I found this article in the latest issue of Maclean's magazine quite a good read. It has been something I have been concerned about for some time, adults who over parent, children not having the luxury of just playing and being children.
Quote:
Virtually since boomers started reproducing (and assumed they invented child-rearing as they assume they invented sex), children, at least those born to the middle classes of the developed world, have been reared on all the essential vitamins, and megadoses of irony. Parents want to raise risk-takers (without exposing them to risk), to give them the freedom (to follow parental dreams), to be spontaneous and imaginative (pencil that in between judo and piano, if the homework is done).
The spirit of hyper-parenting was brilliantly parodied in a recent advertising blitz sponsored by Colleges Ontario, representing 24 applied arts and technology schools. The ads touted a mythic mind-control drug called Obay, "from the makers of WhyBecauseISaidSo." They show happy parents and blissed-out kids above such tag lines as: "My son used to have his own hopes and aspirations. Now he has mine. Thanks, Obay!" A video spot shows a nurse handing a glowing mom her newborn. "Honey," she tells her husband, "It's a lawyer!"
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http://www.macleans.ca/culture/lifestyle/article.jsp?content=20080402_47686_47686