This article from the Sunday Telegraph (
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=VW150Z4IBVA4DQFIQMFSFFOAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2005/11/06/nparent06.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/06/ixhome.html) is very interesting as a possible reason why so many in Europe won't face up to the harsh realities of dealing with terrorism, etc. - they simply aren't mature enough to understand the full implications of the situation. Made me think so, anyway... Does anyone think that something similar is happening in the USA? I don't see it where I live, in the South, but it may be happening in Blue-State country.
How the 'helicopter mother' is taking offBy Nina Goswami
(Filed: 06/11/2005)
They do their children's homework, don't let them lift a finger around the home and, when they hit university age, organise everything from their laundry to their social lives and even their course research. Welcome to the world of the "helicopter mums".
This new breed of parent "hovers" over every state of their child's development and, according to experts, is leading to a prolonged adolescence that runs well into adulthood.
More than a half of men aged 20-24 were still living with their parents after finishing their education, and more than a third of women, according to the most recent research. Now experts believe that micromanaging parents may be partly responsible.
Helen Johnson, the author of the parents' guidebook, Don't Tell Me What To Do, Just Send Money, said: "Parents are increasingly treating their children in a childish way when they should be preparing them for adulthood. They're sending their children the message that they're not capable of handling their own life."
This message, according to Frank Furedi, a professor of sociology at the University of Kent, is so strong that teenagers and young adults do not bother to learn the skills they need to leave the parental home.
"Some can't even walk to the corner shop without their mother in tow, which is why men are increasingly behaving like 14-year-olds well into their twenties," said Prof Furedi, the author of Paranoid Parenting.
After college, 56 per cent of men and 37 per cent of women aged between 20 and 24 were still living with their parents, according to the most recent figures from the Office of National Statistics published in 2003. This accounts for approximately 980,000 men and 650,000 women having not fled the nest.
The numbers increased 50 per cent in a decade, which researchers say is such a big jump that it cannot be the result of rising house prices and the difficulty young people have getting onto the property ladder.
Helicopter parents have become so dominant that some universities are tailoring open days more for the parents than for prospective students.
At Coventry University they encourage parents to attend open days and have seen the numbers of parents accompanying their children rise from a third to almost 100 per cent in the past five years.
Ali Bushnell, the communications officer at the university, said that the involvement of parents - especially mothers - does not end at the open day. "We have parents phoning up our recruitment services and admissions department to find out how their son or daughter is progressing, hoping we can give them the equivalent of a school report," she said.
"More bizarrely one of our students had told her mother that she was having problems making friends so her mother called us and asked if we could organise it so her daughter could make some pals."
In Britain, "helicopter mothering" has yet to reach the same proportions as in Italy where one in three men aged between 30 and 40 still live with their parents.
In one recent Italian court case a mother lost custody of her 11-year-old son to her former husband because she was "too over-protective of her child, which could cause adolescent problems".
