The Peril Of Snowplow Parenting
If you pave over everything for a kid, how does said kid develop resilience?
Read this Common Sense newsletter yesterday that was mostly about “Tinder culture,” but also got into parenting styles. To wit, on the difference between “helicopter” and “snowplow” (or “lawnmower”) parents:
Helicopter parents were infamous in the early aughts for involving themselves in the minutiae of their children’s lives, from diets free of GMOs to making sure they were first-chair violinists. But Dr. Michael Ungar, a Ph.D. in social work who specializes in what makes people resilient, says “snowplow parents” of the later millennials and Gen Zers are on a whole other level. They clear their children’s boundless horizons of even the tiniest of obstacles — think dubious doctors’ notes to get more time on the SAT.
That frictionless world our parents created has since spread from schools and playgrounds to every aspect of life via apps. We can order dinner, or a ride, or some help putting furniture together, and for the last ten years, at least in theory, get a date. But one consequence of all this ease is that it seems to be diminishing our ability to build resilience. According to Ungar, the challenges and pain of early relationships and breakups train us for mating as adults. “You don’t simply learn resiliency as a concept,” he says. “You learn it through interacting with others.”
When you’re raised in a world perpetually protected from skinned knees, you tend to be scared of running fast.
I can totally see this. I’ve blogged a bit about resilience in my day. Wouldn’t say I’m 100% there in terms of always being resilient, no, but I do see its importance in the grand scheme of one’s life. And I’ve now been seeing (“have seen?”) people have kids for 14–15 years, and visited those kids (“You gotta see the baby!”) for much of that time. I can tell you that, anecdotally, it seems like a lot of modern generation parents are snowplow.
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