Ever since the first stirring of civilization, parental love has been highly acclaimed by human being among all kinds of love. However, voices against monster parents are always put under the spotlight in recent years. Frankly, the love of monster parents towards their children is true. They do everything in their power with a hope to have their children wining at the starting line. In the long run, the parent-child relationship will be strained, and even hurting both sides.

 

The over-protection of the monster parents, such as employing a foreign domestic helper to take care of their children without leaving enough room for children to learn on their own, will weaken children’s ability to solve the developmental task of “autonomy” and “shame”. Overly-protected children are then deprived of the ability to learn from mistakes and are unable to prevail in face of adversity. Moreover, mothers are inclined to instill their own values into their children or expect too much from them. There are downsides to the above two situations. Psychologist Ziskind (1945) pointed out that in most cases, over-dominated children show indication of anxiety, submissiveness and dependency; while over-indulged children show indication of over-aggressiveness. The imbalance between the above two are contradiction-prone and conflict-prone.

 

Not only will children who have lost control of their lives do not know the knack of self-care, but they are also prone to lack of confidence and always paranoid about their act. In hope of nurturing children’s whole-person development, there are some parents enrolling their children in numerous interest classes but forget to reserve free time for them. It is disadvantageous to children at play-age to deal with the developmental task of “initiative” and “guilt”. Those children are made to learn, not genuinely exploring the world of knowledge. Support from the monster parents may provoke feeling of being inadequate in their children, hence reducing their initiative and efficacy. They may be overly dependent or lack confidence (Fingerman et al., 2012).

 

Adolescents are in the prime age of their life and are exploring their self-identity. If parents resort to authoritarian parenting style, that they are afraid of letting go and allowing their children to discover their uniqueness. It will weaken their sense of uniqueness and direction. Eventually, the children will plunge into role confusion (E. Erikson & J. Erikson, 1997).

 

As the old saying goes, “Love well, whip well”. The monster parents also have words that are hard to express. However, how difficult is it for affectionate parents to let go? As a matter of fact, instead of binding children’s freedom, it may as well for parents to let go and see them grow and flourish in the compost of mistakes and experiences as days go by.

 

 

 

References

Erikson, E., & Erikson, J. (1997). The life cycle completed. New York: W.W. Norton.

 

Fingerman, K. L., Cheng, Y., Wesselmann, E. D., Zarit, S., Furstenberg, F., & Birditt, K. S. (2012). Helicopter Parents and

          Landing Pad Kids: Intense Parental Support of Grown Children. Journal of Marriage, and Family, 74(4), 880-896.

 

Ziskind, E (1954). Child-parent relationships and their psychopathology. In Psychophysiologic medicine, 157-170).