Helicopter Parents and ‘Meta-Helicopter Parenting’

Over the coming academic year, we are hosting a series of discussions looking in various ways at the widely discussed problem of growing up and becoming an adult. Central to the propositions of Parenting Culture Studies is that the rise of ‘parenting’ and the expansion of the parental role is inseparable from changing constructions of childhood. Assumptions about risk and vulnerability have reshaped cultural norms about what growing up is taken to be with, in turn, profound effects for the parental role. This has been described as the intensification of parenting, and the impacts of intensive parents for the task of socialising children continue to shape thinking and research.

In this first or a series of discussions on Zoom through 2025, we will take a look at the problem of the 'helicopter parent'. Is this reaction against intensive parenting just another form of parent-blaming?

Introduced by Professor Talia Welsh

Background Reading: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Talia-Welsh/publication/338836707_Meta-Helicopter_Parenting_Ambivalence_in_Neoliberal_World/links/5e2ee333299bf10a65976901/Meta-Helicopter-Parenting-Ambivalence-in-Neoliberal-World.pdf

Series deails: Forthcoming events | Centre for Parenting Culture Studies

Host or Publisher Centre for Parenting Culture Studies