helicopter-parented children and the challenges of the Millennial are intricately linked, there is also research linking over-parenting and entitlement mentality.16 What else can you expect for a generation raised without the opportunity to struggle and learn from their mistakes? When you’ve gone from age zero to eighteen with your parents doing everything for you, is it any wonder that the world now accuses you of being an entitled narcissist?
Back to the Bradley-Geist and Olson-Buchanan research at California State. Their survey of college students explored general parental involvement and over-parenting as they correlate to various work-related outcomes. Students with overly-involved parents were found to have lower social and general self-efficacy, as well as “maladaptive responses to workplace scenarios.” Those who had been raised with a helicopter parenting style were more likely to choose workplace solutions that relied on someone else, rather than taking personal responsibility.
“Without a strong sense of self-efficacy, or the belief that one can accomplish tasks and goals, young adults are likely to be dependent on others, engage in poor coping strategies, and fail to take accountability in the workplace.” So, what’s a grown adult to do, when they realize they’ve been raised to be essentially helpless?
If you were raised by helicopter parents (or, more likely, a helicopter parent, as single parenthood correlates with over-parenting), all is not lost. You are not merely an entitled blob of dependent workplace goo, waiting for a group project you can hide behind. There is hope for you to become a functional adult in society and avoid harming the development of your own children. This is the ultimate danger of toxic parenting: in an attempt to avoid hurting your children the way you were hurt, you run the risk of swinging the pendulum too far in the opposite direction, hurting them anyway. It happens with parenting just like it happens on a societal scale, one generation blaming the next because they don’t understand why their efforts didn’t do what they wanted.
Adverse Childhood Experiences
One of the most well-known studies related to childhood trauma is the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study first conducted by the CDC and Kaiser-Permanente from 1995 to 1997.17 The ACE study investigated the correlation between adverse experiences in a subject’s childhood and negative outcomes later in life. The more ACEs someone experienced as a child, the more risk they have for outcomes such as alcohol abuse, depression, illicit drug use, and suicide attempts. There is also a correlation linking ACEs to early initiation of sexual activity, higher risk for domestic violence, higher risk of sexual violence, and increased rates of sexually transmitted infections, adolescent and unintended pregnancies, and fetal death. Similarly, there is an increased risk for smoking (including early initiation of smoking), and health outcomes like liver disease, heart disease, and pulmonary disease. Finally, factors such as poor work performance, financial stress, and poor academic achievement are also linked with ACEs.
What are the ACEs?
The ACEs studied in the late 1990s are common and affect children into their adulthood, possibly for their entire lives. These experiences include:
• Physical abuse
• Sexual abuse
• Emotional abuse
• Physical neglect
• Emotional neglect
• Mother treated violently
• Household substance abuse
• Household mental illness
• Parental separation or divorce
• Incarcerated household member
I believe that traumatic childhood circumstances are linked to the perception that Millennials are entitled and narcissistic. The Baby Boomer Generation skyrocketed the divorce rate in the United States, and divorced parents are one of the ACEs studied. Obviously not every child of divorced parents was neglected or abused, but a divorce is almost always emotionally traumatic. Add to the general trauma of a divorce other ACEs, like witnessing domestic violence or alcohol abuse in the household, and the effect snowballs quickly from a couple of ACEs to a whole pile of them. It can be argued that the Boomer Generation was one of the first that made it socially acceptable to divorce, and I’d argue that they were victim to plenty of ACEs themselves. As we continue to name and study these factors, it’s easier to see the pattern has repeated itself for generations.
Imagine that someone born in the 1950s grew up with either ignoring or engulfing parents. They may have grown up with corporal punishment or been forced to “respect their elders” even if their elders were toxic toward them. Or they may have been a golden child, loved and adored and allowed to do whatever they pleased, but suffering from the lack of boundaries. They may have had to tiptoe around alcoholism, or maybe they tried to ignore domestic violence in the home.
These children grew up and got married and had kids of their own, and maybe they struggled to find a balance between preserving the idyllic parts of their own childhoods and trying to ensure their children had a better life in other ways. As the prevalence of divorce expanded, and as women developed more agency and financial independence, the times were definitely a-changing.
The Baby Boomers didn’t know what to do. Nothing was the same as it used to be. They were growing up during the sexual revolution and had better access to birth control. Feminism was gaining more and more traction, as Baby Boomer women made up 45 percent of the labor force and overtook men in the completion of college degrees. In the midst of all this change, how were the Boomers to effectively raise the next generation?
Part of working through your own childhood traumas with the help of a trained therapist is to put yourself in the shoes of your parents and understand the source of their behavior. This does not mean you have to forgive them, but it can be helpful in understanding that it’s not your fault. Your parents were not perfectly healthy and well-adapted people who mistreated you because of something inherently wrong with you. They were mistreated as well, as were their parents before them. It does not excuse what happened to you, but it gives greater context.
Abuse is never the victim’s fault. When we begin to understand that this applies on a generational scale as well as an individual one, we can see how to break the cycle of generational blame. It’s not that Millennials are suddenly a group of whining, spoiled, entitled brats. Generation X was called a generation of lazy slackers. Boomers had their own challenges from the generation before them. Each generation is prone to lose their own context and ability to relate to the younger crowd when society starts heaping all the blame on the next generation. Let’s stop the cycle.
Solutions for Adult Children of Emotionally Abusive Parents
First, understand that it’s not your fault if your parents ignored or overprotected you. It was nothing wrong or broken within you that caused their behavior. It is okay to acknowledge that your parents hurt you. In fact, they actively impeded your development, independence, and autonomy. You deserve to figure out your own way in life, and you will not feel fulfilled by following someone else’s prescribed path for you or spending your life chasing someone’s approval.
Begin to distance yourself from your parents and set boundaries with them. Depending on their level of involvement in your life, this might be as easy as not always picking up the phone when they call, or it might be as hard as having to sit them down and explain that you need some space. I also implore you to find a good therapist who can help you sift through your brain and establish boundaries with your parents.
It’s possible that, with a lot of work on boundaries and open lines of communication,
