What defines a helicopter parent?

[cuteASAbug]

I think that sometimes the kids are as much to blame for it as the parents. They are comfortable with the idea of having their mothers do everything for them and don't want it to change. I had a roommate in college whose mother would drive up once a week to visit to do her laundry and cook her dinner. She would also call her mother and ask her to call her professors to get them to change her grades or to call the housing office and complain when she had problems with another roommate. At our convention last month, someone was discussing statistics and helicopter parents, and said that the majority of incoming college freshmen feel that their parents aren't being involved enough in their lives and want them to be more active. This sort of scares me.