This is the first of three posts that consider the concept of college helicopter parents. The concept is certainly not new, but it warrants continual examination – and sometimes redefinition. In this post, we look at the definition of helicopter parents, as well as some of the motivation behind parental hovering. In our next post, we will examine who helicopter parents are and how they operate, and in our final post, we will consider the consequences of helicoptering and suggest some possible ways in which parents might hover productively.
Helicopter parents have a poor reputation. Actually, that is probably a polite way of putting it. In most of the higher education world, when the term “helicopter parents” is used, it is not used kindly. Even parents who engage in “helicoptering” don’t like to identify themselves as such, “I don’t want to be a helicopter parent, but . . . ” The truth is that many parents do hover, but some do it better than others. The concept itself isn’t necessarily bad, but the extremists have given it a bad name. Perhaps what needs to happen is that more parents need to redefine what it means to be a helicopter parent and learn to do their hovering productively.