I think your rephrasing gets it right, Heebie.
I was mostly interested in the article because it provided some actual data ($) to back up the US/Canada comparisons we hear so much about.
I still don't really know what to make of it, in part because I know so many UMC families who are not of that ilk and so few that are, that I start to suspect it's sort of made up.
Maybe the incidence of this parenting style varies with place. I see elements of it among people who live in a competitive, expensive city, and were raised in a similar environment, so are fluent in class anxiety from childhood. As with thinking about styles of disciplining kids, there's a tangle of actual beliefs, insecurity, and a desire to be seen as a good parent by perceived peers.
I definitely have seen parents at school meetings that fit the style, met a few at the periphery of my social group. They exist, definitely, maybe are thin on the ground near you.
My mother's Israeli friend was the original helicopter parent. Her son was my age (about 13 when I was around them) and she would take him from one class to another continuously.
And guess what? He's a doctor and a lawyer! It worked!
7: No, he just wanted to fulfill all his mom's fantasies for him! What a good boy!
No ethnic stereotypes were harmed during the telling of this anecdote.
I've the same sense lw has, that there are enough people like this in my environment to be recognized, but a minority. And objects of derision when mentioned and described.
In fact there is a certain anxiety not to be seen as like that, and the point of many stories you hear at parties etc. is to reassure the parents that they aren't going overboard, but there are people far worse. And there are.
12.2 is right, and I also think there are people all over the spectrum who are eager to audit other parents' behavior, some of whom are very attracted to this "helicopter parent" mythos. That auditing itself is IMO the primary symptom of the anxiety she's talking about. This article is a step above that judging-as-a-lifestyle tic, but it did seem to conflate mothers and fathers unhelpfully -- a whole lot of gender differentiation happens around these issues and is pretty significant.
My mother's Israeli friend was the original helicopter parent.
Stereotypically, I think of Chinese parents as the "original" helicopter parents. I remember this anecdote from the NYer Profile of the woman who runs one of the most popular Chinese dating sites:
When Gong was sixteen, her test scores got her into the top local high school, a transformative moment for a farming family. A few days later, she was on a tractor that plunged into a ditch, and the accident crushed her right leg and battered her face. When she got out of the hospital, wearing a hip cast, she discovered that a rural school was no place for a student who was unable to walk. The school suggested that she withdraw. Instead, Gong's mother moved into her dorm room and hoisted her daughter around campus on her back. I wondered if the story was a metaphor--until I met her mother, Jiang Xiaoyuan. "There was one especially tall building, the laboratory," Jiang said. "Gong's class was on the fourth floor." Her mother was undeterred: "School was her only way out. We didn't want her to work in the fields like us."
I've known a lot of helicopter parents. They mostly seem to be high-anxiety people in general who don't know much about children and only have one. Sometimes two.
You could be like David Attenborough to heebie, except you'd have to explain less sympathetic creatures.
"Just over there, is a parent who is very anxious indeed!"
(whispered)
And you'd probably need a more elaborate blind.
Am I explaining helicopter parents to Heebie? I think she knows what they are, she just isn't friends with them. Which is a smart move on her part, I say.
Anyway I was more planning to be David Attenborogh ABOUT Heebie, like make her let me do guest posts where I explain the mysterious ways of the Geebies in the wild.
So far I have discovered that they have a lot of shoes and a lot of hair.
Yes. Like in 17. You're wearing safari-style clothing.
Be like Richard Attenborough to heebie. But maybe not like his Brighton Rock character.
15: Right. They existed in the Fifties too, but not so thick on the ground. Those kids were sad cases of hyponeglect.
22:
Or plan to escape from her house with three simultaneously-dug tunnels. Or desert from her gunboat, so that your friend Steve McQeen has to come looking for you.
I think maybe my expressions shut down any of the auditing process, similar to how students instinctively never cry in my office. I put out some intolerant vibe.
didn't read the article but the Plateau basically IS Brooklyn--so the whole premise seems off to me....
Gentrification is as much a fact of life in Montreal as it is in Brooklyn and other American cities. . . . Average rent for two-bedroom apartments increased more than 16 percent from 2012 to 2013 in Mile End, from $807 to $938.
[spits Blue Bottle latte across keyboard]
Who do I have to kill to get $1200 childcare or $900 rent?
I always felt my sister was helicopterish, but he kids are basically grown now, and they seem to have become wonderful people.
I think Heebie's rephrasing gets it right.
Except that there is maybe another dimension here, which I'm too lazy to articulate, or even to figure out. It has something to do with the relative freedom to not buy into US-style UMC anxieties in the first place, because at least some of the goods and services and, yes, privileges, of a UMC life have been sufficiently "democratized" (in Montreal versus Park Slope) that you don't have to worry about that stuff (in Montreal, but not in Park Slope). If you're middle-class in Montreal (which is already to be quite privileged, of course), you don't have to be quite so hard-nosed, and hard-edged, and always thinking about the next move, in order to secure for yourself and your family a pretty decent life. The health care system (universal single payer), and the parental leave policy are pretty big factors.
My Canuckistani siblings and cousins really do experience parenthood differently than my American friends and neighbours: there is more nanny-state societal support, of course, for the Canucks, but there is also monumentally less guilt. It's okay to have a baby and take some time off work; it's also okay to go back to work. It's okay, eh?
