[musgrove]

As the parent of a four-year-old, I'm especially aware of what's happening among parents and children. And as a 50-year old, I've seen several generations grow up. What this situation involves is: pay now, or pay later. Doing everything you can and giving your child 100% when they're young and growing and learning is the time to teach them to be independent and confident. Not when they're 20+ years old. It's too late; you missed the train. And what parents say they do vs. what they do in reality is quite different. I watch it at playgrounds, kids' events, and each time I go with my daughter to a place with a lot of kids and their parents. The parents likely are looking at their phones or talking to one another, taking a "break" from parenting. I see parents bring their little kids to playgrounds, and they'll stay in their cars, and let the kids go run around with the playground and want me to push them in the swings and play with them, because their parents are in the car on their phone, smoking weed, listening to music, or just "taking a break." I see it all the time. And if that's the encouragement and attention they're giving them in public, it's likely even less back at home. But when they grow up to be helpless and have no coping skills and all the rest of the many characteristics that need to be instilled into a human to be a successfull adult, they scratch their heads and ask "what went wrong?" And usually try ot find fault with society, government, or some external factor that's responsible. They blew it.

[Negitivefrags]

So you are saying that the problem with young adults not being independent enough is that they were too independent of their parents as a child?

That doesn't sound right to me.

[atroche]

It might be that the skills involved in being independent (e.g. good habits around money / food / exercise / socialising / working) don't just come naturally but need to be inculcated from an early age at the cost of significant parental investment.

[cjbassi]

If they're too independent as children, they aren't taught how to be successful people, and then as young adults they end up relying on their parents as life becomes more difficult.

[abootstrapper]

It sounds like you’re describing “helicopter parenting” on the playground as a means of creating independent adults. I feel quite the opposite. Independent kids become independent adults. Kids need to be given the freedom to fail, to fall, skin their knee, make their own friends, solve their own problems, without parental interference.

[bthallplz]

From what you describe, it sounds to me like these parents are not meddling in the lives of their children, which might instill a greater degree of the children feeling on their own at an earlier age rather than feeling strongly dependent upon guiding forces. I don't wish to encourage this manner of absent parenting, but what you describe of the parents' behavior sounds quite different from the things that would lead to the children feeling helpless and without coping skills — as they are already without their parents help and must cope on their own.