Stealth-Fighter Parents are on a Failing Mission
A Gen-X Parent's Manifesto
Gen-X parents have intensified over-involvement in their children’s lives. What was once termed “helicopter parenting” has evolved into “stealth-fighter parenting,” a style characterized by more pronounced attachment, protection, and intervention. In fact, data indicates that half of college student applications are completed by parents, and most registration inquiries are completed by parents. Based on this evidence, which I suspect is accurate and wide-spread, parents of my generation do not trust their children to advocate for themselves.
Parents are right to be concerned, but they only have themselves to blame. Mom and dad have been ever-present pilot, turning the nose of their stealth-fighter toward any potential threat of “safety” or impediment to “success,” ready to strike. With this strategy of aggressive obstacle-clearing, they have disabled their children with alarming conviction.
The goal of carrying out a seamless parenting mission and producing the hard-fought result — a “successful” child — has unquestionably backfired. A high school junior who lacks initiative, confidence, or skills to apply for college on his/her own cannot be called mission complete.
Generational Ambivalence Toward Our Own Upbringing
While we Gen-Xers may harbor resentment for the perceived neglect of our own parents, we also pride ourselves on what we accomplished without their help. Our parents did not help us identify our passions, nor did they support our efforts to, for example, get a job, select college-application building activities, study for the ACTs, or get into a “better” college. Many, like me, fumbled around and figured it out, with zero expectation that my parents were supposed to help me.
In retrospect, their lack of involvement seems bizarre, even unloving—but that harsh assessment is a result of comparison to today’s parenting culture that has swung so dramatically to support and safety that is resembles a fleet of fighter jets.
Even though there is evidence we were, as a generation, “neglected” by our parents (here I mean ONLY in reference to preparation for future success), we must admit we are pleased to tell stories of how little our parents did for us. We are proud of our fumblings and figurings. We can take credit for what we see as our own accomplishments.
While this ambivalence about our own upbringing exists, the resentment side runs deeper, as it tends to always do. We are determined to do right by our children where our parents did us wrong.
Dramatic Shifts in Marketplace
When Gen-X kids were growing up, we had limited choices for what to watch, listen to, and participate in. We remember 3 channels on television, Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 radio program, and high school teachers who were wastes of space that no parent ever complained about.
We’ve seen the marketplace explode. We know we don’t have to settle for inferior products and services, and we will find the accountable party for what we see as unacceptable.
The luxury of choice and the expectation of excellence coexists in us with the refusal to be loyal to really anyone but ourselves. Brand loyalty? Job loyalty? Those was our parents’ allegiances, nor ours.
We know full well as parents we do not have to settle for what other entities deliver our children. We will let coaches know they are failing, school administration know we will take our children and the tax dollars to another high school who will take seriously our complaints, and we will make sure the college we consider for our child justifies its tuition costs with bells and whistles.
Our adeptness with the changed marketplace results in more information to make, in theory, much better choices for our children and their futures.
Self-awareness Hacks
Early in our lives, Phil Donohue was on television, then Oprah. The “self-help” space moved from the periphery to center, and frankly, has gotten crowded since then. Books, YouTube tutorials, Facebook groups, TED talks, and podcasts: pick your medium.
We’ve grown up with the self-help language our parents didn’t have, and we can use words like “purpose,” “intention,” and “trauma.”
These mediums are hacks to self-awareness, simple shortcuts that still conceivably add up to meaningful insight. Many of these hacks are wrapped up in pretty, easy to consume packages and function like pseudo-entertainment. Minutes in the car or on the treadmill can be filled with a compelling TED talk or a witty podcast guest’s pitch for seeing your vulnerability as your strength.
We can choose how shallow or deep we go in order to help ourselves—still saying, “I meditate,” or “I read Echart Tolle, and his books changed my life.”
Without ever setting foot into a therapist’s room, we feel armed with a degree of self-awareness — and a clarity of vision for our kids — that our parents never had.
Promote Independence and Self-realization
As a mother of 3 (16, 18, and 21) and as a college instructor for many years, I have observed my generation (Gen-X) defines success for our children as anything that looks good on a college application or resume and sounds good in a social media caption.
The alternative parenting mission has everything to do with intentions and trust that our children will learn to advocate for themselves.
The driving intentions should be two-fold:
Fostering our children’s independence, including and especially from us, beginning in infancy; and
Creating space for each of them to begin on a path toward self-realization (knowledge of who he/she is and confident embodiment of that knowledge).
Each child’s journey toward independence and self-realization looks different. I encourage my children to do for themselves what they can, when they can. My youngest is now a junior in high school, and she is exploring post-graduation options on her own and presenting what appeals to her to me and her dad.
All 3 of my kids scheduled their own ACT exams; all 3 kids applied for their own jobs and college choices. They choose their activities, majors, and friends; they make and manage their own money. They ask for support if and when they need it.
Once a parent said to me, “Of all of my accomplishments, I am most proud of my children. They are my greatest work.”
I shuttered.
My children are not really mine, and your children are not really yours. They are not missions to complete or projects to present to the world.
We commodify them when we take ownership. We weaken them when we do things for them that they ought to do themselves. We destroy their curiosity about the world and themselves when we hand them a life script of success.
Do you want your high school junior to take charge of her life? Or do you want to live his life for him to make sure “he” gets it right?
Train yourself to be the kind of expert parent who promotes independence and self-realization in her/his children.
10,000 Hours of Practice
Anders Ericsson theorized it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to develop expertise. Experts are made, not born, by way of “struggle, sacrifice, and honest, often painful self-assessment.” The metric for expertise is clearly defined; an expert, according to Ericsson, must be demonstrated by superior performance and concrete and measurable results.
Parenting expertise requires its own deliberate practice. The practice is simple, yet monumentally difficult: Ask yourself, “Am I doing for my child something he/she can do for themselves?” And, “Am I creating or prohibiting the kind of environment that encourages exploration and curiosity?”
Ask repeatedly, answer honestly, and decide if you would be serving your intention better by modifying your behavior.
Repeat over 10,000 hours.
The only metric for success is measurable growth in independence and self-realization in your children.
10,000 Hours of Experimentation
The brilliant James Altucher, entrepreneur and writer, suggests a 10,000 experiment rule for developing expertise. Try something. Fail. Try something else.
I propose deliberate practice and deliberate experimentation are both part of developing parenting expertise. The intention remains the same: promote independence and self-realization in your children.
Experimentation is especially important when you meet resistance in your child. He wants you to read his paper and edit it, or she wants you to tell her what major to choose. She refuses to contact her teacher with questions, or he seems totally unmotivated to make his own money.
If she/he shuts the door on you today, try again another day in another way.
Deep Inner Work
In his book, Deep Work, Cal Newport theorizes that in order to achieve mastery, one must make room for long periods of focused work with no distractions.
Newport’s theory can and must be applied to an expert parent’s training model.
Instead of focus on the child’s success, or lack thereof, it is vital to focus on our own motives as parents. Unless we do the work of checking our motives, we run the real risk of parenting out of selfishness/ego (call it what you will), encouraging what we like, protecting what we value, and guiding our children to make decisions that make us feel safe and comfortable.
Heard of the 5 Whys? It’s a simple technique for getting to the root of a problem, and, I would argue, the root of a motive. Dig deep, without distraction, and brutally self-assess.
Stealth fighter parents: Land your jets.