Embedded video from CNN Video A blog post at Gen X Files ponders if parents today are ditching their tendency to over-parent. A short CNN clip and a sudden tide of blogs and books of the "bad-mom-confession" type suggest that the helicopter parents are beginning to slow down...
Generational experts Strauss and Howe argue that the kids from the Silent generation (born 1924 -1942) were the most gender-polarized in the 20th century until they became radicalized in the early 1960s. From Shirley Temple's sausage curls to eerie robotic wives in their squeaky clean Stepford homes, girls and women fit neatly into the gender stereotypes until they rebelled against them as grown women.
So how did the princess business become so successful half a century later? After an era when de-genderization of toys was the ruling meme among early childhood advocates, feminists and savvy parents, the toy distributors got busier than ever dividing up their stores into pink isles and blue isles.
Source: http://www.allvoices.com/cartoons/c/71772450-tiger-mother[/caption]
‘Tiger mother’ Amy Chua refuses to let her children go to play dates and sleepovers. She protects them from the evils of TV and computer games. She protects them from a whole world outside of violin practice and top grades. Are these types of parents really the opposites of indulgent Helicopter parents or are they rather the extreme version of them?
Amy Chua is hardly the first remarkable Tiger mother. As she proclaims herself, Chinese parents and parents who are first generation immigrants, are often much more authoritarian than ’Western’ parents. So why is she getting so much attention in the media? Good timing is probably the answer.
The Millennials are becoming parents - or at least they are preparing for it. And the children they give birth to are the New Silents. A Pew Research cohort study measured attitudes towards marriage and parenting comparing Generation X and the Millennials in 1997 and 2008 respectively....
