It's my understanding that Helicopter Parenting is taking quite a hit on the blogs. Some young parents are under the impression that all that hovering and obsessing is detrimental to a child's development. Free-Ranging is the way to go, they say. I tend to agree if we're talking about chickens.
When I was a child, there was no such thing as Free-Range Parenting. In those days, it was simply referred to as "parenting." (Actually, that's not true, since turning nouns into verbs wasn't a big thing in the 50's.) My generation was raised to run wild in the streets of suburbia, doing just as we pleased as long as we were home in time for dinner. We were brought up tough..forced to write our own book reports, to suck it up when we didn't make the team, to get our hair done in our mothers' kitchen, and to devour all sorts of chemical compounds. Basically, once we were old enough to leave the whelping box, our parents moved on with their lives, leaving us to fend for ourselves at malls and slumber parties and cheerleading try-outs. It's no wonder my generation invented Helicopter Parenting!
