UGH.
This book is like reading an infinitely long essay. It’s just chapter after sub
chapter of words and support and citations and all the other boring parts of
writing. To make it even worse, every sub chapter says essentially the same
things in new ways. I’m guessing that it’s the author referring their points
and evidence back to their thesis statement, which is good writing I suppose
for a few page paper. But in a 250+ page book, redundant is an understatement.
As
the cover suggests, the thesis relates to how invasive parents or “helicopter”
parents are creating generation that isn’t ready for the real world. However,
“wimp” doesn’t necessarily portray how Marano describes the generation of
Millennials (my generation). Children aren’t becoming physically weaker, it’s
just that they aren’t prepared properly for the world they will enter after
high school. They live their childhoods with their parents at their side the
whole way, and when college comes, they can’t handle living on their own and
they dropout or fail miserably.
One
thing that has pleasantly surprised me to this point is how relevant the
content of the book has been to my life. The focus of the book is on middle to
upper-middle class families, where parents make the only focus of their kids’
lives to get into the best college possible. There have been several times
where a discussion topic comes up where I have something relevant from the book
to contribute. Despite how mundane it is, the book is interesting in that
regard. As far as writing lessons we have done, there haven’t been any elements
of literary non-fiction to this point, and I don’t expect there to be since
it’s an essay style book.
One
of the best points Marano makes is about learning from failure. She writes, “Failure
is information. Parents are bubble-wrapping their kids to keep them from
failing and to keep their path to college straight.” From points made earlier,
I was immediately able to conclude that since parents are keeping their kids
from failing, the lack of experience in dealing with failure is what leads to
kids struggling so much in college. Sure enough, the next few sentences explain
the same connection. That’s the love-hate relationship I have with this book.
The author connects the dots very well, but that is also what makes it so long
and tedious to read. Anyways, I’m looking forward to the chapter that delves
into kids affected by invasive parenting who are in college.
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