Cyn, thanks for the links--still pretty damn unbelievable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LoganSnake
You're surprised at overprotective parents? They have always existed. It's just that with the cell phones, instant messaging, email, etc., they have even more control over how often they can monitor their kids.
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I grew up with a VERY overprotective parent. I'm not surprised that they exist. However, in my experience, it was always the immigrant parents (especially my Asian friends' parents) who wanted to shelter their children the most.
I never saw the born-and-bred American parents freaking out about their kids the way these parents seem to be doing--they were all about independence, which influenced me quite a bit to rebel against my mom and do my own thing throughout my life (to her frustration!). The parents of my 2nd-gen friends were always fretting about the underparenting done by their American counterparts--maybe it was just the area in which I grew up (no one was rich enough to afford being a helicopter parent), but I still see it as a surprising phenomenon, I guess.
Maybe this economic downturn will give those soccer moms something else to do with their time, hmm...
-----Added 27/7/2008 at 07 : 43 : 31-----
Quote:
Originally Posted by jorgelito
Wow, I am shocked that you would perpetuate this negative stereotype, and a really shaky one at best. Might as well use Jewish mothers or WASP mothers. Especially coming from an anthropologist. I have a lot of Asian friends and none of their parent as far as I can tell act overprotective. In fact, it was definitely my Jewish and Irish friends that had overprotective parents.
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Well, first of all, I don't see it as negative
... just annoying, as a kid who wanted to be away from it. And yes, now I am starting to see that ALL kinds of mothers are overprotective, lol... hence my surprise at this article (Jewish and WASPs and anyone else who sends their kids to these types of camps).
But truly, when I was growing up, every single one of my Asian friends had notoriously overprotective parents. We were all jealous of our "American" friends' parents, because they didn't seem to care what their kids were doing, while we couldn't even sneak out of the house without fear of getting a wooden spoon on our asses. Yes, it was a small sample size based on snowball methods, but I didn't know any exceptions to it. (I should have made it clear that I was speaking anecdotally.)