Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Copter Parents

Daniel Drezner posts and gets comments about "copter parents", those parents who hover over their college student children.

My Irish and German great grandfathers emigrated to the U.S. at 17, by themselves we think, which is much the same age as many current immigrants. It seems to me that modern progress, by shrinking the size of families, increasing the premium on competition and learning, and giving us more to learn, is in a race with the healthcare industry, itself a vital part of progress.

What's the race: whether the life span is going to grow faster than the span of adolescence. I fear, over the next millennia, we're doomed to see adolescence grow faster until there's just a month or so between the time the last child becomes independent and the parent goes into the nursing home.

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