Why Are Gen-X Moms So Weirdly Obsessive About Their Kids?
There’s a growing issue of Gen-X moms who can’t let their kids grow, or even give them space.
Darren Baker | Canva Editor's Note: This is a part of YourTango's Opinion section where individual authors can provide varying perspectives for wide-ranging political, social, and personal commentary on issues.
Today, I was scrolling through Reddit and found a blog post that sounded a bit too familiar.
As you can see, the post follows a Gen-X couple who had kids…and became sickeningly obsessed with them. She wouldn’t let them out of her sight. She demanded they sleep with her in bed. She wouldn’t give them space.
By now, the kids are teenagers and have been scrambling to get away from her. In her mind, she still has no idea why her kids are distancing themselves from her — even when she’s caused serious issues for her own life.
It’s a story I’ve seen play out among many of the people I used to know. Some were men I dated. Others were friends who still couldn’t drive or hold down a job without Mommy Dearest. This begs the question:
Why are Gen-X moms so weirdly obsessive about their kids?
Nicoleta Ionescu / Shutterstock
There’s a growing issue of moms who can’t let their kids grow, or even give them space.
When I grew up in the 90s, the term “Helicopter Parents” was first coined as a term for parents that hovered, hovered, hovered over their kids. Everything their kids did was monitored. Everything their kids did was also dictated to them.
While I might be wrong, I feel like Millennials were the first generation to see widespread hovering from parents. As years passed, the dangerous effects of helicopter parenting became well-documented — and many of the first victims went low-contact or even no-contact with their parents.
Yet, despite all the warnings and klaxons, it seems like it’s a “trend that won’t die.” Many Gen-X and Millennial moms commit the sin of hovering, crowding, and invading their kids’ personal lives.
Though helicopter parenting might seem well-intentioned, the truth is that it’s pathological.
It’s a scary world to raise kids in, no doubt. However, part of being a good parent is giving your kids enough space and opportunity to fail to make them able to handle the difficulties of life.
It’s normal to want to protect your kid. It’s not normal to fool yourself into thinking you can protect your kid from everything — or to fool yourself into thinking that you are everything your child needs for their life to be complete.
While men can do this on occasion, this issue tends to be almost entirely a female problem. Perhaps more significantly, it tends to be a strange obsession that primarily focuses on sons rather than daughters.
Don’t believe it? Take a look at the social media trend known as “boy moms,” where moms seem to obsess, hover, and even show borderline inappropriate behavior to the boys they gave birth to.
To mothers like this, their children can do no wrong. Their children also need a mom nearby 24/7. To their moms, these children are not other people; they’re extensions of a mother’s self — like an extra arm or a leg. Moms who do this are often delusional.
Gen-X moms will do anything possible to make themselves believe that their children need them, even when doctors, spouses, and even the kids themselves tell them it’s not healthy.
The growing parent obsession is a serious problem. So, when I was a kid, parents who wouldn’t let their kids out without supervision were a rarity. My parents and my best friend’s parents were known for being very strict compared to others — and it often got in the way of things.
People with “hoverparents” were rare, and looked at with a certain level of pity. However, it was quietly understood that most of these helicopter parents would stop most of their shenanigans once the kids went off to college, giving kids the opportunity to fly free.
That’s no longer the case, not by a long shot.
Online, I’ve read story after story of moms who wouldn’t accept their kids moving out for college without the possibility of living with them in the dorms meant for students. I’ve also personally seen at least two parents come with their kids to job interviews.
My parents, college professors, also had to deal with helicopter parent obsessions. It got to the point where their colleges had to have a policy about parents calling the school to learn about student grades, whereabouts, and more.
I don’t need to tell readers how unhealthy this is. It’s downright sick. These moms are abusing their children, treating them like toys to make themselves feel safe, important, and in control.
Unsurprisingly, most people with extreme hover-moms have one of two outcomes: they either stay emotionally stunted “forever kids” until Mother Dearest dies and they break, or they go no-contact with their parents. But why is this such a growing problem?
Many Gen-X helicopter parents became that way because, in their own words, they were latchkey kids who overcorrected the behavior of their parents.
But that doesn’t explain Millennials or Gen-Z heli-moms. The fact that this is a growing problem isn’t coincidental. It’s a sign of a lot of different factors that are affecting our society as a whole. Let me explain…
Remember when I said the 80s and 90s were the first decades of helicopter parenting? It’s not a coincidence that they also were the decades when “stranger danger” became a major topic of discussion.
Parents were warned about kidnappings and child murder by total strangers — a bold-faced error, considering that the most likely offender is the parents, family members, or people close to the family.
Every year that passed since the 90s was a year when society became less and less trusting. Parents were warned of danger around every corner…and we are shocked to find out that moms reacted to these warnings by choosing to force their kids to stay inside or under supervision.
Our society embraced paranoia and stigmatized trust. That led to a lot of anxious moms restricting and infantilizing their kids. While 12-year-olds used to do late-night bike rides in the 80s, most parents now flip out if their kids go biking alone at 16.
Even if the main cause of overparenting is something else, it’s clear that anxiety has at least something to do with this Gen-X obsession with their kids.
