An interesting theory that I hadn't seen before
What Really Scares Helicopter ParentsMany teenagers -- and I include myself at that age -- do not quite have the emotional maturity and long-term planning skills for the high-stakes economic competition they find themselves engaged in. So their parents intervene, managing their lives so intensely that their child doesn’t have much opportunity to, well, act like a child instead of a miniature middle-aged accountant. Since the professional class can’t pass down its credentials, it passes down its ability to navigate the educational system that produces the credentials.
It does ring true for me. Letting my DD drop out of the gifted program to go to the middle school she wanted to attend was way scarier than letting her ride city buses by herself, for example.
