Like many Americans of a certain age, we grew up on Time Magazine. Henry Luce’s weekly was a staple in our home-- like Cheerios.

We haven’t subscribed in years. However, a recent trip to the dentist’s office sent me scurrying to Safeway to buy the latest issue. The Cover read: “The Case against Over-Parenting.” Having been guilty of that myself at times, and having been accused of just the opposite, I couldn’t wait to read it. I hit the mother lode.

Here are some nuggets: “We hovered over every school, playground and practice field—“helicopter parents,” teachers christened us….”Kinderkords” (Also known as leashes, allow “three full feet of freedom for both you and your child”)…We were so obsessed with our kids’ success that parenting turned into a form of product development. Parents demanded that nursery schools offer Mandarin…High school teachers received irate text messages from parents protesting an exam grade …college deans described freshman as “crispies,” who arrived a college already burned out, and “teacups,” who seemed ready to break at the tiniest stress.”

“...parents stopped letting kids out of their sight; the percentage of kids walking or biking to school dropped from 41% in 1969 to 13% in 2001…Death by injury has dropped more than 50% since 1980, yet parents lobbied to take jungle gyms out of playgrounds…Among 6-to-8-year olds, free playtime dropped 25% from 1981 to ’97 and homework more than doubled.”

“…heaven help the heretics—the ones who were brave enough to let their kids venture outside without Secret Service protection.” (Been there—and criticized mightily for that).

“Just ask Lenore Skenazy, who when you Google “America’s Worst Mom,” fills the first few pages—because last year she let her 9-year-old son ride the NY subway alone.”

She wrote a column about it and was excoriated—-leading her to write a book for Parents: Free-Range Kids: Giving our Children the Freedoom We had Without Going Nuts with Worry.

“10 is the new 2. We’re infantilizing our kids into incompetence.” She celebrates seatbelts and bike helmets but irrational responses drive Ms. Skenazy bananas (like Dear Abbey’s suggestion that parents photograph their kids each morning so police will know what they were wearing should they get kidnapped that day!).

“There is no rational reason that a generation of parents who grew up walking alone to school, riding mass transit, trick-or-treating, teeter-tottering and selling Girl Scout cookies door to door should be forbidding their kids to do the same.”

She’s about rational assessment of risks. Parents have the math wrong. “Refusing to vaccinate your children…is statistically reckless…there are no reports of a child ever being poisoned by Halloween candy, and the odds of being kidnapped by a stranger are 1 in 1.5 million.”

“When parents say “How can you let him to the store alone,” she counters with, “How can you let him visit your relatives (80% of kids who are molested are victims of friends or relatives).”

“…teachers face a climate in which parents ghostwrite students’ homework, airbrush their lab reports (and) lobby for their child to be assigned to certain classes.”

And my favorite: For a lot of parents, college admissions is like their grade report on how they did as a parent….”


“Many educators have been searching for ways to tell parents when to back off. It’s a tricky line to walk, since studies link parents’ engagement in a child’s education to better grades, higher test scores, and better college outcomes.”

But over parenting is emasculating, damaging, and infantilizing a generation of youngsters. It’s crippling the schools.

Helicopter parents transcend zip codes and races. They’re everywhere.

Even in St. Helena.

Whether one has kids in school or not, (been there done that)—don’t we all have a responsibility to ensure that local kids are being educated by professionals—that teachers and administrators are paid competitive wages—not state averages--but wages which are commensurate with their talents, and competitive with those districts we compete against? Test scores are the highest in history. Want to mess with that?

Ought we not to hire the best and the brightest as long as their salaries are within our ability to pay? And then get out of their way and let them do their jobs?

Parental involvement is vital—to a degree. And yes, we've piloted a Sikorsky or two on occasion. But at some point, don’t we have to trust the professionals—be they teachers or administrators?

Want your child to get A’s? Don’t get “F’s” as a parent. Strong kids come from strong parents—those strong enough to let go.