If there’s one thing that I learned from being pregnant and then having an open adoption, it’s how society treats moms. Moms are not human to people. They’re slaves and broodmares to the bulk of people — doctors included.
What’s even more tragic is the way moms are pitted against one another. Everyone seems to move goalposts with moms, with mom-shaming being a national pastime of sorts.
Think about it. I’ve heard all of these barbs directed at women:
“Oh, you’re a single mom? Damaged goods. Your kid is going to be traumatized.”
“Oh, you didn’t breastfeed? I guess you don’t care about your kid enough to give them a ‘natural’ diet.”
“Real moms gave birth naturally.”
Women are always told they’re not “mom enough” unless they sacrifice their entire lives, their goals, their dreams, and all their free time to the altar of motherhood.
One of the most disgusting things about motherhood I’ve seen is the way that people expect women to drop their entire identities so that they become “Mom.”
They are no longer Shiela, Katya, Anna, or Kate. They’re Kaleigh’s mom, Calliou’s mom, Bob’s mom, and Jane’s mom. And what’s sad about this is that this attitude hurts their kids while also stripping women of their independence.
It’s not healthy for kids to think that their mom exists only to serve and raise them. It’s also not healthy for women to be moms and only moms. Sometimes, other things (such as a spouse or a job) should come first.
When your kids are your entire life, letting them grow up or even have space can become an existential threat. I mean, you just gave up who you were for those kids…and now they want to leave you?
Where does that leave you!? Your identity is “MOM.” If you’re not doing “mom” things and mothering your kid and watching your kid, what are you doing?! Moms who think like this realize they won’t have anything without their kids because they dropped their identities for the “Mom-dentity.”
Maybe it’s due to the paranoia, maybe it’s due to the mom-shaming and mom-petition, but whatever the reason, moms are isolated. Most women I know who become moms all say the same thing: “No one told me it’d be this lonely.”
kryzhov / Shutterstock
If you’re a mom who operates under modern standards, you can’t leave your kid alone for too long. Even pawning your kid off to parents (if you’re that lucky) too often is frowned upon by some. So, any plans you make have to include kids.
Unfortunately, most childfree people don’t want to hang out at a bar with you if you have a toddler or newborn in tow. Honestly, the only lounge that I ever saw with a kid’s menu during non-performer hours shut down years ago.
This leaves women to seek out “mom friends,” who often end up being either their lifeblood or major threats to their remaining sanity. If you can’t make mom friends, you end up alone with your kids as company.
Meanwhile, a lot of dads tend to avoid helping moms with the daily goings-on. In many cases, relationships suffer when kids come into the picture. Date nights? They vanish for many couples, leaving moms feeling unwanted by their partners.
Guess what ends up happening then. Yep, moms turn to their children to be their besties. And this leads them to freak out if their kids start to even remotely detach from their hips.
Is narcissistic parenting the root of why Gen-X moms are so weirdly obsessive?
So, I’m not going to get too much into this, but a study cited in Psychology Today noted that helicopter parenting is a type of narcissistic parenting. The way helicopter parenting and parental obsession work makes this make sense.
Think about it. Narcissists often view their families as extensions of themselves. When you’re a mom who has a weird obsession with your child (a genetic extension of you), your need to control them often stems from a narcissistic need.
Most child-obsessed parents know they’re hurting their kids by crowding them and controlling them. They don’t care. They don’t have the empathy to care what they’re doing to their kids.
Their needs come first — not their kids. It’s their way of controlling others so that they can feel important and needed.
As someone who grew up with parents who yearned for a conservatively dressed, feminine girl, my gut instinct is to let my kid dress in whatever way she wants. I also have been trying to get her to enjoy metal music, though she’s more of a pop girl.
Every parent tends to have regrets. Some regret they have kids, and double down by becoming obsessed with their kids. Others regret that they weren’t in Hollywood, so they become similar to Jeanette McCurdy’s mom. Still more regret that they weren’t safe as kids, so they turn into personal bodyguards for their kids.
Every parent has regrets. Some regret things more than others. That’s often when they end up going to an extreme length to hover, control, and push kids in a certain direction.
Finally, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Way too many people give women who are obsessively clingy with their kids too much of a wide berth. If we as a collective said this wasn’t okay, there would be less of this.
Schools have accommodated moms, making them “aides” so they can sit and stare at their kids at school. Lawmakers made it harder for kids to flee moms who are enmeshed with them.
Currently, CPS generally doesn’t see enmeshment as a reason to remove a kid from the home. Workplaces, particularly fast food places, will occasionally allow parents to watch their kids work.
And fellow parents? Somehow, they haven’t gotten the memo that they can speak up about enmeshment. It’s not easy, but someone has to say something. Those kids can’t speak for themselves.
Kids cannot stay kids forever. A successful parent makes their job obsolete.
You want to have functional adult children. You’re not raising a perma-baby. You’re raising a human. The growing enmeshment problem doesn’t just harm kids. It destroys families and makes it harder for institutions like schools and workplaces to function.
So, maybe it’s time we talk about what makes parental obsession so common. Chances are, we can find a way to put our collective foot down and help moms have healthier relationships with kids.
Ossiana Tepfenhart is a writer whose work has been featured in Yahoo, BRIDES, Your Daily Dish, Newtheory Magazine, and others.