What’s Wrong With the ‘Helicopter Parent’ Generation? by John Grondelski

Many kids have been shielded from life by helicopter parents and indulgent schools. But how will they handle the demands of the real world?

By John Grondelski, EWTN News, June 14, 2023

John Grondelski John M. Grondelski (Ph.D., Fordham) is former associate dean of the School of Theology, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey. …

The distinctive note of Charles Péguy’s poetry is that he often writes it as if the speaker is God. In his poem “Freedom,” God the Father reflects on the balancing act vis-à-vis his children that freedom poses on him. Freedom requires his child to take risks to stand on his own two feet but, like any good parent, God wants to protect his child. It’s like the dilemma, he says, of a father teaching his son how to swim: when do you hold him up, when do you let go?

Such is the mystery of man’s freedom, says God,
And the mystery of my government towards him and towards his freedom.
If I hold him up too much, he is no longer free
And if I don’t hold him up sufficiently, I am endangering his salvation.
Two goods in a sense almost equally precious.
For salvation is of infinite price.
But what kind of salvation would a salvation be that was not free? ….