What defines a helicopter parent?

[pbear19]

One of my biggest beefs with modern society is the apparent movement away from taking personal responsibility for anything. We have become a culture that blames many an ill in our lives on someone else, and seldom acknowledge any wrong doing in ourselves.

Reading this thread, I'm beginning to wonder if this lack of personal responsibility might not be at the heart of helicoptering, moreso than any influence of technology or anything else. So many of the above examples would never take place if the parent would consider that their child (or in some cases the parent) might have some role in the failure to achieve whatever they wanted to achieve. Instead, the blame goes to the teacher, the system, the mean sorority girls, etc.

Just typing while I think, but I believe it's an interesting correlation.