Barack Obama: Federal ‘Helicopter Parent’
By Larry Doyle on June 21, 2009 at 6:01 PM in Economy, Sense on Cents (Larry Doyle blog)
Is Barack Obama anything more than a federal version of the dreaded “helicopter parent?” I’m serious.
We have all witnessed overbearing and overprotective parents hovering over their offspring from youth soccer through middle school teasing and all the way into the workplace. In my opinion, our nation now suffers from generations nurtured without true hardship or failure.
We are now paying the price.
What truly drives and motivates many to succeed? (Please understand that I do not define success as purely monetary.) However one defines success, there is little doubt the greatest motivation is always the fear of failure. That fear does not abate as one attains ever higher levels of achievement. Why? The intangible quality, the fear of failure, is embedded in the character of an individual from a very early age.
How does one “develop” that intangible quality? Take risks and fail. Obviously, I am not encouraging taking imprudent risks that would place one in a position of excessive physical, mental, emotional, or monetary harm. However, I strongly encourage individuals from an early age to move outside their comfort zone in order to experience the discomfort associated with the fear of failing. In so doing, the foundation for success will be poured and then cemented.
Against this backdrop, I have mixed feelings about the launching of the new Consumer Protection Finance Agency. Why? I appreciate helping people gain a greater understanding of financial principles and products. At the same time, however, I fear many consumers may view this agency as a “safety net” that will preclude or prevent ill-conceived or inappropriate products from coming to market in the first place. Why may they think that?
A consumer who witnesses violations of moral hazards at almost every level will come to expect the same for them at the personal level. Many consumers are already experiencing these situations to a degree via the non-economic refinancing of their mortgages through the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae ‘piggy bank.’
Please do not confuse my writing with a lack of willingness to help and assist people. In fact, I sincerely hope Sense on ¢ents plays an ever increasing role in promoting financial literacy. However, the greatest help and assistance starts at home and in the classroom.
Obama should be pounding and overemphasizing principles of strong family units along with the necessity for educational advancement. I give Obama credit for his timely message, “We Need Fathers to Step Up,” but we need this message not only on Father’s Day but 365 days a year. I know that education is a major initiative within the Obama administration, but I do not hear or see an airing of the cold, brutal facts primarily within our urban education systems (i.e. a 50% high school dropout rate in major urban settings).
In summary, I believe our nation suffers financially and morally from a system promoting an overprotective sense of entitlement when what we truly need is a reemergence of the fear of failure that stemmed from The Great Depression.
I hope that readers do not view my writing as cold, but rather more in the spirit of a parent who wants to see every individual and community achieve true and lasting success.
Happy Father’s Day to all the Dads in the world who are “allowing” their children to fail.
LD
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Clinton was right postponing his run for the Presidency till Chelsea was in High School. A president can’t help but be a “helicopter Parent”. Is BHO going coach his daughters baseball/basketball/soccer team? Watching his many speeches, he doesn’t even have time to read them ahead of giving them. (His Washington press club jokes show this – or when he read someone elses speech during the campaign). I predict his girls will grow up unadjusted for the real world and be spoiled failures because of it.
Amen LD. I bailed my son out time and again but the last time he called me for assistance I said no.
Why? He turns 21 this year and sooner or later he has to learn to fail or succeed on his own.
I’ve had my share successes and failures with no safety net. Those experiences taught me some valuable lessons. It hurts to watch your child going through the same things.
But it’s like watching your child learning to walk. You do the best you can to encourage them and to catch them if they start to fall. But even the most vigilant parent can’t catch them every time.
LD, when I saw the phrase “Helicopter Parent,” I thought you meant the fabled “black helicopters” at first! LOL
I was ready to put on my tinfoil hat! I guess I misread it as “helicopter president” in some part of my mind!
But seriously, I agree with you. The entitlement programs are like giving your kid an allowance for the rest of his life. They should be there as a safety net for those who really need assistance, but it’s all too easy to get addicted to living off the dole.
My own wife was laid off in January and is drawing unemployment income until the end of the year. If the job market isn’t rebounding by then, they’ll have to extend benefits again, or many folks will be forced to give up their homes or take menial jobs at minimum wage just to survive. That kind of impoverishment may be good for the souls of our spoiled children, but for us aging Boomers, it’s devastating. We can’t take jobs doing manual labor, and they wouldn’t hire us if we applied.
Very eloquent, Candymarl. Ultimately, they have to leave the nest and either fly or fall on their own. If you always protect them from falling, they are not ever going to learn to fly. And sometimes, in spite of everything, they fall, and the parent must struggle with the coulda-shoulda-woulda’s, and carry the pain.
I am reminded of George McGovern’s struggle with his daughter Teresa:
Sorry. This is in response to Candymarl’s post above, and the final citation is from Wikipedia “George McGovern.”
I have to admit that in writing this post I was not intending on commenting on Obama’s actual parenting skills with his own daughters.
