When Helicopter Parents Hover Even at Work<br />“Mom and Dad footed the college bill, made sacrifices to get<br />that extra thing on their résumé, so they felt part of the process,” said Mr. Webb, who said that texting one’s parents was frequently the first reflex for the millennials in his charge after a run-in with a manager.<br />Within that group of employers, more than 30 percent reported parents submitting a résumé for their children; 15 percent reported fielding complaints from a parent when the company didn’t hire their child;<br />and nearly 10 percent said parents had insinuated themselves into salary and benefit negotiations.<br />While other prominent sports parents have exerted influence over their adult children’s business decisions, “I can’t think of anybody who turned their back on the marketing might<br />and power of a Nike, an Adidas, or any of those companies, and said, ‘Nope, I’m going to do it myself,’” said Bob Dorfman, a sports marketing expert at Baker Street Advertising.<br />Still, there does appear to be something uniquely millennial-parent about LaVar Ball, who in addition to hatching Big Baller Brand, the family apparel line, has created a sports talent agency, Ball Sports Group, whose sole purpose will be to represent Lonzo<br />and his two brothers, high school standouts who are expected to follow their brother to U. C.L.<br />But while pundits derided LaVar Ball as the state of the art in obsessive sports dads — an Earl Woods or Stefano Capriati for the social media age — he may actually epitomize a model<br />that extends far beyond the arena: the helicopter parent of the workplace.<br />The older workers, by contrast, tend to “come in at 10 a.m. and go do their work.”<br />Of course, professional sports may be the one corner of the work force where parental involvement was very much the norm long before the millennials turned up, if for no other reason than<br />that it involves adult children playing a kids’ game for a living.
