Snowplow parenting refers to parents who try to remove any obstacles or hardships from their child’s life path. The term was first coined in the Wall Street Journal in 2016 and comes from the analogy of a snowplow clearing the road for cars behind it. Snowplow parents do everything they can to make life easier for their child, from arguing with teachers over grades to calling college professors when their child gets a low mark. The goal is to create a smooth, easy life journey for the child, free of stress, failure, or adverse experiences.
What are the characteristics of snowplow parenting?
Here are some key characteristics of the snowplow parenting style:
– Hyper-focusing on the child’s success – Snowplow parents have an intense focus on their child’s achievements, reputation, and status. Their own self-worth gets tied up in their child’s accomplishments.
– Removing obstacles and hardships – These parents try to clear any difficulties, setbacks, or inconveniences out of the child’s way so they never have to struggle. This includes doing tasks for them.
– Micromanaging the child’s life – Snowplow parents tend to micromanage their child’s responsibilities like schoolwork, friendships, sports teams, etc. They allow little autonomy.
– Intervening on the child’s behalf – They frequently intervene with authority figures like teachers and coaches to prevent any problems or inconveniences for their child.
– Shielding from failure and critique – Snowplow parents try to protect their child from failure, disappointment, negative feedback, or consequences. They may yell at coaches, challenge grades, or confront peers who criticize their child.
– Hyper-vigilance about safety and emotions – These parents can become overprotective about both physical safety (“helicopter parenting”) and emotional well-being. They may get overly involved to prevent distress.
– Lack of limits and high responsiveness – Snowplow parents typically do not enforce many boundaries or discipline. They give a lot of leeway and are highly responsive to the child’s desires.
The snowplow approach stems from loving intentions to give one’s child the best chances in life. However, many experts argue that it can cross the line into unhealthy territory.
What causes snowplow parenting?
There are several cultural and psychological drivers behind the rise in snowplow parenting in recent decades:
– Competitive college admissions – Getting into elite colleges has become incredibly competitive. This pressure motivates parents to micro-manage their kids’ lives to pad their resumes.
– Fear of children’s fragility – Some parents see their child as psychologically fragile and unable to handle stressors that prior generations endured. This perception fuels overprotection.
– Parenting scrutiny – Parents face enormous scrutiny through social media. This makes discipline and allowing consequences feel risky.
– Intensive parenting norms – Modern middle-class parenting culture emphasizes close supervision, constant enrichment, and advocacy for one’s kids as “good parenting.”
– Self-esteem movement – Educational trends have moved away from rigorous competition and towards protecting self-esteem. This shapes parents’ approach.
– Earlier dependence – Young adults are physically mature but economically dependent for longer. This extends intensive parenting.
– Luxury of choice – Middle and upper-class families have more resources to expend on optimizing their child’s experience.
Snowplow parenting has its roots in both economics and culture. While driven by loving aims, experts warn it may cross the line into unhealthy territory.
Why is snowplow parenting controversial?
Snowplow parenting has generated significant backlash and criticism in recent years. Here are some of the main concerns about this parenting approach:
– Lack of resilience – By shielding children from challenges, they fail to develop coping skills, resilience, and grit to power through obstacles. This ill-equips them for adulthood.
– Entitlement and dependence – Snowplowed kids may develop an unhealthy sense of entitlement and privilege. They grow overly dependent on their parents deep into adulthood.
– Narcissism – Children may become self-absorbed and narcissistic if parents portray them as super-special and focus heavily on their status and achievements.
– Impaired life skills – Doing so much for their children prevents kids from developing crucial life skills like self-regulation, planning, and basic responsibilities.
– Mental health risks – Snowplowed kids show higher rates of anxiety, depression, and struggling with the disappointments of normal life. Overprotection breeds fragility.
– Peer resentment – Other students often resent snowplowed kids for getting special treatment. This can impede healthy social development.
– Burdens teachers – Constant intervening with teachers, coaches etc. is burdensome and disrespectful of their professional roles.
– Inequality – Poorer families cannot provide this intensive level of optimization. It widens social gaps under the guise of good parenting.
While clearly driven by love, snowplow parenting borders on over-parenting. Allowing children to face age-appropriate challenges is crucial for their development. Moderation and balance are key.
What are the effects of snowplow parenting?
Research increasingly shows snowplow parenting can have detrimental effects on kids, including:
– Weak executive functioning – Children have poorer focus, self-control, planning and ability to handle cognitive complexity.
– Helplessness – They feel powerless in the face of challenge and quickly give up due to lack of grit.
– Externalized blame – Rather than take responsibility, they blame failures on external factors like teachers.
