“Its lunch time at Alexander, Fanning & Co., an investment bank with offices on Wall Street, and senior partner Whitney Buchter is walking the halls looking for a "warm body" to accompany him to a client lunch. He sticks his head in the office of Alexandria Keats, an '05 graduate of Wellesley College, and asks if she can join him. "Spencer had to cancel on me and I've got the folks in from Glenmore Industries--are you free?" She starts to say "yes" but her father, a retired lawyer, intervenes. "If you've got two seats--fine," he says. "Otherwise, my little girl is staying put."
Okay, my bad. The above quote is actually from a spoof article on helicopter parents, written by ‘Con’ Chapman at Spoof.com.
But the reality isn’t far off; consider these true examples of helicopter parents at work:
· When General Electric made an offer to one recruit last fall, the mother of the recruit called the next day trying to negotiate an increase in pay. (CareerJournal.com)
A hiring manager for Boeing “was very surprised when a recruit brought his mom right into the interview.”
And it's not just the workplace:
· One mother talks frequently with her 18 and 21-year old sons via cell phone, drafts to-do emails for them, checks their grades and their bank account balances, uses their personal passwords to check their student e-mail, organizes their schedules and proofreads their papers. One son refers to her as a “secretary mom,” which Lewis sees as a compliment. “It means that I'm very organized. A secretary helps to keep the boss focused and organized, right? We don't know how to balance much of our lives yet when we're 18.” (ABCNews.com)
· 
“At the University of Georgia, students who get frustrated or confused during registration have been known to interrupt their advisers to whip out a cell phone, speed-dial their parents and hand the phone to the adviser, saying, "Here, talk to my mom," says Richard Mullendore, a University of Georgia professor and former vice president, student affairs, at the universities of Georgia and Mississippi. The cell phone, he says, has become "the world's longest umbilical cord."
The term ‘helicopter parent’ describes that “loving, intelligent and well-meaning parent who is 'over-intervening' in the day-to-day activities of [their] son or daughter in college,” say authors of Millennials Go to College, Neil Howe and William Strauss. These parents, both mothers and fathers, “hover around their children at all times, ready to swoop in and help.” BTW, while the examples in this article refer to moms, dads are just as apt to helicopter into their kids’ lives.
Helicopter parents, who ecompass a range of incomes, want to protect their child, help them to do their best and have good opportunities. For some, it’s a way of protecting the sizable investment in their child’s college education, for others, it is a way of attaining status: "You want that Harvard sticker on your car,” said one parent whose child didn’t want to apply to go there. (MSNBC.com)
Maybe “Bring Your Mother to Work Day” isn’t as fanciful as you think.
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