Council on Contemporary Families
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • RSS
Yes, I want to support CCF's work
  • Home
  • About
    • About CCF
    • The Society Pages
    • Make a Gift
    • Become a Friend of CCF
    • CCF’s Student Internship Program
  • CCF News & Events
    • Biweekly Media Briefings
    • News & Upcoming Events
    • Members In The News
    • About the CCF Media Awards
  • Publications
    • By Topic
      • Aging
      • Economic Inequality
      • Couples Conflict, Separation & Divorce
      • Family Counseling, Therapy & Parenting Intervention
      • Gender & Sexuality
      • Health & Illness
      • LGBTQ Partnering & Families
      • Parenthood
      • Public Policy
        • Aging (Public Policy)
        • Child Welfare
        • Health Care
        • Labor & Workforce
        • Marriage & Divorce
        • Reproductive Health
        • TANF & Public Assistance
      • Race, Ethnicity & Culture
        • African American Families
        • Asian American Families
        • Latino Families
      • Singles & Dating
      • Work & Family
    • By Publication Type
      • Brief Reports
      • Fact Sheets
      • Online Symposia
        • 2019 Defining Consent Symposium
        • 2019 Parents Can’t Go It Alone Symposium
        • 2018 Gender Matters Symposium
        • 2017 Gender and Millennials Symposium
        • 2016 Welfare Reform Symposium
        • 2015 Intimate Partner Violence Symposium
        • 2015 Housework, Gender, and Parenthood Symposium
        • 2014 New Inequalities Symposium
        • 2014 Gender Revolution Rebound Symposium
      • Press Releases
      • Unconventional Wisdom
      • Opinion Pieces
    • CCF Books
      • Families as They Really Are (2009)
      • Revised Edition Ensuring Inequality
  • Conferences
    • 2020 CCF Conference
      • 2020 Conference Registration
      • 2020 CCF Conference Program
      • 2020 Flash Session & Pamela Smock Travel Award
    • Previous Conference Archives
      • 2018 CCF Conference – Highlights, Pictures, and More!
      • 2016 CCF Conference – Recap!
      • 2014 CCF Conference – Highlights, Summary Talks, Pictures, and More!
  • Membership
    • New Membership
    • Membership Profile Update
  • Experts
    • Find an Expert
    • View by Topics

New From CCF! When “Helicopters” Go to School: Who Gets Rescued and Who Gets Left Behind?

Posted on March 1, 2020 in Press Releases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Virginia Rutter / Framingham State Sociology
vrutter@gmail.com

Uber-rich parents and their fixers may be just the tip of the iceberg. Turns out it’s hard for teachers to resist pushy parents.

Most Americans applaud the prison sentences given college admissions scandal parents like actor Felicity Huffman and “fixers” like tennis coach Michael Center for manipulating outrageous claims and exorbitant “donations” to get coveted college admissions for unqualified students. A new study hints that similar kinds of pressure are widespread – and difficult for well-meaning educators to resist.

March 2, 2020, Austin TX—This year’s college admissions scandal was shocking. But in a briefing report released by the Council on Contemporary Families today, Indiana University’s Associate Professor Jessica McCrory Calarco shows that the roots of such excesses can be traced back to parent-teacher dynamics that are evident as early as elementary school. While not focusing on such extremes, Calarco’s report, When “Helicopters” Go to School: Who Gets Rescued and Who Gets Left Behind?, documents problems in ordinary elementary schools that carry the seeds of future abuses.

Teachers and schools rely on helper helicopter parents. In a three-year study, Calarco spent approximately 500 hours observing at a suburban elementary school, and interviewed 21 students, 24 parents, and 14 teachers and administrators. She documented how educators, trying to supplement unequal and inadequate resources for high-quality education, come to rely on a set of privileged helicopter parents who contribute substantial amounts of time and money to the school. These parental volunteers allow schools to offer enrichment activities and supplemental staffing they could not otherwise afford.

Some teachers are deferential, others just feel obligated to bend for these helper helicopters. Calarco shows how teachers’ and administrators’ dependence on these parents makes them yield to those who expect their children to receive special consideration as payback for the time and money they contribute. Some teachers willingly bend rules for these kids, reasoning that children whose parents don’t or can’t be highly involved in their education haven’t “earned” special consideration. Others, Calarco shows, feel compelled to violate their sense of what is fair and best for the students’ own development.

Don’t kid yourself: It isn’t the children of helicopter parents who suffer, it is the other students who are harmed. Most criticisms of helicopter parenting focus on how such parents hurt their own children by their over-protection and coddling. However, Calarco shows that the kids who actually get hurt by this are not the ones who gain an edge in their school records and college applications but the ones who don’t.