If you're middle-class in Montreal (which is already to be quite privileged, of course), you don't have to be quite so hard-nosed, and hard-edged, and always thinking about the next move, in order to secure for yourself and your family a pretty decent life. The health care system (universal single payer), and the parental leave policy are pretty big factors.
But even among UMC parents who annoy me, locally, they seem much more Montreal than Brooklyn. I mean, there's plenty of over-protectiveness and fretting, but it's not hyper-ambitious. It's not because of the healthcare system nor the socialize childcare.
I mean, I'm sure there's plenty in Austin, just because there are plenty of self-important people there. And in any major city. Maybe it needs a critical mass to generate the auditing.
Infant daycare in Brooklyn is pretty inexpensive.
35: Yeah, you just drop 'em off in the subway and the albino alligators and giant rats take care of them all day. Nutritious snacks provided!
35: ?!
When I lived in Brooklyn, much was pretty, picturesque, pre-War, architecturally interesting, and way cool. But nothing, and I mean nothing, was inexpensive. Guess I didn't know the right people, the right sort? It was freakin' ridiculously expensive, as I recall.
We've compared our SAT scores daycare costs here before, but full time center infant around here is typically over $2k. They note that $1200 is on the cheaper end so it's probably a home day care which would would probably be closer to $1500 but hard to find a spot.
Our previous center where we did the 1 year old program is currently $2750 for infants.
We talked about this before and it turns out that MA has some rules that make their daycares both super awesome and super expensive.
Anyhow, still cheaper than paying a nanny 3k plus per month.
39: Per month, you mean? That's... never mind, I don't want to start posting salaries. But dang.
I feel like I hear about a lot of helicopter parenting at work from colleagues. But I don't see those families socially so hard to figure out how much is posturing / positioning. I used to work with a woman whose two older kids confronted her and her husband when their younger brother was finishing middle school to demand the parents not force the youngest to go to the same very competitive private HS they'd gone to. This colleague also seemed to be intimately involved in every essay her kids "wrote" in college. And some of the stories I've heard about teacher behavior at local pressure cooker HSs are repellant - weird over the top workloads that are about display not learning. I suppose the parents think it will keep the kids too busy for sex and drugs hahahahahahaha.
Some of my kid's friends who are girls are in my opinion excessively driven about rather than allowed to take the bus, but as the parent of a 6'2" white boy who moves self confidently I keep my mouth shut, I'm clearly doing a different risk calculus.
Sometimes with music it's been hard for me, I had a much different musical upbringing with far more structure that led to a lot of fantastic opportunities, but came well with a lot of pressure. Imposing those expectations when the kid was younger and doing so much dance would have caused him to crumple I just couldn't do it. So music became the fun no pressure thing and I found a teacher who has been cool with that. It's worked so far, he's learned tons and music is what he goes for to have fun and relax. He'll push himself because he wants to do something, not because we make him.
is currently $2750 for infants.
And you're saying this is relatively inexpensive, unless I misunderstand you? Sacrament! Holy Mother of Sainte Anne de Beaupré, but that sounds more than a wee bit spendy.
No, that's in our area, the story says infant was $1200 in Brooklyn which seems like a bargain (though not compared to $300 Canadian which is what these days, 50 cents American?)
Well, as my Da used to say, "There's no better place in the world to be young and rich than the US of A. Just don't get sick, or grow old."
I kind of think my dad was onto something, at the end of the day?
Huh, don't know why my phone didn't k ow me but pretty obvs 44 was me.
I bet that daycare is more in Toronto. Tim's sister was looking at a home-based thing in Ottawa, and it took up most of her NRC internship salary. Montreal is a lot cheaper than Toronto, but there aren't as many jobs there. My in-laws blame the separatists for the loss of jobs in Montreal. Everything moved to Toronto, or so they say.
Probably no place is as expensive as Massachusetts, but maybe MA can be the first state to pay for universal pre-K.
But the old have single payer; I'm on the countdown.
Doesn't Quebec have a extra-ordinarily generous daycare system compared to the rest of Canada?
My brother's family is pretty chill compared to equivalent parents down here but that's because his gov't grant for his PhD gave him an extra year of funding for each kid. And because his wife got a full year off on like 80% pay both times. I think their childcare isn't $300 but then the kids start 'school' earlier.
It's like this crazy dream to me. Sometimes me and my fellow Canadians here sit around and tell each other these crazy tales of our country - 'Tell me again about the health care' 'Once upon a time, you didn't have to worry about healthcare. Remember that? When you were little?' 'Can I go back again someday?' 'Only if you're really really good and publish a lot and the big meanies get voted out'
Doesn't Quebec have a extra-ordinarily generous daycare system compared to the rest of Canada?
My brother's family is pretty chill compared to equivalent parents down here but that's because his gov't grant for his PhD gave him an extra year of funding for each kid. And because his wife got a full year off on like 80% pay both times. I think their childcare isn't $300 but then the kids start 'school' earlier.
It's like this crazy dream to me. Sometimes me and my fellow Canadians here sit around and tell each other these crazy tales of our country - 'Tell me again about the health care' 'Once upon a time, you didn't have to worry about healthcare. Remember that? When you were little?' 'Can I go back again someday?' 'Only if you're really really good and publish a lot and the big meanies get voted out'
Only quad-copter parents truly care about their children.