I should have been more explicit in stating that I view Obama as utilizing the same tendencies as a “helicopter parent” in his role as President. Perhaps a more appropriate title would be Barack Obama: “Helicopter President”
Larry, as you know, metaphors and analogies tend to meander via associations, especially with us commenters here at NQ. My feeling is that a metaphor’s associations help to formulate a cohesive understanding, a constellation of images and thoughts. The hip-bone’s connected to the leg-bone, and on and on . . .
Excellent, evocative post!
Sorry to disagree here but I don’t see this as a helicopter problem or a character problem. This mess was created by people who were either willfully oblivious or congenitally stupid. It was encouraged and nurtured by regulators who were either willfully oblivious or congenitally stupid and the solutions proposed are also either willfully oblivious or congenitally stupid.
None of the conditions that created and sustained this economic disaster were innocent mistakes. They were deliberate choices made by generations of men (and some women) who absolutely knew the disaster they were sowing – and who didn’t give a rat’s ass because they were gonna get rich. The destruction of rules and safeguards and the deliberate disempowering of regulatory function was designed and deployed by men who absolutely knew the debacle they were creating – and who didn’t give a rat’s ass because it wan gonna make them and their friends wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice.
And the ’solution’ now being jammed down our throats is deliberately designed to defend and extend the obscene profits made by the perpetrators of these crimes and will put us all in servitude to those same criminals for generations to come – and they don’t give a rat’s ass about it because they know their money got their perfect servant elected to make sure they get away with it.
It’s not the sense of entitlement in the vast majority of folks now going broke that I fear – it’s the generation of monsters who created this mess I’m afraid of, monsters who were created by the neocon credo of ‘free markets’, by Ayn Randian me-first-and-fuck-you ideology, by Reaganite government=bad, greed=good idiocy.
You don’t need to point the finger at the poor schmucks who feel ‘entitled’ – they’re finding out just how disenfranchised they are. The ones responsible for this are the vicious bastards who never gave a damn for anyone but themselves.
I’ve found that these folks are often the culprits.
I agree with Obama being a helicopter parent. We should not just be bailing everyone out. Part of Governing is deciding where the greatest needs are. The entire Obama administration seems clueless and seems to want to push everything through before we all get what they’re really about. They must know they won’t get a second term Knowing Obama and how he’s never held a real job for long, he probably doesn’t even want the entire first term!
On the parent front, FOX news reported that Obama went golfing for several hours today. Hmmmmm. The MSM makes him out to be such a great father, one would think he’d want to spend his days off with those precious girls. Oh, well. Sasha and Malia are the only Obama’s I like! I hope they don’t turn out like their parents!
did anyone read this?
She finally has a home: Harvard
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-harvard20-2009jun20,0,1882109.story
I heard a comedian say that what’s wrong with parents today is that they are so darned needy. It’s all about the parent’s needs, their need to have to smartest kid, the richest kid, the prettiest kid. In the olden days, we threw kids a peanut butter sandwich and told them to come home before the sun went down.
Khadijah Williams – what a wonderful testimony to the human spirit and not only the need to survive but the will to overcome! God bless and protect her and the angels who helped her along the way.
What a great story. Too bad a mentor compared her to Michelle Obama. She is so much better than Michelle Obama.
Thank you all for your kind words for Khadijah and for those who supported her. Khadijah has started her freshman year at Harvard College and has a website that provides updates – http://www.khadijahwilliams.com.
Khadijah was interviewed this week for an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show entitled “Don’t Stop Believing.” It is scheduled to air on Friday, October 2. Watch for Oprah’s surprise for Khadijah!
The respsonses to this thread are a confirmation of how each person perceives differently what’s being written .
I guess you mean that overprotecting makes weak people who can’t take risks enough to succeed because they like comfort too much to be willing to experience fear of failure in order to be a success..i.e. TAKING RISKS LEADS TO SUCCESS AND FAILURE. (you win, you lose, and a few get rained out), Get used to it.
Or is it ” the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”
Or The only way that steel can be strong and sturdy is to be burned over and over and over.
Never-the-less, you forgot to mention the nanny too, as in “the nanny state” or the Helicopter Nanny State. 50% of these fearful lovers and long time recipients of the comfortable ‘dole’ will put be much stress on the Nanny and US will FAIL the stress test.
Very nice twist you have on success. The only thing blocking it is fear of failure.
Fear is a funny thing. You have to walk through it to get to the other side. It just doesn’t go away by itself or by ignoring it.
I agree with your sentiment, LD, although I would put it a slightly different way. Fear of failure is something we should all overcome. If we are to be successful, we WILL fail time and again first–we just have to quit worrying about failing and stop using it as an excuse not to try.
What we should be terribly afraid of having to say, though, is that we never even tried something we wanted, for that is a 100% guarantee of getting absolutely nowhere.
Here’s the rub, though: in order for our citizens to maintain their motivation to try, they need for the government to get the heck out of their way! Why would anyone try to succeed, take risks, or get rich if the government is waiting at the other end to confiscate more and more of the fruits of one’s labors? And why would anyone try to succeed if the government is bailing out a competitor that behaved so irresponsibly that it would otherwise go out of business? I, too, have nothing against helping people who are truly in need, but government should not hold back and/or punish the go-getters of society. Government is too intrusive in our lives!!