Today's Ypulse Guest Post is in response to the Essentials link I posted yesterday about the whole Hannah Montana/Club Libby Lu essay scam. It's from Oliver "Olly" Benson, who is head of editorial at the UK youth journalism charity, Headliners. Find out more about Olly here. If you work in youth media or marketing and have an idea for a guest post, just email me.

The Problem With 'Pushy Parents' (Note from Anastasia: I wrote the headline for Olly's post)

I switched on my work computer for the first time in two weeks; fought my way through a whole load of Christmas press releases and then got down to the serious business of reading YPulse. And got even more depressed.

Not by the blog itself, far from it, but by the story of a mother who justified why she let her six-year-old daughter lie about her father being killed in Iraq to win some concert tickets. "We did whatever we could do to win," she said.

Coming on the back of the horrific case of Megan Meier, I couldn't help thinking that there should be more outrage at the morals of parents. (That both these cases are in America is by-the-by; I would hazard a guess that something similar will happen soon in the UK). Had Megan Meier been driven to death by some teenagers who used MySpace to create a fake friend, I get the feeling the media would have hit the "moral panic" button, questioning the values of every teenager, as they did after the death of Jamie Bulger. Instead the reporting appears remote; the story is presented as abnormal and you get the feeling the journalist could have easily added "crazy" as an adjective before references to the Lori Drew (the mother deemed responsible) to make sure readers understood that normal parents didn't behave in this way.

And yet, both the Megan and ticket stories probably are the visible tip of a much bigger iceberg. Not that I think that all parents are bad or morally-questionable; just that there is a creeping tendency to do "what’s best for your kids" regardless of the consequences. Parents think nothing of moving houses, or even buying up a second house simply to ensure that their children get into the right school. On TV talent shows, whilst children will often accept defeat, it's the parents who will barge in and start threatening the judges for failing their little darlings.

Schools are introducing security measures for parents' evening and a friend tells me she's marked up pupils work because it was easier than telling the child's mum that they were failing. Only today the Guardian reports how university lecturers are being tackled by pushy parents, who've also been responsible for writing their offspring's UCAS form (university application) and attended the open day and careers events.

That is why I think we need to make sure that the young people we portray in the media are congratulated for surviving their circumstances, rather than derided for not being perfect. The whole point of childhood is to develop the independence, and interdependence, to survive in a world where you have to be the one who makes the decisions. Sometimes those decisions don't go the way you want; but that's where you learn how to grow wiser.

If the link on YPulse had left me somewhat depressed, my faith in humanity was restored when I had to moderate the comments on the site of the organization I work for. In the inbox was a comment from Amie (scroll down) who I think represents far more the sort of person I want to see being the product of this upcoming generation. She won't necessarily have the access and opportunities of her contemporaries; but she's been given the space and the time to make her decisions. It might go horribly wrong, but you get the feeling she's far more likely to be able to deal with the consequences than the grown-up six-year-old whose mum still lies for her to get her front row tickets at her favorite band.

Categorized under: Youth Marketing

You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.