This series of articles describes helicopter parenting and helicopter governing, the pathologies associated with each, and the impact on American culture. A helicopter government is one that exhibits characteristics similar to those of helicopter parenting which are expressed in four types of behavior: overprotection, overpraising, overindulging, and overprogramming. In Part V we shall examine our helicopter government’s overprogramming of the lives of its citizens through excessive and burdensome rules and regulations on individuals and culture at large and the pathologies and consequences thereof.
Overprogramming
One of the great tragedies of modern life over the last several decades is the loss of childhood in America. Perhaps a better word is “condensation” of childhood. Dr. David Elkind described this phenomenon in his 1981 book The Hurried Child.
…it is important to see childhood as a stage of life, not just as the anteroom to life. Hurrying children into adulthood violates the sanctity of life by giving one period priority over another. But if we really value human life, we will value each period equally and give unto each stage of life what is appropriate to that stage…In the end, a childhood is the most basic human right of children.[1]
Helicopter parents overprogram the lives of their children through obsessive scheduling, micromanaging, and monitoring. In such a regimented world the child becomes a pawn of the clock and calendar rather than a child of the moment or season. We see well-meaning parents over schedule their children’s lives with play-dates, organized sports, extra-curricular school activities, and the like with virtually no down time for just being a kid. The cell phone has become a child’s wireless umbilical cord by which parents micromanage and monitor the minutest actions and decisions of their children. One of the signs of an overprogrammed child is a frequent complaint of boredom (which means they have found themselves with an unfilled gap in their schedule). But whatever happened to good old-fashioned play? By “old-fashioned” play is meant unstructured, voluntary, no goals, curiosity unplugged, and fun. In other words, when does a child have his own personal and private downtime?
For many serious psychologists, sociologists, and education professionals, old-fashioned unstructured, purposeless play is as outmoded as yesterday’s bell-bottoms, a waste of time and energy, and non-productive. Yet, researchers have discovered the enormous benefits of unstructured play. It stimulates the brain; thrives on complexity, uncertainty, and possibility; makes us mentally quick; teaches social and survival skills; and stretches us as we grow toward adulthood. Effectively, play is practice for adulthood.[2] But in our children’s overprogrammed lives, play is now work and its activities (sports, music, camp, and other such activities) are now competitive and professionalized.[3] Children are now treated as miniature adults.
The governmental equivalent to parental overprogramming is a pervasive governmental interference in the lives of its citizens. Socialism is the practical application of the tenets of humanism which are being infused into society. The essence of a life overprogrammed by a humanistic helicopter government is a loss of freedom, a freedom by which is meant the absence of coercion as opposed to humanism’s new freedom which is not freedom at all. The new freedom is merely another name for leveling society through an equal distribution of wealth and circumstance. Rather than expanding the range of choice, leveling results in greater limitations on choice, and those limitations, which by definition is a loss of freedom, are the ultimate outcome of all socialistic systems.[4]
Leveling society requires omnipresent rules—petty, complicated, convoluted, uniform, voluminous, tedious, wearisome rules which dulls the mind, weakens the spirit, saps energy, crushes creativity, and opposes initiative. To give an inkling of the size of the overprogrammization of American life, Title 27 of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations is the U.S. Tax Code which contains 16,845 pages including the part written by Congress. It is available for purchase from the U.S. Government Printing office for $1,153. However, the U.S. Tax Code is just one of 50 titles found in the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, each of which contains one or more individual volumes, which are updated once each calendar year, on a staggered basis.[5] To these we add a multitude of state, county, city, and other regulatory entities’ rules and regulations. These have become the official handbook for living life. Who needs freedom when the government has all the answers?
Overprogramming life, whether the catalyst is a helicopter parent or a helicopter government, robs child and adult alike of perspective as to the important things in life. As we travel through various seasons of life, perspectives change but the things of importance never do. As we enter adulthood, the appointment book fills and the “to do” list lengthens. That is a normal part of life, but such things are temporal and appear much less important in life’s rear view mirror. It is the moments and seasons we savor, store in our memory banks, and protect for they cannot be recreated or rescheduled.
Who hasn’t smiled at the joy and wonder of a four-year-old boy focusing on the fascinating complexities of a dandelion or gazing at the playful wanderings of a butterfly on a sunny spring afternoon all the while oblivious to yells from parents and coaches as the soccer ball rolls past him?
How many of us adults are secret Walter Mitty types who have on occasion snatched a moment from our childhood to ride with the Commander as he pilots the Navy hydroplane through the worst storm in twenty years of Navy flying…or stand beside Captain Mitty as we strap on our Webley-Vickers 50.80 automatics and prepare to fly forty miles through hell while the cannonading shells from the box barrage crash around the dugout…[6] We all deserve a childhood, and if we are fortunate, a little bit of our childhood’s innocence, wonder, and adventure will survive in us and act as a respite if not a reprieve from our helicopter government’s overprogrammed world.
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
[1] David Elkind, Ph.D., The hurried child – growing up too fast too soon, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo Press, 2007), p. 221.
[2] Hara Estroff Marano, A Nation of Wimps, (New York: Broadway Books, 2009), pp. 86-87.
[3] Elkind, p. 214.
[4] Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), p. 243.
[5] “What is the Real Size of the U.S. Federal Tax Code,” Isaac Brock Society, February 12, 2012.
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2012/02/12/what-is-the-real-size-of-the-u-s-federal-tax-code/ (accessed April 9, 2014).
[6] James Thurber, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” Introduction to Literature, 4th Edition, (eds., Louis G. Locke, William M. Gibson, and George Arms, (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962), p. 418-421.
