Connections

The term “helicopter parent” refers to a parent who hovers like a helicopter over a child of any age. From the moment of birth, the children of this generation have been videotaped and over scheduled with sanitized activities for the general well-being of the child.

Their parents are always on the lookout for threats to their child’s security, success, and happiness. If a problem does surface, these parents are ready to swoop in and save the day.

These hovering parents thrive on the fact that they are raising culturally sensitive, well-rounded little people to face the world of the 21st century. Dance, piano, sports, karate, and language classes fill the child’s after-school schedule. This is their response to being the latchkey kids of the 70’s and 80’s. Moreover, parents have instant access to their child through cell phone, e-mail, or text-messaging. They lurk on Facebook and MySpace to see if their baby is hanging out with the bad kids.

Colleges have reported that helicopter parents are making their presence felt on campus. They are intervening in roommate disputes, registering their children for classes, and questioning professors' grades. Their hovering is a reality that has prompted research as to how children will enter the workforce and what influence Mom and Dad might have when it comes to negotiating salary and benefits. Yet to be seen is how helicopter parents will function as grandparents and in-laws.

The good news is that these parents care about their kids and want to protect them and make certain they are successful. The downside is that their self-image is determined by their child’s success. The child's accomplishments, or lack thereof, reflect on them as good or bad parents.

Hovering is impacting youth ministry. The National Study for Youth and Religion, states that children are most influenced in their religious and spiritual behaviors based upon those of their parents. Youth ministry is a wonderful place for young people to become better Catholics, as long as the family schedule allows. Parents can be keenly aware and invested in every aspect of their child’s life, and youth ministry is that unknown option that works if family harmony is not disrupted.

We remain stuck in a paradigm that targets the “good” youth, extracts them from their families, secludes them in a youth room, and teaches them about Christian leadership. All this is done apart from the broader community. Youth are reluctant to make faith commitments because of what their parents might think. Facilitating youth to encounter Jesus Christ would do serious damage to their parents’ plans for them. We take these youth to rallies and conferences and expect them to make a radical choice to follow Christ- to be true adults and owners of their Christian faith- and they stare at us blankly because they know their baseball coach and hovering parents will not allow “God stuff” to interfere.

Catholic parents see themselves embodying the mystery of the Catholic faith while remaining physically detached from the institution, and their children are following suit. They are neither rebellious nor indifferent. They have put their own faithfulness ahead of what their own parents taught them about what it means to be a true Catholic. They simply view faithfulness in the daily routine of family life.

In fact, these parents believe that they are becoming more like a church every day through sacrifice and prayer for their kids, while at the same time moving farther away from Sunday Mass. They accept the ideals of the church and generally agree with church teaching, but step away to use their own judgment in daily decisions. They believe the institutional church exists as a sacramental gas station. And why should they think any different when confirmation preparation is really a holding cell of catechesis that ends in a ceremony that looks and feels like graduation?

Finding their basic faith experiences in the course of daily life, their irregular Mass attendance is an attempt to make a connection to the everyday. And when Mass does not speak to their minds and hearts, they feel even more detached. Since our church glamorizes intellectual conversion, it seems that true faith can be found by reading the right book or listening to right Catholic apologist.

So, what is a solution?

Stop doing youth-centered programming. As the pastoral plan Our Hearts Were Burning Within Us explains “the parish is curriculum.” If we want parents and youth to discover what it means to be Catholic and do Catholic things, we must facilitate authentic encounters with Jesus Christ and his church that reaches them where they are now, not necessarily where we want them to be in 20 years. We still are determining faithfulness as a measurable external activity based on regular attendance for both children and parents. We must encourage and model that we, as a church, value their time and talent rather than their passive existence.

In other words, how we worship, pray, care for the poor, celebrate socially, baptize infants, bury the dead, and welcome at the door communicate more than a systematic catechetical program does. Moreover, outside of gathered church functions, our faith needs to be present and relevant in the daily routine of family life- in the car ride, at the restaurant, in the planning of a vacation, in the football bleachers, in the spousal argument and in the cell-phone conversation at midnight.

I guess the solution is simpler than I thought…youth ministry should target parents.