Helicopter Mom Is Determined To Find Her Son A Wife, The Internet Thinks She Needs A Reality Check

Unless you are dead set on an arranged marriage, having your mom help your dating life is basically a worst-case scenario. However, ever-present, helicopter moms generally do not really understand that hovering around their kids at all times is unhealthy, counterproductive, and pretty embarrassing, particularly when the kids are already adults.

So imagine opening your Facebook feed one day to see that your mom made a rather unhinged post attempting to solicit a date for you. This is what netizens saw one day when a mom made a long and somewhat absurd list of things her 26-year-old son presumably wanted in a partner.

The origin of the phrase “helicopter parent” is not even that far from the first usage of helicopters. The 1969 book “Between Parent & Teenager,” by Dr. Haim Ginott, contains the phrase “Mother hovers over me like a helicopter..." which is said by a long-suffering teen. First and foremost, props to the teen for so quickly developing a new metaphor using, at the time, cutting-edge technology. This teen was absolutely ahead of their time, as it would be a full decade later when the term became more commonplace, mostly with educational specialists who had to deal with parents that were a bit too involved in every facet of their child’s life. This behavior could be found both with younger children and even college students. Some summer camp organizers have also reported a barrage of messages and calls from parents who could not relax.

Of course, in most cases, this term had a pretty pejorative meaning, both annoying and embarrassing to the children and exhausting to deal with for educators. The mother in this post calling herself one without a hint of irony is a burning, bright red flag for anyone potentially involved. Even if a woman (although that is just the son’s preference) was interested in this offer, it would mean dealing with an aggressively involved mother, a herculean task for anyone.

Helicoptering, if we were to convert this adjective-from-a-noun into a verb, normally represents an overprotective behavior from a parent. Now, being protective is by no means bad, children can and should not be expected to protect themselves at all times, we do not live in a “state of nature,” but the emphasis here is on the prefix “over.” Similar to our immune systems, children need some room to fight their own battles and learn from them. The mother in this post calls her adult son “all the kid one woman can handle,” when realistically this man needs to stand on his own two feet. While adults do need to take responsibility for their own actions and, by extension, who they are, the mother may be to blame for him still being a “kid.”

The long-term consequences of helicopter parenting are hard to study at scale, as there are so many things that can influence how an adult or young adult develops. Just the degree of “helicoptering” might vary from person to person, and certain young people will react differently. Some studies indicate that helicopter parents are often the cause of teenage rebellion, which is a pretty natural behavior at that age. However, “helicoptering” is often so much “worse” than normal parental controls, that the teenage rebellion stage lasts into young adulthood. While there are few things more insufferable than a twenty-five-year-old who defines themselves by anti-social behavior and “rebellion,” we might have to place the blame squarely on the parents. On the flip side, it can lead to adult-children who, well into their twenties and thirties, are incapable of independent decisions and “real life.”

Other research suggests that since helicopter parents really make all the calls, their children (or victims) struggle with leadership, self-confidence, and basic decision-making. After all, why even try when your parents will criticize, control, and coral you into doing exactly what they want? As previously stated, the two main reactions are just compliance and rebellion. Counterproductive to this mom's wishes, most people do not actually find man-children attractive, so it does not help that she explicitly calls her son a kid. While it’s possible to agree to disagree on the values posited here, regarding the partner's position in the relationship, she is the main barrier to his success. There no doubt are women and even men out there who would be ok with the sort of relationship she seems to be looking for, but these people, hypothetically, are interested in dating her son, not her. Based on her own description, where her son goes, she will be hovering nearby, which sounds like a date from hell, let alone a marriage.