54: Hmmmm. I know he's awful and I prob would have lost my job with his cuts but, being jobless in Canada seems easier. Though that might have more to do with visa anxiety on my part.
My major reasons for wanting to go back to Canada are healthcare and the school system. I'm dreading trying to afford to live in a good school district in the States and save for my (non-existent) kid's university. In Canada, I'd just live where ever and presumably my kid would get loans (that they could pay back).
Yeah, I think that Quebec is leftier than the rest of Canada.
I was just looking through a thread on cities and their relative cost of living in which Von Wafer maintained that Toronto, like Chicago, had a lot of inexpensive neighborhoods for a major metropolitan area. He didn't name names though. Which ones was he thinking of?
All my Canadian (or Americans living in Canada) friends go on about how expensive Toronto is, how it has so much sprawl, how public transit is horrible, and as far as I can tell it's not worse than most major American cities.
Harper may lose, so there's that hope.
Me? I don't know TO at all. Generally I find Canadian rent pretty steep. But fewer unsafe neighbourhoods and fewer heartbreakingly poor areas, excluding the North.
I skipped most of the comments, because I do have some expertise on this issue. I did a mini ethnography on UMC/UC helicopter parents at an elite private school in the US, and I would say the class anxiety hypothesis is spot on. The ideal typical helicopter parent is the sort of parent whose household income puts them in the top 1% of earners, but recognize their wealth is not enough to keep their children there if the kids aren't also independently high earners. One thing that I think we find distasteful is that it's about straightforwardly and openly reproducing class structures in a way that's supposed to be hidden. I.e., it's people who understand the methods class reproduction, but aren't really fluent in the "language" of such sort of reproduction. I think it's no coincidence that Jews and Asians, both groups who have historically or are currently considered to be actively striving threats to WASP supremacy, are seen as the biggest sources of helicopter parents, as it's very much intertwined with model minority stuff.
There are also different strains of helicopter parenting, one is more "tiger" parenting, one is more coddling. I.e. if the kid gets an A-, does the parent yell at the kid or the teacher?
if the kid gets an A-, does the parent yell at the kid or the teacher?
Isn't yelling at the kid (if not also yelling at the teacher) not helicopter parenting? Maybe I don't understand the concept.
My project of listening to the French-language news from Quebec on Satellite Radio makes me feel like I should have expertise on this, but of course I don't, except that I now mentally pronounce it Steph-ennnn Har-PAIR.
[checks wikipedia] Huh, I guess I never knew how broadly the term applied. I thought it referred to parents dropping in on teachers, administrators, coaches, etc., but I guess it applies to more general hovering-related parental activities.
60
Helicopter parenting refers to the level of hovering and micromanaging. So, if the parent spends hours a day helping the kid with homework and cares more about the result than the kid, it's still a variety of helicopter parenting, even if the parent isn't mowing down outside obstacles for the kid.
Seriously, Torontonians are mere innocents, they don't even know.
Far be it from me to make invidious comparisons, but it's not that Canada is so wonderful (it's not), it's just that the US is so shitty when it comes to women, children, health care, child care, and families. When it comes to life, as it is actually lived, in other words.
62
Oh, I see you answered your own question. I agree that it covers a broad range of not uncontradictory behaviors. Intensive parenting might be another term. I think the idea is that either style produces dependent, passive children who are incapable of fully functioning as adults.*
*The problem with this is that there is sort of a myth to the idea that From the Dawn of Time 22 year olds have been independent. For most of history people have been living in multi-generational structures where there's no radical break or radical increase in responsibility, even if there are certain ages where one assumes certain formal adult responsibilities (e.g. marriage, warfare, hunting, formal religious roles, etc).
Seems like it would be hard to manage from a hovering helicopter instead of landing first BECAUSE ITS SO FUCKING LOUD AND WINDY AND THE SCHOOLWORK WOULD BE BLOWN AROUND THE ROOM IN CHAOS but I don't make up the metaphors.
A friend of mine who was a kinda senior-ish guy at a huge company left his job to have an even more senior role at a startup in Canada. He says it's boring as hell and the healthcare sucks, you're waiting forever and they're always trying to find ways not to prescribe treatment, etc. Of course he's comparing it to his extreme-ultra-gold plated health plan that only bigshots at big companies can get here anymore, so it's bullshit as social policy, but given the bubble I live in I just thought it was refreshing to hear someone saying mean things about Canadian health care.
Though, as a counterpoint, I had an early version of the DIY overly educated SAH über mother, however she was not a helicopter parent. She may have made her own baby food from vegetables she grew, but we were supposed to fail and we were supposed to suffer the natural consequences of our actions. We were also given a lot of freedom and encouraged to take risks, physical and otherwise. We strictly disciplined when it became to ethical conduct and behavior towards others, but not when it came to our own work habits or for lack of conventional success.* When my mother became a single parent and had to work full time, any active parenting went out the window. My mother actively opposed formal SAT prep as a form of cheating, and I was one of the few kids at my UMC high school who did college selection almost completely on my own. As a result, I applied to one school early decision, and had no back up schools or safety schools picked out had I not been accepted.
