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The New York Times & Snowplow Parenting
Who nailed it for this week? Well, for maybe the only time on this podcast we’re going to cite The New York Times for wisdom and timely insight on of all things; parenting! You need to hear what they have to say.
I’m Joel Fieri, Executive Producer of Christian Podcast Central. And this is “The Best Thing You’ll Hear This Week”
We can add another label to our society’s ever-growing problem of over-parenting, according to a recent article in The New York Times written by Claire Cain Miller and Jonah Engel Bromwich. 
The term is “snowplow” parenting (also called “bull dozer” and “lawn mower” parenting, but I’m running with “snowplow”). The term expands on the familiar “helicopter” parenting of recent decades and describes parents that go from hovering nervously over their young children’s lives to actively plowing away obstacles from their teen and young adult children in college and even the workplace. Miller and Bromwich describe several ways in which parents do this.
From the extreme (and criminal) cases in the news lately of rich and famous parents bribing their children’s way into prestigious colleges, to
“..less outrageous — and wholly legal — form(s), snowplowing has become the most brazen mode of parenting privileged children in the everyone-gets-a-trophy generation.
It starts early, when parents get on wait lists for elite preschools before their babies are born and try to make sure their toddlers are never compelled to do anything that may frustrate them. It gets more intense when school starts: running a forgotten assignment to school or calling a coach to request that their child make the team.
Later, it’s writing them an excuse if they procrastinate on schoolwork, paying a college counselor thousands of dollars to perfect their applications or calling their professors to argue about a grade.”
The article quotes psychologist Madeline Levine, who
“regularly sees college freshmen who ‘have had to come home from Emory or Brown because they don’t have the minimal kinds of adult skills that one needs to be in college. One came home because there was a rat in the dorm room. Some didn’t like their roommates. Others said it was too much work, and they had never learned independent study skills. One didn’t like to eat food with sauce. Her whole life, her parents had helped her avoid sauce, calling friends before going to their houses for dinner. At college, she didn’t know how to cope with the cafeteria options — covered in sauce.’ Here are parents who have spent 18 years grooming their kids with what they perceive as advantages, but they’re not”
The article goes on, and naturally we’ve linked it below for you to read in it’s entirety. And if you’re a parent, please do! You might see yourself in it before it’s too late. It describes parents intervening in every conceivable area of their children’s lives, producing “..young people (in) crisis, lacking…problem-solving skills and experiencing record rates of anxiety.”
My wife and I have known a few parents, like the ones described in the article (many of them Christians, by the way). Parents who rush forgotten assignments to school and later fill out college entrance applications and write essays for their children. Parents who drive long distances to aid their adult children in buying new tires or making doctors appointments. And I will take the log out of my own eye and get off my high horse now and admit that we’ve been guilty of falling into this ‘parent trap’ ourselves. But for the most part we’ve tried to maintain a good balance between helping our children prepare for success in their lives on the one hand, and maintaining a healthy distance and allowing them to struggle and yes, FAIL on the other. Not easy, but doable, and crucial to our children’s health, not only their physical, emotional and mental health, but their spiritual health as well. As I mentioned earlier, Christian parents are just as likely to snowplow as any other parent, for one simple reason: Idolatry! We’ve made idols of our children and their material success, at the expense of their spiritual maturity towards God and others. We need to admit that, and ask God (and our children) to forgive us.
And then we need to back up the snowplow, turn the key, jump down and walk away as our children venture out into their adult walk with God, prayerfully trusting Him to guide and strengthen them through their successes and, most importantly, their failures!
So, a tip of the cap to the New York Times! Your article nailed it, and it’s the best thing we’ve heard this week!
Reference: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/style/snowplow-parenting-scandal.html