It is easy to blame ambitious, over-engaged moms, but helicopter parents aren’t so much a cause of inequality as a consequence. For the past forty years, economic inequality has grown: Benefits of economic growth have been gobbled up by the top ten percent, and the bottom half of the population has seen wages stagnate while costs of schooling have soared. Over this time, the intensity of parenting has increased—and parents with more resources are spending those on their children at an accelerating rate.

The policy recommendations aren’t complex. “Adequate and equitably distributed school funding (particularly if coupled with redistribution of funds raised by Parent-Teacher Organizations) has the potential to reduce schools’ dependence on higher-SES ‘helicopter’ parents,” Calarco writes. In America we have a deep belief that education leads to social change. This work shows such change could be towards equity, but has instead been towards growing, persistent inequality that leaves some children and their parents stymied in school and beyond. These inequalities exacerbate the unresolved racial and ethnic disparities that plague our education systems.

“It’s perfectly natural to want your kids to do the best they can,” Stephanie Coontz, CCF Director of Research, notes.“But in societies with high levels of economic inequality, parents often want them to do better than everyone else. And when schools are unequally funded and must rely on parents’ contributions of time and money, it creates patterns of entitlement and exclusion that pave the way for the abuses we have seen in the college admission scandals.”

-more-

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Jessica McCrory Calarco, Associate Professor of Sociology at Indiana University, www.jessicacalarco; jcalarco@iu.edu;484.431.8316. Professor Calarco is author of Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School.

 Stephanie Coontz, Professor of History and Family Studies, The Evergreen State College coontzs@msn.com; 360-556-9223.

LINKS AND ABOUT:
Report: https://contemporaryfamilies.org/when-helicopters-go-to-school/
Advisory: https://contemporaryfamilies.org/when-helicopters-go-to-school-press-advisory/

The Council on Contemporary Families, based at the University of Texas-Austin, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of family researchers and practitioners that seeks to further a national understanding of how America’s families are changing and what is known about the strengths and weaknesses of different family forms and various family interventions.

The Council helps keep journalists informed of notable work on family-related issues via the CCF Network. To join the CCF Network, or for further media assistance, please contact Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education, at coontzs@msn.com, cell 360-556-9223.

Follow us! @CCF_Families and https://www.facebook.com/contemporaryfamilies

Read our blog Families as They Really Are – https://thesocietypages.org/families/

-end-

Post Views: 2,918
Share

Recent News & Publications

  • Why Families Need More Financial Support during the COVID-19 Pandemic
  • CCF’s Joshua Coleman on the Complicated Realities of Parental Estrangement
  • New from CCF! Do the Media’s “Sexy Girl” Messages Trump Their “Girl Power” Ones?
  • Media Messages to Young Girls: Does “Sexy Girl” Trump “Girl Power”?
  • CCF Board Member Barbara Risman On How To Help Working Parents While Also Equalizing Children’s Educational Access

Featured Expert

Elizabeth Gershoff

Professor, University of Texas at Austin

View Expert

Browse Publications by Topic

  • Adoption & Foster Care
  • Aging
  • Biracial/ Multicultural Children and Interracial/ Multicultural Families
  • Childcare (Providers & Systems)
  • Children
  • Cohabitation, Committed Relationships & Marriage
  • Couples Conflict, Separation & Divorce
  • Division of Labor in Families
  • Domestic Violence & Child Abuse
  • Economic Inequality
  • Family Caregiving (for Adults, Children, and Disabilities)
  • Family Counseling, Therapy & Parenting Intervention
  • Family Law
  • Feminism & Families
  • Fertility,Reproduction & Sexual Health
  • Gender & Sexuality
  • Health & Illness
  • History & Trends on Gender, Marriage & Family Life
  • Immigrant, Mixed Status & Transnational Families
  • LGBTQ Partnering & Families
  • Loss & Resiliency within Families
  • Media Briefs
  • Military Families
  • Parenthood: Motherhood/Fatherhood
  • Public Policy
  • Race, Ethnicity & Culture
  • Sexual Abuse & Misconduct
  • Singles & Dating
  • Step-Families
  • Transition – Adolescents to Adulthood
  • Transition – Couples to Parenting
  • Trauma and Disaster
  • Work & Family

The Council of Contemporary Families is housed at the University of Texas at Austin through the generous support from:

Why should you support CCF?

Loading Quotes...
© 2014 Council on Contemporary Families - Web Design by HelloAri - Managed by CCF Admin Team