3. We Can’t Helicopter Parent Three Children.

Helicopter parenting is almost intuitive at one child. Parents not only can do everything for onlys, but also, as anyone who has watched a two-year-old dress herself knows, it seems easier, or at least faster, for the parents to do everything. Maintaining the same level of control for two children is utterly exhausting. Micromanaging the individual children consumes enough time. Negotiating their interaction consumes the rest.

But we can’t helicopter parent three children. We can hire nannies to helicopter the children, but that is an advantage only available to the very well-off. We can rely on grandparents to hover over the children, but that requires 1) grandparents willing to hover and 2) parents to start relying on a village. (See below.)

Throw in the disadvantage to children, the isolation of motherhood, the common marital strain in child-centered marriages, as well as the nervous breakdown for any who actually attempt hovering over three, and in short order the elder generation’s backed-off parenting style starts making sense.

Parents of three revert to the backed-off style in resignation, at first comforting themselves with notions of “good-enough parenting.” (For the readers who might notice that there is a catchy name for every aspect of parenting, yes, there is. It’s part of the quest for a unified theory of parenting. We want to identify with a style, a group. Why this is so is an interesting discussion for another day.)