This article in the WSJ has a lot of good points towards being a parent; too many parents do attempt to mold a child into what the parents decide the child should be instead of providing a loving stable environment where the child is allowed to be their own individual. Here is the excerpt from the article that drives the point home:

The most important rewards of being a parent aren’t your children’s grades and trophies—or even their graduations and weddings. They come from the moment-by-moment physical and psychological joy of being with this particular child, and in that child’s moment-by-moment joy in being with you.

Instead of valuing “parenting,” we should value “being a parent.” Instead of thinking about caring for children as a kind of work, aimed at producing smart or happy or successful adults, we should think of it as a kind of love. Love doesn’t have goals or benchmarks or blueprints, but it does have a purpose. Love’s purpose is not to shape our beloved’s destiny but to help them shape their own.

What should parents do? The scientific picture fits what we all know already, although knowing doesn’t make it any easier: We unconditionally commit to love and care for this particular child. We do this even though all children are different, all parents are different, and we have no idea beforehand what our child will be like. We try to give our children a strong sense of safety and stability. We do this even though the whole point of that safe base is to encourage children to take risks and have adventures. And we try to pass on our knowledge, wisdom and values to our children, even though we know that they will revise that knowledge, challenge that wisdom and reshape those values.

In fact, the very point of commitment, nurture and culture is to allow variation, risk and innovation. Even if we could precisely shape our children into particular adults, that would defeat the whole evolutionary purpose of childhood.

The big difference in the way people approach parenting from when I was a kid in the 60s and 70s to the way it is done now, is that back then parents provided food, shelter, love, and a stable environment for us to flourish naturally. We were encouraged to spend time away from home, playing outdoors with the neighbor kids, developing our social skills, learning to make our own decisions (bad or good), and deciding our own fate.

I remember the beginning of helicopter parenting and was horrified at how these parents controlled their kid's every minute of time with planned activities, strict schedules, and how they protected their children from ever having to make a decision other than deciding between the choices the parent provided.

The shift between hands-off parenting and helicopter parenting took place sometime in the late eighties to mid nineties, due mainly, in my opinion, to Baby Boomers waiting until later in life to have children, and the resulting fewer number of children born to those parents. When a couple has four kids, they are much more likely to give those children freedom as opposed to putting all of your eggs into one child/basket, and then trying to mold that one (or two) child(ren) into the end product desired.

Letting your children experience childhood on their own terms is now considered dangerous, so all activities must be planned, must be scheduled, must be adult supervised, and must adhere to the specific results each parent wants for their child. We aren't growing individuals; we are building robotic automatons.