Hot and Cool Mothers

“Hot and Cool Mothers” moves toward a media theory of mothering and parental “fitness.” The article begins with an investigation into midcentury pediatric psychological studies on Bad Mothers and their impacts on their children. The most famous, if not persistent, of these diagnoses is that of the so-called refrigerator mother. The refrigerator mother is not the only bad model of maternality that midcentury psychiatry discovered, however; overstimulating mothers, called in this study “hot mothers,” were identified as equally problematic. From the mid-1940s until the 1960s and beyond, class, race, and maternal function were linked in metaphors of temperature. Whereas autism and autistic states have been extensively elaborated in their relationship to digital media, this article attends to attributed maternal causes of “emotionally disturbed,” queer, and neurodivergent children. The author argues that these newly codified diagnoses were inseparable from midcentury conceptions of stimulation, mediation, domesticity, and race, including Marshall McLuhan’s theory of hot and cool media, as well as maternal absence and (over)presence, echoes of which continue in the present in terms like “helicopter parent.”

Helicopters and Nazis

Chapter 2 moves beyond nutritional discourse to consider the more social and emotional content of parents’ food talk. Much of this talk was oriented toward the concern to socialize and to train but not to overly limit children, project a negative adult persona, or come across as judgmental of others’ choices. The popular concept of the overprotective “helicopter parent” was an expression of these ambivalences, visible in national media and parenting blogs as well as in the ongoing commentaries of Atlanta parents; overattentiveness and food anxiety were seen as potentially negative influences on children. This chapter explores how food and feeding are wrapped up with models of personhood, that is, with conceptions of the kind of person one should be in order to be a good parent or a healthy child and socially attractive to others. In particular, it examines how power struggles around children’s food reflect ideas about individuality, relationships, and the fuzzy boundaries of the self.

Why people helicopter parent? An actor–partner interdependence study of maternal and paternal prevention/promotion focus and interpersonal/self-regret

Helicopter parenting among parents of young adults has risen in the last few decades, especially in middle-class families, and is identified as a risk factor for offspring’s maladaptive adjustment. Using actor–partner interdependence modeling, this study investigated why mothers and fathers use helicopter parenting. More specifically, the study investigated how mothers’ and fathers’ characteristics (prevention focus, promotion focus, interpersonal regret, and self-regret) work together to predict their helicopter parenting. Questionnaires were collected from 96 families (mother, father, and young adults). The results revealed that higher levels of maternal and paternal prevention focus were related to higher levels helicopter parenting by mothers and fathers, respectively. In addition, higher levels of paternal interpersonal regret were associated with lower levels of helicopter parenting by fathers. Maternal prevention focus, promotion focus, and interpersonal regret were (indirectly) associated with paternal helicopter parenting. The results indicate that parental prevention and promotion focus may play a role in the etiology of helicopter parenting and may therefore be taken into account when addressing such parenting behavior. Further research is needed to deepen our understanding of the processes that shape the tendency to helicopter parent.