Great piece in the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly about overzealous (a/k/a "helicopter," "nauseating," "obnoxious") parents. It's an essay/review of four books that take a look at parents who wreck their kids' lives for the sake of living through them. I'm not sure whether the essay is available on-line, so I'll be liberal with the excerpts:
However, these soaring levels of academic achievement and care seem to be generating not satisfaction but epic levels of misery ”¦ particularly for the sons and daughters of America's most affluent, education-obsessed families. Such kids are fueling their own exploding at-risk statistics: among all socioeconomic groups, they're now the leaders in adolescent rates of depression, substance abuse, and anxiety disorders. . . .
One fascinating thread Robbins tracks is a growing similarity between the overachieving culture of the United States and the legendarily rabid edu- culture of East Asia. By the age of six, some Asian students are doing homework until after midnight. By adolescence, they're suffering such high rates of suicide and anxiety that they make the likes of Winona Ryder seem rather cheerful.
But–one might coldly ask, with a certain gestalt bent–don't the miserable survivors at least make better widgets? Even in this, though, the results are mixed. Studies indicate that Asian students achieve some of the highest scores in the world in math and science comparisons. However, owing to excessive focus on memorization, done solely for the purpose of passing tests, these gloomy idiot savants demonstrate surprisingly little practical know-how and often are unable to apply what they've learned. . . .
Alissa Quart, in Hothouse Kids, writes about a visit she paid to Philadelphia's prestigious Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, and offers this observation:
For many [parents], the school was the center and pinnacle of their own lives. One mother told me that upon arriving at the school, when her son was one year old, her husband cried because he felt they had “wasted a year of our baby's life.”
But who exactly is the husband crying for? For his son, or for himself?