*Being mean to another child or poor table manners would get punished, but choosing to fail at something by slacking or being unprepared was our own choice.
67
Does Canada not have the option of gold plated private care? I know Australia does, and many of the European countries do as well.
I just thought it was refreshing to hear someone saying mean things about Canadian health care.
Yeah, let's never lose an opportunity to undermine a universal single payer system in North America that actually works. So refreshing! Let's even make up lies about that system, and pretend that Canada has worse maternal mordidity, and overall longevity, rates (which would be very dishonest indeed, but potentially refreshing!).
He also said that the Canadians were totally humorless.
72: I know, eh? It's like we're too busy fending off the moose and the bears. Well, Jaysus Christ, boyo, are ye wit' us, or just what, eh?
The wait times for Canadian humo[u]r are horrendous. That's how those kids ended up spending so much time in that hall.
Tommy Douglas, a canny Scot, and the man who brought single payer to Canada. My parents loved this guy so much: it was
"Tommy!" and that's all you needed to say! Loved him so, so much.
Canada is pretty unique in that it actually bans healthcare outside of the government system (without going to the U.S.). So he actually can't get a gold plated rich assholes plans.
The waiting times to see a doctor in my new town are crazy. Almost 2/3rds of primary care doctors aren't taking new patients, and it was nearly two months of wait to get an appointment. Just picking up a home sleep study is booked out several weeks in advance!
I don't know if it's some kind of cognitive breakdown or what, but I can't really find any cause-and-effect relationship between my upbringing and my many shitty life outcomes. Or my sister's. Maybe some correlation with the individual flaws or blind spots of my parents. What would anyone have judged them for at the time? What would those people say if they saw us all now? Raising a kid with severe depression is a bitch, I guess. I suppose that was said.
This study must be mostly B.S., but I was struck by the writeup anyway:
The research findings suggest that Asian Americans and European Americans truly see moms differently.
For example, Asian American high schoolers were more likely to talk about their relationships with their mothers than were European Americans. Asian Americans more often noted that their moms helped them with homework or pushed them to succeed.
On the other hand, European American students were more apt to talk about their mothers as separate individuals - describing their appearance or their hobbies, for example.
Asian American students experienced more interdependence with their mothers and pressure from them. But the pressure does not strain their relationships with their mothers as much as it does with European Americans, according to the study.
"Following failure, Asian American students compared with European American ones are more motivated by their mothers, and are particularly motivated by pressure from their mothers when it conveys interdependence," or the feeling that mom is on their side in challenging times.
On the other hand, Fu explained, when European Americans experience failure, "It can cut you to the heart. Then, it's up to you to pick yourself up by the bootstraps and move on."
I had never before imagined any alternative to the "European American" posture described there. Your mother wants you to be independent and to succeed or fail on your own terms, and, inevitably, "to be happy" for some insanely long period of time, like, definitely more than a few hours, long enough that you'd probably want to stop by urgent care.
Canada is pretty unique in that it actually bans healthcare outside of the government system (without going to the U.S.)
This didn't actually spring up naturally from the pine and the balsam trees. It took a hard-fought political campaign, against a powerful opposition. Just sayin'.
80 cont'd: (And yet, having carefully let you do your own thing, she will be bitterly disappointed and frustrated if you fuck up, and that friendly relationship between independent self-determiners will be strained by the fact that you can do fuckall to console her. Seriously, it was interesting to see those two tendencies laid out, ethnically coded or not. I don't know which is closest to the helicopter parent tendency, or whether they're real.)
I've always wanted to be more hands-off as a parent. But when your kids are daydreaming procrastinators -- how the hell could that have happened! -- and the consequences of failure get progressively more serious, some intervention is sometimes required.
Some people learn from failure, some get defeated by it. Really, I should say some failures lead to positive results and some don't.
I mean, I've never done school work or anything like that, but I'd lean pretty hard on a kid to get stuff done if that's it takes to get a C rather than a D or F. I'd never get involved at all over the difference between an A and a B . . .
While I'm serial commenting, I don't have any opinion about childcare costs in Canada. One thing that has struck me, though, is the high percentage of unmarried (but "engaged" for many years) couples my age and especially 20 or so years younger with children -- often 2 or 3 -- amongst my distant cousins living in Montreal and Quebec. I think marriage is a lot more common in BC.
So, if the parent spends hours a day helping the kid with homework and cares more about the result than the kid, it's still a variety of helicopter parenting, even if the parent isn't mowing down outside obstacles for the kid.
The latter being, specifically, helicopter gunship parenting.
The analogy could be extended.
Arc-Light parenting: my parents basically left me alone most of the time, but if something really serious happened they responded by devastating the surrounding three square kilometres.
Lightning parenting: my parents were great, but they were only ever around for about 15 minutes at a time before they got tired.
F-22 parenting: my parents spared no expense on my upbringing, but that did get kind of asphyxiating after a while.
Osprey parenting: they were pretty cool most of the time but had a tendency to flip unexpectedly.
Ekranoplan parenting = adoption: some people condemn it as not being a "parent" in the strictly traditional sense of the word, while foolishly overlooking the AWESOME.
