’s media discussions. In the scholarly article Helicopter parents: an examination of the correlates of over-parenting of college students, Jill C. Bradley-Geist and Julie B. Olson-Buchanan conducted an online survey to examine the consequences and effects of parental involvement versus over-parenting, also known as helicopter parenting,” in relation to college students’ college life and workplace behavior. Bradley-Geist and Olson-Buchanan define helicopter parenting as “’a form of over-parenting in which parents apply overly involved and developmentally inappropriate tactics to their children’” (Bradley-Geist and Olson-Buchanan, 2014). The online survey was completed by 482

Over-parenting parents are involved in their children’s lives to the point where they prevent them from taking responsibility for their own actions. For example, an involved parent may ask their child how they did after an exam, whereas a helicopter parent may call the teacher themselves and ask how their child did on the exam. After analysis of the completed surveys, Bradley-Geist and Olson-Buchanan found that “several demographic factors do predict parental involvement and over-parenting;” however, some of the findings they found that over-parenting can be damaging to some young adults. In regards to research question one, they found that when parents have higher education, they are the biological parents, and the child is female and young that there tends to be a higher parental involvement. Moreover, the findings showed that Asian students were more likely to have higher levels of parental involvement, whereas white students had higher levels of parental involvement compared to Hispanic students. However, this comparison appeared to be due to the parent’s level of education (Bradley-Geist and Olson-Buchanan, 2014). Furthermore, over-parenting is related to a student’s college experience. Parental involvement was positively related to a student’s social efficacy, but over-parenting was negatively related, meaning that parental involvement can help guide students to gain their own confidence, but over-parenting creates a sense that the student cannot do anything on their own in general or socially. Likewise, results in regards to the workplace behavior showed that students with higher levels of over-parenting were more likely to rely on others and have lower levels of self-efficacy, which is essential in the workplace. Without a sense of self-efficacy, young adults are more likely to rely on others and fail to take responsibility amongst their