– Lower perceived competence – Snowplowed kids underestimate their abilities as they attribute success to external help.
– Greater deceitfulness – Studies find these children are more willing to lie to parents and teachers to avoid getting in trouble.
– Poorer academic skills – Despite intensive parenting, grades and test scores are often lower.
– Lower self-directedness – These young adults show weaker intrinsic motivation and sense of purpose.
– Greater mental health issues – Rates of anxiety, depression, and substance abuse are markedly higher.
– Impaired coping abilities – Without slowly built resilience, children reach adulthood poorly equipped to handle stress, failure, uncertainty and rejection.
Overall, snowplow parenting often backfires by fostering helpless, fragile children unequipped for adulthood. Self-sufficiency requires slowly developing coping skills through age-appropriate challenges.
How common is snowplow parenting?
It’s hard to gauge precisely how many parents engage in snowplow parenting today. But surveys suggest it has become relatively widespread, especially among middle and upper-middle class families:
– A 2016 study found 38% of upper-middle class parents reported intervening to solve problems with college professors and employers.
– In the same study, 45% of wealthy parents said they would call their child’s employer if their child was having an issue at work.
– A 2019 Nationally Representative Poll found 61% of parents had done their child’s homework.
– In another national survey, over 75% of parents said they reminded their college-aged kids of deadlines or scheduled appointments for them.
– College officials estimate severe snowplow parenting affects around 10-20% of students to an extreme degree.
While by no means universal, snowplow parenting has grown common enough to worry many educators. Substantial numbers of parents now engage in some of its questionable practices.
Is there any positive side to snowplow parenting?
Snowplow parenting is clearly problematic when taken to an extreme. However, experts note it can have some potential benefits when done judiciously and age-appropriately:
– Removing excessive barriers helps nurture self-confidence and enthusiasm in youngest kids.
– Providing warm support and advocacy models effective self-advocacy skills.
– Monitoring schoolwork prevents kids falling irreparably behind in core skills.
– Building packed schedules can expose children to diverse enriching activities.
– Intervening to prevent severe bullying or abusive situations may sometimes be warranted.
– Clearing logistical obstacles allows some kids to explore their passions.
The goal should be empowering children to handle reasonable challenges on their own over time. In moderation, snowplow parenting may have select upsides for younger kids while still allowing space to build life skills.
What are the alternatives to snowplow parenting?
Rather than intensive snowplow parenting, experts recommend more balanced, autonomy-granting approaches:
– Authoritative parenting – Combining high warmth with firm boundaries around behavior.
– Free-range parenting – Allowing kids independence to play and explore on their own.
– Natural consequences – Letting children face reasonable outcomes of their behavior and choices.
– Mindset coaching – Teaching kids abilities grow through effort rather than fixed talents.
– Autonomy granting – Supporting intrinsic motivation by allowing kids choice and input.
– Scaffolding challenges – Slowly increasing responsibilities to match the child’s growing abilities.
– Modeling persistence – Demonstrating working through difficulties, not just talent.
– Teaching mindfulness – Helping kids practice calming, focusing, and cognitive reappraisal skills when stressed.
The key is equip kids with life skills while still providing backup support as needed. Sheltering children from all difficulties can backfire by impairing their development.
How can parents find the right balance?
It’s understandable wanting to optimize a child’s life and remove obstacles. But preventing all hardship can stunt development. Here are tips for finding balance as a parent:
– Let kids struggle through some hard assignments rather than instantly intervening.
– Give children age-appropriate autonomous spaces to solve their own social problems.
– When you step in to help, explain it’s a temporary aid so they can gain skills (not a permanent fix).
– Consider your child’s temperament – more fragile kids may need more scaffolding.
– Don’t over-attribute success solely to the child’s innate talent – praise effort.
– Allow small failures while providing emotional backup. Don’t harshly criticize.
– Adjust support levels gradually as kids mature – don’t create dependency.
– Model and praise examples of persistence through difficulties.
– Remind kids of their past successes when they now face challenges.
With the right balance of care and stepping back, parents can empower kids to develop crucial life skills. The key is adjusting support based on the child’s evolving abilities.
Conclusion
Snowplow parenting stems from loving aims of optimizing children’s lives. However, taken too far it can cross into unhealthy territory by preventing kids developing key resilience and life skills. The goal should be slowly empowering autonomy, intrinsic motivation and the ability to handle reasonable hardship. This requires gradually stepping back parental support as children mature and gain competencies. With the right balance, parents can continue providing a nurturing foundation while making space for crucial developmental growth. The sweet spot is scaffolding age-appropriate challenges to match the child’s evolving abilities. This allows children to build both confidence and real coping skills on the road to adulthood.