The term ‘helicopter parents’  sometimes crops up, particularly in the US, to describe the phenomena of baby boomer parents taking a (some may say) overly active interest into every element of their Gen Y kids lives – there are even stories of parents turning up to their kids first interviews…

But have a thought for the Gen Y of China.  Since the one-child-per-family laws were passed in 1979, all members of China’s Gen Y are singletons.  That has to have an effect on the psyche of a whole  generation.

Now I’m not saying that we are into ‘super’ helicopter parenting – living standards in the West and China  in the 80s and 90s were very different  after all – but we would expect to see the effects of two devoted parents showering all their undivided attention onto one child working its way through into that childs values and attitudes.

With some major western firms now recruiting about 10% of their graduate talent from China,  we’re looking into this effect in our next round of research – we’ll keep you posted on what we find.

Simon Walker

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