My in laws complain about socialist healthcare all the time, but they are Harper supporters. Victoria - sorry to text so late. Just wanted to make sure that you got my e-mail about the reference. They may not contact you because I'm already working for them, but I wanted to give you a heads up. Abbye. fIL's brother got colon cancer and he as talking about how lucky he was to get a cancellation in the surgeon's schedule. He said, "it's not like the US where you can get in early if you have money." Well, that's only true of concierge doctors (which exist in Toronto too.). Or billionaires and Red Sox players.
Avro parenting: the legendary parenting of our parents generation, destroyed by politics.
86. F-35 parenting: my parents were insanely high maintenance but never worked, so I grew up kind of feral and broke.
The top article at this search attributes the very real difference in the time that canadians and americans spend taking their kids to bullshit "look good on college application activities" (and probably helicoptering in general) is due to the differences in the college structure in the two countries:
"the Canadian system lacks a steep prestige hierarchy among institutions, so that Canadians do not experience the intense rivalry to gain admission into higher rated colleges."
things are getting more competitive in canadian colleges due to asian students though
I don't really get why those activities actually look good on college applications.
"Hmm, it says here that you have been a competitive show-jumper, and are a grade 8 violinist, who went on a trekking expedition to Amazonia last year? Please explain to me why makes you more likely to be good at philosophy?'
They do serve a function, obviously, which is to make it harder for people from lower income backgrounds.
That and they are tangible proof that you aren't lazy or that you know enough to hide it if you are.
Also, some of it is supposed to be charitable activities, to show you give shit in socially acceptable ways.
You didn't just learn how to play the violin and then go to the Amazon, you brought music to people who have never even seen a violin before.
That said, I really hope this current enthusiasm for teaching all children to do music goes away. A little bit of art never hurt anybody, but I think I would have spent more years enjoying music if people didn't think I had to learn how to play it first. Besides, it's not like we can run out now that all the music is recorded.
Dear Admissions Committee:
I learned to play the hollow fish with ridges carved on it that you stroke with a small stick. Then I pro-actively raised funds to take my knowledge of music and share it with the people who were capable of playing instruments that didn't suck goat balls. They were all fascinated by the hollow fish with ridges carved on it that you stroke with a small stick. Or too polite to tell me to fuck off. Sometimes, that's the best you can hope for with culture.
I look forward to hearing from you about the class of 2020.
P.S. Is Ithaca as dull as everybody says?
The purpose, historically, of "well-roundedness" in US college admissions was to limit the number of Jewish students accepted. Now it's a key part of the quota system on Asian-American students. Certainly it also makes it harder for poor students, but I think that's something administrations would see as a bug and not a feature. The feature is excluding Asian-Americans.
That said, there is also a reasonable argument for this policy, which is that the elite schools are hoping to accept students who will become the elite in their chosen fields, and for a lot of fields extracurriculars and go-getter-ness are more predictive of that than academics. The biggest difference between Harvard students and Berkeley students was that most Harvard students have an extracurricular activity they spend 20+ hours a week on in college (when it's not admission or parent driven). But it ceases to work when it's become gameable by parents. Once people know that activities are a plus, the activities no longer indicate what you were looking for.
When a measure becomes a target...
When we met my secret family, the mother told a story about how she kept her son home from the field trips in 5th grade because she didn't trust the school buses. This was in the late 70s. This illustrates that Jews have been helicopter parenting since the late 70s or something, I don't know.
7,9,11: As Moby pointed out, this is definitely an ethnic stereotype, but actually this mother was an extreme outlier among all the Israeli mothers and Jewish-American mothers that I was around as a kid. From my perspective it looked like she invented a kind of parenting that I discovered had become common some 20 years later.
Also 9 is probably mostly false. My understanding is that he figured out he could make more money as an attorney with medical expertise than he could as a surgeon in Israel.
I was aware of a lot of middle-class gaming of the system, even when I was in high school. Parents who hired tutors to try and drive their Higher grades up, so they could get into university (or a better university).
My 15 year old self though they were, basically, cheating fucks. Or at least, that it was profoundly unfair.
104: That doesn't sound like classic helicopter parenting to me. That just sounds neurotic.
Basically you need to have spent at least three summers digging wells in Ecuador, launch your social media app start-up and sell it by 17, be a good-to-very-good-competitive martial artist, play the drums in some guys-in-sweaters band, read poetry for its soulfulness, and do at least one rock climbing trip per summer, plus keep up those grades, if you want Stanford to open up its gates. That's what success is made out of.
More 'relentless beshitting of the world' to fuel my hate.
107: Maybe! It was in the context of her describing herself as overprotective.
Rock climbing scares me, because of the heights and the rocks.
My 15 year old self though they were, basically, cheating fucks. Or at least, that it was profoundly unfair.
They probably thought it was unfair that you were smart and willing to work hard. With that kind of mojo, how will they perpetuate the class system?
There's always going to be kids whose learning style doesn't match what the school does. A tutor is cheaper than a private school.
95: run right, they could actually be a way of making it easier for people from low-income backgrounds - a way of counterbalancing lower exam grades with evidence that you were an intellectually capable and energetic person (and thus a good potential student) who had been to a bad school and hence got bad exam results, rather than just a stupid person. "Yes, it's true, I went to Asbestosgrad High School and only got BBB. But I spent two evenings a week volunteering at the local youth theatre group and every Saturday at the soup kitchen. He (pointing) may have got AAB, but he went to Arcadia Academy, so no wonder, and he didn't do anything else worthwhile during his time there except play rugby and sneak into pubs."
