The Lantern

Issue date: 8/7/08 Section: Campus

Some parents have a reputation for sheltering their children and preventing them from learning from their own mistakes. "Helicopter parents," the millennial breed of child defenders, have taken the function of overprotective parenting to an entirely new level.

"Helicopter parents" have earned notoriety in many places, from high school and college advising offices to the workplace.

Jim Kilburg, an academic adviser in the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences, said faculty and staff at Ohio State are aware of the trend.

"It is a newer phenomenon where parents have a difficult time letting their children grow and make decisions on their own," Kilburg said. "Although these parents are truly acting with the best intentions, it does sometimes hinder progress that staff makes with a student when it comes to things like course choice and major exploration."

Scenes from classic television shows like "Leave it to Beaver" and "The Brady Bunch" might come to mind when thinking about parents who do not easily allow their children to leave the womb, but this new wave of intrusive parents has become difficult for staff and faculty to handle when parents call requesting private student information.

"Without a FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) release, staff will not release a majority of the information parents are hoping for, thus causing undue stress to the working relationship between parent and child," Kilburg said. "If a student is struggling with balancing family influence and wanting to make decisions on their own, we always encourage them to come see us without their parents so we can discuss these matters with them."

FERPA is a federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. The law applies to all schools that receive funds under an applicable program of the U.S. Department of Education.

Kilburg said issues with helicopter parents arise most frequently during orientation and with first- and second-year students.

Ashley Hines, a senior in international studies, said her "helicopter parents" are more like "Black Hawks" and do not look to lose altitude anytime soon. She said they will do anything to ensure her success and their continual presence is inevitable. The "Black Hawk" is a term taken from a military helicopter and generally means an extremely overbearing parent.

"I have the mom that shows up announced. I wake for class at 8 a.m., walk downstairs and she is mysteriously pouring my Cheerios," Hines said. "To make things worse, she asks how I am doing in my pre-med courses. 'Excellent,' I say, 'should be operating anytime now.'"

Hines' mother is quite focused on her daughter's coursework.

"We have stopped discussing my major because the last thing I need is to find my way to a bank account large enough to bail my mother out of jail after she is arrested for scaling the walls of Hagerty Hall during my German class, rambling unmentionable obscenities about how I should be in a bio lab," Hines said.

As Generation Y enters the job force, parents of new hires are calling employers to negotiate salary and benefits, and some are even showing up at job fairs, according to USA Today.

Hines knows all too well about parents extending their hovering into areas of life outside of school.

"My mom acts as pilot while my father assumes the position of sniper hanging out the side. During job fairs, he accompanies me with all his ammo intact. In fact, I do not speak at the job fair, he does it for me," she said. "He negotiates starting wages and gives the recruiters my number. It is no surprise that I have never received a call back."

Growing access to new tools such as e-mail and cell phones create the ability for parents to use technology as a long-distance umbilical cord to keep track of their children's every move.

Geneva Hines, the mother of Ashley Hines, insists that it is her responsibility to ensure her daughter is not taken advantage of in today's competitive environment.

"Women are not through the glass ceiling, so I always have to call Ashley and make sure she has not hit her head at the top. As a successful woman, I know what it takes to survive in a man's world. I will do everything in my power to assure my daughter's success," Geneve Hines said. "She may be embarrassed or feel suffocated by it now, but she will thank me later when she realizes why I push her so hard."



Keith Denlinger can be reached at denlinger.34@osu.edu.

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