David French & GenX Parenting

Columnist David French poses an interesting and important question in his recent New York Times column:  "How Did the Latchkey Kids of Gen X Become the Helicopter Parents of Gen Z?"

It's not unreasonable to suggest that parents of a certain age should be a bit less obsessive about micromanaging every detail of their children's lives. And, to be clear, the current generation of parents did not invent the idea of helicoptering in the child rearing game. That's reserved for the Baby Boomers who coddled their Millennial offspring to ridiculous and unprecedented degrees. Subsequently, anyone with much experience with the youngest of young people these days might suspect that the Boomers' parenting was not particularly effective in that Millennials are specifically bad at the parenting game. 

Granted, all this talk of generational trends and inclinations is obviously greatly overgeneralized. There are effective and ... pathetic parents at all ages in all eras. I wrote about GenX and the parenting game five years ago, though I had a different view than French. In fact, my piece suggests that "GenX Parenting" is the opposite of helicopter parenting. Of course, that view also implies that the very concept of "Generation X," at least in the manner that sociologist Paul Fussel and writer Douglas Coupland used it, is more about an attitude and lifestyle choice as opposed to an age range.

Gen X parents don’t hover, they don’t helicopter, and they certainly don’t snowplow. However, they are neither aloof nor disengaged. Generational writer and sociologist Neil Howe has termed Gen X parents “Stealth Fighter Parents.” They are aware and involved in the lives of their children, choosing where and when and how much. If an issue “seems below their threshold of importance,” they will let it go, “saving their energy” and probably their nerves. But if the situation “shows up on their radar … they will strike, rapidly and in force, and often without warning.” The target might be their kids’ friends or their teachers or a neighbor, or most likely the kids themselves. Gen Xers are post-9/11 “security moms” and hands-on dads. And our kids, the neXt generation, share our pragmatic, somewhat jaded, and pessimistic view of society while also being rather attentive to themselves, like Xers who had to be while we let ourselves in to the houses after school and fixed our own snacks while waiting for our parents to get home. They are woke, and to borrow from David Bowie (and John Hughes) “quite aware of what they’re going through.” That’s the scoop on Gen Z, a derivative nickname for Xer’s kids, who are out, open, authentic, transparent, and inclined to change the world themselves rather than wait for their elders.