Yes, but people from low-income backgrounds don't have parents who make donations and they usually require financial aid.
I still remember how dumb I felt when, as an adult, I realized that Colleges don't have their own private detectives and I could absolutely have just made up all kinds of extracurricular activities without them knowing I'd done it. I mean, grades or other accomplishments probably not (though from what I can see only if I'd done something really questionable while at college also), or at least there's a risk there. But the admissions office wasn't exactly going to be making calls to rural PA in order to check to see if I'd actually volunteered at something or other or played in some unofficial sports league or something. This is probably less true now that the internet has reduced this process to something a lazy person could do purely out of curiosity though.
I think helicopter parenting is motivated mostly by anxiety over the future. What, exactly, are you supposed to tell a middle class person from a background like mine about doing as well as your parents? College? The nice state ones that we defunded or the private ones that cost more than my salary? My dad went to a regional university, did a mediocre job, and wound up with a decent career and nice house. My sister did the same mediocre job at the same university and will wind up worse off.
IOW, the UMC finds it can't skate by on a gentleman's C.
C has been a failing grade since I started college. I think you had to have a 2.5 to not get kicked out.
115- Great, I've seen proposals about investing in grad student financing as equity instead of loans, but now they're giving high school students bond ratings?
118 -- joke's on you, hardworking losers, because unless you win some kind lottery and chance into CEO level earnings it turns out that all your helicoptery striving is for nothing and inherited wealth will just get more and more powerful anyway.
I expect the literature of the near future to be more focused on marrying well, like Jane Austen or whoever that was.
The purpose, historically, of "well-roundedness" in US college admissions was to limit the number of Jewish students accepted.
There were some essays about the history of admissions criteria at elite colleges that were circulating around the web a few years ago. One of them mentioned that around the turn of the century Harvard adopted "manliness", among other things, as a factor to consider in admissions. They should bring that one back.
re: 114
These were universally above average middle-class kids, who were already doing pretty well in school. Not misfits who might have benefited from a different educational method. It was all about the competitive advantage, and polishing a C student into a B student, and a B student into an A student.
For people from my background,* everything is utterly fucked. Fucked. Grinding actual poverty, or near poverty, for fucking ever.
* I'm assuming the sweet digital library bucks will put xelA into a life of luxury.
I don't buy that there is a "C student" or whatever that exists free from context even in the set of above average middle class kids. That's just what people who get (relatively) effortless As in a given setting say.
One of them mentioned that around the turn of the century Harvard adopted "manliness", among other things, as a factor to consider in admissions. They should bring that one back.
MANDOM!
re: 125
Would it be clearer if I said, 'people who would ordinarily have received a C in a give subject, under the particular testing regime that was in place, based on the curriculum that was currently being taught, using the methods that were being used to teach it'?
That is, the conditions that the people who couldn't afford to pay for significant amounts of extra specialist tuition were labouring under?
It was perfectly clear before. I just don't agree. I don't see how getting a tutor is appreciably different (in an ethical or moral sense) from having parents who can explain the subject to you themselves or being the sort of person who can pick up a skill from a book without instruction or whatever.
re: 129
Impasse, then.
There's lots of things that can help explain academic success. Family environment: is it the kind of family where people read, talk about books or have an intellectual interest in the world. Is the individual the kind of person who is able to motivate themselves, or who has the kind of personality type that provides them with the ability to stick at things. Is the person 'naturally' smart? Is the family rich?
It seems to be that if you are interesting in breaking down entrenched class barriers, and living in a more egalitarian society, wealth is the biggie. Raw 'smarts' are going to be fairly evenly distributed among the social classes and races. Personality types ditto. Maybe there's something to a certain amount of intellectual social capital [independent of wealth], but it's going to be fairly closely correlated with wealth.
If academic success (or college admission) is basically buyable, then, fuck the poor, basically.
Of course it is buyable.
Tutoring (such as SAT-prep) is one of the few ways somebody of relatively modest means can buy a reliable boost. A thousand bucks of SAT prep isn't anything at all in this context. The school districts which prepare every kid for those exams are usually set up in areas where the combination of zoning and high housing prices make it impossible for anybody who isn't in the top 10% or 5% to live.
I also think taking a class is a very good shortcut for those who have my own personal favorite failings, inability to self-motivate and a disinclination to stick with things. In theory, I could pick up new skills from reading about them. In practice, I have to enroll in a class or I just won't.
For the people I'm thinking about; my family, people I grew up around, people from my social class background, a thousand bucks (or the UK equivalent) is completely out of reach.
I'm not thinking about the sharp-elbowed middle-classes. I mean, it sucks to be them* but it sucks even more to be actually poor.
* I guess I count as one myself.
I don't see how keeping the lower ends of the middle class from competing for college slots with the upper end is going to help the poor.
I think we are talking about cross-purposes. Bright and/or hard-working poor kids are competing with those lower-end of the middle class people, too.
Yes, but the difference between the whole bottom half of the income distribution and the top tenth strikes me as being a bigger issue than the difference between the bottom quartile and the second from the bottom.
re: 136
I think the distribution is somewhat different here, although it's going that way.
