Raising Children With Benign Neglect

In a recent interview, actress and entrepreneur Jennifer Garner commented she lets her kids experience ‘benign neglect’. To legions of helicopter parents, a statement like that is, at best, controversial and, at worst, abject blasphemy. While coining a new media catchphrase reflective of a decades-old psychological archetype, Ms. Garner, in her candidness is, as a proponent of actual good parenting—unwittingly, or not—spot on.

The Rise of the Helicopter Parent

In her 1981 monograph, The Drama of the Gifted Child, Swiss psychoanalyst Alice Miller presented three parenting archetypes—the good mother, the bad mother and the good-enough mother. The good mother is hypervigilant, overprotective, and self-imposing. The bad mother is neglectful and emotionally unavailable. The good-enough mother balances mindful attention with a laissez-faire context of self-exploration. Miller’s good mother archetype foreshadowed the helicopter parent, who exercises an invasive hypervigilance, ultimately debilitating to both child and parent.

The notion of ‘helicopter parenting’ has become so deeply woven into the cultural fabric it is, at this point, simply acknowledged as part of the overall post-modern cultural narrative. In her book, How to Raise an Adult, educator Juliette Lythcott-Haims suggested a series of child abductions and murders that occurred in late 1970s fostered the Stranger Danger ethic. This new social perspective moved parents and caregivers away from a culture of cautious consideration—one acknowledging Miller’s refrain of the good-enough parent, and echoed in Garner’s exhortation—toward a culture predominated by fear.

Fear Mentality

A fear mentality within the context of parenting serves, in part, as both the genesis and propagator of the helicopter parent. It also further amplifies a number of cultural influences fostering and feeding the current dynamic of over-parenting. Not least among these cultural influences is the self-esteem movement—where every child is a star just because someone tells them it’s so.

In the past, you were a star because you displayed athletic or academic prowess (or both), or were somehow an asset or influence in the community. The self-esteem movement came out of the well-intentioned efforts of parents, however ultimately misguided, largely in response to a notion forwarded by Nathaniel Branden, who posited self-esteem was something that could be conferred. Enter the idea of rewarding presence in lieu of prowess, and suddenly everyone gets a trophy just for showing up.

Failing to Succeed

In fact, self-esteem cannot be conferred—it must be earned—and hard-earned, at that. It is developed primarily through risk taking and skills development. The hypervigilance associated with helicopter parenting, or Miller’s good mother archetype, interferes with this natural developmental process, and its ensuing socialization. When children are bubble-wrapped and misled, they are not allowed to fail, ultimately doing them a disservice.

The experience of false success doesn’t prepare children, teens, or even young adults, for the real world. It is, in fact, the underlying dynamic prompting so many Millennials and Zoomers to ultimately fail—at school, in the workforce and at life in general—and, coincidently, why so many mental health professionals are confronting a young adult population fraught with anxiety, apathy, angst, and self-doubt.

Falling Down

Garner’s admission—and admonition—is also a validation. It opens a door for parents seeking permission to step back—and for the distance that stepping back creates to be acceptable, both to them and within the larger social context. There is a wisdom teaching suggesting you can’t fall down in a muddy field and expect to stand up in the forecourt of the Taj Mahal. You must pick yourself up, muddied as you are, and continue forward on your journey. This notion is at the heart of the mindful attention and allowance for a child’s self-exploration compassed by Miller’s good-enough mother, and reframed in the colloquial parlance of Garner’s benign neglect.

Without some semblance and practical application of these ideas, there is little filter for real-world failure, particularly when the hypervigilant parent is not, or no longer, available as a buffer. Not allowing children to explore and fail on their own robs them of their ability to take responsibility for themselves, their actions and, most poignantly, their outcomes. This lack of self-possession, self-responsibility, and the attendant resources associated with both, can have a profoundly debilitating, if not devastating, immediate and ongoing impact on a rising adult.

Parenting Essential Reads

Responsive, Sensitive Parenting and Healthy Development

Do Parents Always Need to Validate Children's Feelings?

So, let your kid fall in the mud. Better yet, let them play in the mud and experience first-hand the trials, tribulations, and travails of this mess we call life. They might surprise you. Better yet, they may surprise themselves.

© 2023 Michael J. Formica.