The Double Bind of Parenting Culture: Helicopter Parents and Cotton Wool Kids

Abstract

This essay …

• Discusses the apparent reaction, in recent years, against the excesses of risk-averse, intensive parenting culture. This takes the form of highlighting the problem of stifling young children’s ability to take the risks necessary to grow up (‘cotton wool kids’) and the problem of parents of teenage children hovering over them and not allowing them to achieve on their own (’helicopter parents’).

• Argues that while these critiques raise some important points about the problem of risk-aversion in developing children’s independence, their focus tends to be on the problem of parental anxiety. Thus, critiques of ‘overprotection’ tend merely to fuel the trend towards parent-blaming, rather than challenging the cultural source of the problem. This leads to the ‘double bind’ of parenting culture, where parents are criticized both for absorbing the imperatives of intensive parenting and rejecting them.

• One important theme to emerge is that of the ‘diseasing of childhood’, where wider anxieties about adulthood and modern life are projected onto children. This has important implications for the way that the task of socializing children into adult society comes to be conceptualized.