Write a summary about this article please. ReadingRead the passage carefully. Then complete the exercises that follow.CD 1TR 251015202530"Helicopter Parenting" Hysteria: Is it aswidespread as we think?by Alfie Kohn, alfiekohn.orgParents who are overly involved in the lives of their college-age children arethe folks we love to scorn. A steady stream of articles and blog posts bristle withindignation over dads who phone the dean about a trivial problem or moms whoknow more than we think they should about junior's love life. But it may be a goodtime to ask just how common such incidents really are—and whether "helicopterparenting” (HP), when it does occur, is as damaging as we've been led to believe.When you track down hard data, the results contrast sharply with the conventionalwisdom. Yes, most parents are in touch with their college-age kids on a regular basis.But communicating isn't the same thing as intervening on a child's behalf, and thelatter seems to be fairly rare. The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE),which reached out to more than 9,000 students at 24 colleges and universities, foundthat only 13 percent of college freshmen and 8 percent of seniors said a parent hadfrequently intervened to help them solve problems.As one university administrator told the Chronicle of Higher Education, "Thepopular image of modern parents as high-strung nuisances who torment collegeadministrators doesn't match reality." In any case, the students themselves certainlydon't seem to be tormented by their parents. An overwhelming majority of the10,000-plus University of California students contacted in a separate survey said theirparents weren't involved in their choice of courses or their major.Alarming media reports have also claimed that parents hover once theiryoung-adult children enter the workplace, but there's little basis for that claim either.Michigan State University researchers discovered that 77 percent of the 725 employersthey surveyed "hardly ever witnessed a parent while hiring a college senior." As forgrown children outside of college and the workplace, the only study on the topic Icould find, published in 2012, reported that just one in five or six parents seemed to beintensely involved in their children's lives.But what about the effects of such parenting on individual young people whenit does occur? Here, too, a look at empirical findings yields surprising conclusions.For starters, some research has actually made a case in favor of parents' being veryactively connected-and, yes, even involved with their young-adult children. ThatNSSE survey, for example, didn't find a lot of HP going on, but where it was takingCHAPTER 1 "Helicopter Parenting" Hysteria: Is it as widespread as we think?5 ReadingRead the passage carefully. Then complete the exercises that follow.CD 1TR 251015202530"Helicopter Parenting" Hysteria: Is it aswidespread as we think?by Alfie Kohn, alfiekohn.orgParents who are overly involved in the lives of their college-age children arethe folks we love to scorn. A steady stream of articles and blog posts bristle withindignation over dads who phone the dean about a trivial problem or moms whoknow more than we think they should about junior's love life. But it may be a goodtime to ask just how common such incidents really are—and whether "helicopterparenting” (HP), when it does occur, is as damaging as we've been led to believe.When you track down hard data, the results contrast sharply with the conventionalwisdom. Yes, most parents are in touch with their college-age kids on a regular basis.But communicating isn't the same thing as intervening on a child's behalf, and thelatter seems to be fairly rare. The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE),which reached out to more than 9,000 students at 24 colleges and universities, foundthat only 13 percent of college freshmen and 8 percent of seniors said a parent hadfrequently intervened to help them solve problems.As one university administrator told the Chronicle of Higher Education, "Thepopular image of modern parents as high-strung nuisances who torment collegeadministrators doesn't match reality." In any case, the students themselves certainlydon't seem to be tormented by their parents. An overwhelming majority of the10,000-plus University of California students contacted in a separate survey said theirparents weren't involved in their choice of courses or their major.Alarming media reports have also claimed that parents hover once theiryoung-adult children enter the workplace, but there's little basis for that claim either.Michigan State University researchers discovered that 77 percent of the 725 employersthey surveyed "hardly ever witnessed a parent while hiring a college senior." As forgrown children outside of college and the workplace, the only study on the topic Icould find, published in 2012, reported that just one in five or six parents seemed to beintensely involved in their children's lives.But what about the effects of such parenting on individual young people whenit does occur? Here, too, a look at empirical findings yields surprising conclusions.For starters, some research has actually made a case in favor of parents' being veryactively connected-and, yes, even involved with their young-adult children. ThatNSSE survey, for example, didn't find a lot of HP going on, but where it was takingCHAPTER 1 "Helicopter Parenting" Hysteria: Is it as widespread as we think?5

Helicopter parenting, a term often used in modern parenting discussions, refers to a style of…

place, such students actually reported "higher levels of [academic] engagement and more frequent use of deep learning activities." Jillian Kinzie, a researcher involved with that project, confessed that when she saw those results, her first reaction was, "This can't be right. We have to go back and look at this again." But the benefits did indeed prove impressive. As the survey's director, George Kuh, told a reporter, "Compared with their counterparts, children of helicopter parents were more satisfied with every aspect of their college experience, gained more in such areas as writing peers about and critical thinking, and were more likely to talk with faculty and substantive topics." Meanwhile, in the 2012 study of grown children, "frequent parental involvement, including a wide range of support, was associated with better well-being for young adults." Support (not limited to money) from one's parents may be helpful, not critical, when students graduate with uncertain employment prospects and, perhaps, a crushing load of debt. A fair-minded appraisal of the subject suggests that denunciations of HP are based less on evidence than on a disparaging attitude about young people or on the value judgment that kids ought to become independent as soon as possible. That judgment may seem like common sense, but maturity isn't the same as self-sufficiency. Most developmental psychologists have concluded that the quality of parent-child relationships continues to matter even past childhood. Good parenting is less about pushing one's offspring to be independent at a certain age than being responsive to what a particular child needs. But doesn't research show that HP can be psychologically damaging at least to some young people? A handful of small studies have shown that extreme versions of HP sometimes go hand-in-hand with anxiety or a diminished sense of well-being. In each of these studies, however, questionnaires were given to students only at a single college, and the strength of the results weren't particularly impressive. Look closer, in fact, and you'll find two caveats to all of this research that are even more damning. First, the findings offer no support for the conclusion that HP caused the problems with which it was associated. One set of researchers admitted that "when parents perceive their child as depressed, they may be more likely to 'hover."" Those in another study acknowledged that unhappy students "may view their parents as more intrusive." Here, in other words, we have two alternative, perfectly plausible explanations for the (weak) correlation. One: if the parents are hovering, it's because the kids already have issues. Two: students who are struggling may be more likely than their peers to interpret whatever their parents are doing as excessive involvement. Either way, the evidence doesn't prove that HP makes kids unhappy. The second major caveat is truly intriguing; its implications extend to the heart of what's meant by "overparenting" of children of all ages. When you read the research closely, it turns out that what's classified as over-, intrusive, or helicopter parenting might more accurately be described as excessive control of children. This offers a very different lens through which to view all those warnings that parents do too much for