I suspect we are at cross-purposes because we are thinking about two different (but related) things.
i) Flattening the hierarchy overall.
ii) Helping the worst off most.*
It's possible to do i) without doing much for ii).
* some kind of Rawlsian maximin thing, or however you want to label it.
Helicopter parenting is old news. Where are the articles about ornithopter parenting?
sweet digital library bucks
First you get the content, then you get the servers, then you get the money.
I'm not thinking of anything as grand as flattening a hierarchy. I'm thinking that telling somebody not to pay for a tutor for their kid when that might make a difference between college or not or affordable college or not is pointless on a macro level and cruel on a micro level.
I think family environment needs to be picked apart somewhat.
is it the kind of family where people read, talk about books or have an intellectual interest in the world
These are very important, but not sufficient. There's also being around to have those conversations, as it were spontaneously. I had a professional job from which I was home for dinner nearly every night. Then I was unemployed for five years, the years my kids transitioned from elementary to high school.
So I was around all the time, and both of us were sharing the household work.
Those were the years when my kids' academic success really took off. My son tested into a very selective middle school, my daughter starred in productions at our local and took courses at the Art Institute, before being admitted to one of our selective-enrollment HSs.
By the time I went back to work, my daughter was near graduation and my son was midway through the same HS. Both went to SLACs with substantial financial aid, which we really needed while we dug out of debt.
Among my friends and neighbors, our parental level of education is almost typical. They're my friends because we have so much in common culturally, economically, socially.
Yet the academic success not just of one but of both my kids stands out in my cohort as virtually unique. Whenever the subject comes up, the cultural capital of my kids is remarked on, as something that stands out.
I've come to believe that the time I spent at home had a huge impact on the difference. My friends, often both parents spent those years working the long hours their jobs required.
I'm becoming convinced that our under/unemployment has been a blessing in disguise, and that if we'd been able to be hired for the demanding jobs we both kept applying for and just missing out on, we might be more solvent but not in as good a place as a family.
I don't really get why those activities actually look good on college applications.
The committees are not, in fact, looking for the students who will make the best philosophers (or roboticists or whatever). Perhaps some of them are--CalTech's maybe comes close to that, and the Westinghouse/Intel science prize types are going to get in anywhere, but there aren't many kids who're able to display real head-and-shoulders-above academic achievement that early, especially because American high schools and elite undergrads (with exceptions, yes) are relatively unspecialized--you're not applying *as a philosophy major* to any Ivies, not in a meaningful way.
I think UPETGI gets it right here: elite American colleges want their undergrads to be generalist winners, in a very particular sense of "able to do better than everyone else at a rather arbitrarily chosen set of tasks than include both cooperative and competitive elements." And at the next stage for the elite--high-paid consultancy or finance or law firms--they're looking for the same things. They don't want somebody whose reaction to e.g. an irrational and unpleasant client demand is to say, "Fuck this, what's this have to do with anything?" They want someone who'll cheerfully be a team player and work late nights doing it anyway, even if it's pointless.
I'm not sure UPETGI's right to say "But it ceases to work when it's become gameable by parents. Once people know that activities are a plus, the activities no longer indicate what you were looking for.", though. To a large extent (and perhaps larger in the future, as Roberto Tigre reminds us), the advantages that parents are able to give their kids at the undergrad-admissions level also apply to the next step, so if you want to maximize the number of future bankers/consultants/elite magazine assistant editors/congressional staffers/[insert other first-rung-on-elite-path here] in your student body, you don't just want to look at student-value-added, but rather the whole student-plus-support-network package.
I mean, I think this is a terrible system, and support the sentiment of Tigre's destroy-it-all gif, but it's not happening that way because the committees are confused about how to find the best future philosophers/historians/whatever. That's only one of their goals, and not the most important one (again, with some exceptions).
And what Cala talks about in 118, about UMC anxiety about staying afloat, is very much connected to intersection of steep status hierarchy with radically increasing inequality. If the only people who are guaranteed the traditional trappings of middle-class-ness are, in fact, the super-rich, it's that much more crucial to get in there.
Merging the threads a bit, in a world where managers all openly agreed with Penelope Trunk, how terrified would you be for your children's future, and how desperate to ensure that they'd be among the few winners?
I'm thinking that telling somebody not to pay for a tutor for their kid when that might make a difference between college or not or affordable college or not is pointless on a macro level and cruel on a micro level.
I'm not telling anyone anything. I'm saying from the point of view of people who can't afford it, it looks unfair.
If I was making education policy, though, private test tuition wouldn't be anywhere near where I'd start.
about UMC anxiety about staying afloat,
I'm not pouting about no one reading the OP because that would be petty.
It's like an itch that had to be scratched.
143.1: yes, exactly. It's that slice of people who can see that their kids are going to be barred from a large number of the things they took for granted like an affordable university leading to a well-paid job that would allow you to buy a house.
The other side is the vast number - and it must be a vast number - of people who are the first in their families to go to university.
Say you graduated in 2010, and your parents graduated in 1980. When your parents were at university, there were only 70,000 other students pursuing a full-time undergraduate university degree in the entire country. When you were at university, that number had quintupled. That, in part, is where the money went that used to pay for your parents' tuition fees and maintenance grants.
