Parenting style is undoubtedly a major factor in the upbringing of a child. Recent research from Carnegie Mellon also suggests that it can be insightful in terms of understanding the political orientation of the parents themselves.
The researchers examined whether helicopter parents, who favor a more disciplinarian approach, are more likely to be conservative than range explorer parents, who are more likely to be liberal.
“There’s a new dimension of parenting philosophy that has emerged (in recent decades)—free-range versus helicopter parenting,” the authors explain. “If the (helicopter parenting) trend continues, we can expect people to endorse greater intervention in personal liberty in most social institutions.”
Government as family
The research was based on the “government as family” theory popularized by George Philip Lakoff. This suggests that our political beliefs about how governments should be run tend to mirror our personal beliefs on how our families should operate. As a result, conservatives tend to have stricter parenting styles whereas liberals are more nurturing.
The researchers focused their attention on the helicopter parent, who has been defined as one who “takes an overprotective or excessive interest in the life of their child or children.” Three experiments were undertaken to examine the role parenting style has on policy preferences.
Volunteers were asked a series of question to understand their support for paternalistic policies. Somewhat surprisingly, the results showed that one’s parenting style was the single most reliable predictor of support for such policies, and more so than political party identity, ideological support, or various other demographic factors.
A causal link
The researchers then conducted an additional experiment to try and determine a causal link between the two and found that the paternalistic approach was also found in terms of approach to education, medicine, religion, and peer relationships.
“By knowing people’s preferences for helicopter parenting, we can predict people’s views on autonomy vs. coercion in business, religion, sports, peer relationships, medicine, politics,” the researchers explain. “We can even predict how middle-aged people will treat our aging parents in regards to autonomy, which has implications for geriatric health.”
The authors note that helicopter parenting has been believed to be detrimental to children in previous studies as it lowers their level of autonomy and general satisfaction with life. Despite this, it is a trend that is broadly on the rise.
“We don’t want to become alarmist, because we really don’t know whether the effects on children would be the same as the effects on citizens,” the researchers conclude. “But if being helicoptered has similar effects on adults as kids, we would expect to see heightened mental health problems and lower self-efficacy across society at large.”
