‘Snowplough parents’ slammed

In the 1990s and early 2000s, mothers and fathers who seemed to hover anxiously over their progeny were given the name ‘‘helicopter parents’’.

Now there is a label for those who go further, clearing the way for their offspring even after they have left home. Meet the ‘‘snowplough parents’’.

Universities, employers and psychiatrists are expressing alarm over the mothers and fathers who make calls, organise schedules and even negotiate salaries for their adult children. Madeline Levine, a psychologist who treats young adults who are finding it hard to cope with university or the workplace, said snowplough parents were taking ‘‘every challenge’’ out of their children’s way.

While attempting to give their children a head start in life ‘‘you actually disable them’’, she said.

Levine has treated young adults who abandoned university because they did not know how to study on their own or did not like their roommates.

A survey of more than 1000 parents of children aged 18 to 28 for The New York Times found that 74 per cent still organised doctors’ visits and other appointments for their children, and 16 per cent helped their adult child write all or part of an application for a job or internship. Eleven per cent said they would contact a child’s employer over an issue they had suffered at work.

The result of snowplough parenting in its most extreme form has been a legal and philosophical quandary for universities that have students who were apparently admitted as a result of fraud. Last week the FBI indicted 33 parents accused of trying to smooth their child’s path into university.

The University of Southern California has said it is conducting a ‘‘case-by-case review of current students who may be connected to the alleged scheme’’. Stanford has said it is examining the case of a student that may be connected to part of nearly US$770,000 (NZ$1.1 million) given in donations to its sailing programme by the charity at the centre of the scandal.

The broader results of snowplough parenting had been seen in more diagnoses of anxiety disorder and the development of ‘‘emerging adult programmes’’ in the US, said Levine, who has a practice in San Francisco.

Less serious cases tended to involve working with the child and their parents, she said.

One set of ‘‘desperate’’ parents first had to be persuaded to cut off their child’s US$9000-a-month allowance. ‘‘They have a 25-yearold kid who can’t do anything.’’ The Times

‘‘They have a 25-yearold kid who can’t do anything.’’ Madeline Levine, psychologist