I read the OP, heebie. I just haven't said much. Maybe the lurkers are readers?
"Overall participation in higher education increased from 3.4% in 1950, to 8.4% in 1970, 19.3% in 1990 and 33% in 2000."
http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN04252/SN04252.pdf
That really is a huge increase.
Even with all the murders at Oxford in the 80s? I guess higher education much have a big advantage or Inspector Morse finally put a stop to it.
I'm not pouting about no one reading the OP because that would be petty.
If you'd made your point at tiresome length, like I do, maybe I would have remembered that you'd mentioned class anxiety. Learning requires repetition!
Even with all the murders at Oxford in the 80s? I guess higher education much have a big advantage or Inspector Morse finally put a stop to it.
All the murderers fled to .
Merging the threads a bit, in a world where managers all openly agreed with Penelope Trunk, how terrified would you be for your children's future, and how desperate to ensure that they'd be among the few winners?
Thing is, AB & I have both managed a life with UMC status (and LMC finances; we're in an ugly stretch right now) without ever having to deal with that sort of bullshit, so we're not feeling even a little bit of that anxiety for our kids. There's some low level panic about future college costs, but we're still feeling like a couple of smart white kids with typical UMC advantages* will do fine. Denial, maybe, but I also kind of suspect that the status anxiety is communicated intentionally, that it's another tool to keep hoi polloi frightened and productive.
*cultural comfort with UMC mores, decent education, well read, some sort of work ethic, some degree of financial backstop (although I'm not sure about that one)
158:
I don't think it's denial, I think your chances sound pretty good. And the freedom from bullshit of unsuccess can turn into real advantages for your kids.
Merging the threads a bit, in a world where managers all openly agreed with Penelope Trunk, how terrified would you be for your children's future, and how desperate to ensure that they'd be among the few winners?
This is what so fucking baffles and scares me about the US and much of Europe. We *have* the wealth and social infrastructure to allow our populations to lead secure, productive, comfortable lives, so why are we hellbent on recreating the psychological conditions of life in a developing country? People in China are scared shitless of their children's futures, mostly with good reason. They recognize that they're in a society where competition is insane, meritocracy is limited, wealth is becoming concentrated, and class divisions are becoming more relevant, even as material wealth trickles down to lower rungs of the population. If I had to define a difference between daily life in a developed vs developing country, I would say freedom from precarity and worry would be a key difference. Since we seem hellbent on destroying our public goods, our social safety net, AND our decently paid blue collar and now white collar jobs, all I can think is that we're looking enviously at places like China/Brazil/India/Nigeria and wishing our societies were more like these places.* I don't know about most of these places, but Chinese people think we're fucking insane.
*I mean, these can be great places for soulless plutocrats. They can horde wealth more efficiently, political bribes go further, and service workers are dirt cheap. Why the UMC on down goes along with this beats me.
I don't see how getting a tutor is appreciably different (in an ethical or moral sense) from having parents who can explain the subject to you themselves or being the sort of person who can pick up a skill from a book without instruction or whatever.
I'll buy this as far as it applies to academic subjects. Its another educational resource for somebody, and that's a positive thing.
What's bullshit is tutoring for test-taking purposes. I used to tutor SAT prep and, boy howdy, did those kids live in nice houses....
160 is great (and seems like someone should write it up as a NYT op-ed column -- and in this case I mean that as a compliment)
160--who you calling "we", white man?
Having not read the thread yet, holy shit is $1200 a month for infant care a steal, enough so to be unbelievable. The daycare/preschool my son goes to in not-central-Boston-area is up to $2800/month for infants (a mere $2100 for preschoolers, from 2 years 9 months).
re: 165
I thought it was bad here. It's more like $1600 for us here, although you could pay quite a bit more if you chose a posher nursery. Ours is one of the cheapest in our area.
Quick back of the envelope calculation, based on the day rate of the more expensive nursery that we looked at, they are around $2900 per month. Which is comparable. Although I expect there's probably a discount if you had the kid in full time.
Do Boston people have a sense of what childcare workers are being paid? Here the answer is really, really not much.
I'm guessing here in the UK it'll be minimum wage plus a bit extra for the more experienced/qualified staff.
So, something like $1700 USD a month.
168: Based on what I just saw about relative rates between here, Austin, and Sacramento, I'd have to think that labor rates vary a lot, and that workers at the $2800 place in Boston are making out OK (but still have to commute in from bumfuck to afford housing).
Apparently typical daycare here is $1300/mo., and a family of four with almost exactly our income* can "live modestly" here. Which sounds about right.
*hmm, not sure if they mean pre- or post-tax; if they mean post-, then it's significantly more than we earn
Daycare appears to be free here (well, €63/month for meals), whether part-time or all-day (6-18:00), but I think there may be issues with supply.
that workers at the $2800 place in Boston are making out OK (but still have to commute in from bumfuck to afford housing
Making out OK is my sense of the workers at our center, which is not quite as expensive as the above. (Partly because of much more limited hours.) A lot of the workers commute from a distance away; there are quite a few in Quincy, but others as close as Medford. Neither of which is what I would call "bumfuck".
Once you get east of the Squirrel Hill tunnel, it's all bumfuck.