I suspect a lot of this is an unavoidable consequence of shifting from 3-5 kid families to 1-2.  When you have 4 kids,<p>(1) you don&#x27;t have enough time to helicopter all of them, some will just have to deal with their own problems<p>(2) having one disappointing kid isn&#x27;t the end of the world.  you have others to shift your expectations and hopes onto<p>But if you only have one or two kids... you simply can&#x27;t afford any failures.  If your one kid fails, you&#x27;re a failure of a parent.  So you spend as much time and (maybe misguided, maybe not) energy on them.  I think this is a natural response, which makes me think it&#x27;s pretty un-fixable unless family sizes increase.