Millennials Grow Up: Ground Those "Helicopter Parents" - Millennial Money with Cliff Mason

BIO

Cliff Mason is the author of Millennial Money. He is the Senior Writer of CNBC's Mad Money with Jim Cramer, and has been that program's primary writer, in cooperation with and under the supervision of Jim Cramer, since he began at CNBC as an intern during the summer of 2005. Mason was the author of a column at TheStreet.com during 2007, which he describes as "hilarious, if short-lived." He graduated from Harvard College in 2007. It was at Harvard that Mason learned to multi-task, mastering the art of seeming to pay attention to professors while writing scripts for Mad Money. Mason has co-written two books with Jim Cramer: Jim Cramer's Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich and Stay Mad For Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer). He is 100% responsible for any parts of either book that you did not like. Mason has also had a fruitful relationship with Jim Cramer as his nephew for the last 23 years and will hopefully continue to hold that position for many more as long as he doesn't do anything to get himself kicked out of the family.

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Nov.18

9:14 AM ET

Tuesday, 18 Nov 2008

Millennials Grow Up: Ground Those "Helicopter Parents"

Posted By:Cliff Mason

Topics:Stock Market

Young businesswoman and family
Memo to every member of Generation Y who's ever brought a parent along to a job interview or a campus tour: please stop, you're making the rest of us look like jerks! You may think that your overprotective, over-involved parents are just embarrassing you, but they're not.

You're bringing disgrace and disrepute upon an entire generation, 78 million other people.

I was reading an article in BusinessWeek, "The Millennials invade B- Schools," and I cringed inside when I got to the part about "helicopter parents." These are the kind of parents who are involved in every aspect of their children's lives, even when their children are adults in their late 20s.

Most of the people I know who have "helicopter parents" act like they're the victims. They claim they have no control over their controlling parents. That excuse works when you're 16, but not so much when you're 26. I don't blame anybody's parents for this. You love your kids, you want what's best for them, good for you! The problem is adult children not being able to tell their parents, "I can handle this myself."

Frankly, there are a lot of people my age who still need to grow up and learn how to say, "no," to their parents. If you're one of them, don't just do it for yourself so you can live your own life. Do it because you don't want to besmirch our collective generational reputation.

Whenever an angry mother calls a company and screams at some recruiter for not hiring her son or daughter, a story I've heard or read about all too many times, it adds to this particular stigma and makes everyone our age look bad. It's also difficult for anyone to take you seriously if you're in your mid-twenties and you still let mom and dad call the shots.

We're all adults now, or at least we're supposed to be. But nobody will treat you like an adult if you've always got your parents in tow, and have to consult them, or even get their approval, before you make any big decisions. And the more millennials there are with "helicopter parents" the more the rest of us are seen as permanent adolescents.