overparent

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   To provide an excessive amount of parental attention and protection to one's children.

   • I think we have a tendency today to overparent, micromanage, and underappreciate our adolescents.
   • When you overparent, you weaken your child's self-image, suffocating her so that your child comes to believe, I guess I don't have what it takes to get by without Dad's and Mom's help.
   • Both restrictive and indulgent parents can either underparent or overparent.
2. 2

   A person or entity in a position of greater authority than a parent who takes on some…

   A person or entity in a position of greater authority than a parent who takes on some aspect of the parental role or authority.

   • Slum children will be provided the assurance of this " overparent " as a guarantee against the underfed, vermin-infested children found in the London schools inspected at the outset of the century.
   • If Father is the typical male underparent, as he generally is, it is not that he is a failure, except by overparent standards.
   • In order to cushion the blow of this disillusionment they ascribe the power and perfection they once believed a parent had to an overparent, a divine being.
3. 3

   The role of the state in caring for and nurturing its citizens.

   • To quote directly, not from his article in THE INDEPENDENT but from one published in the New York Herald on November 4th: “Socialism says boldly the State is the overparent, the outer-parent.
   • “Only the law of self-preservation will force the state, against the opposition of the mere makers of money, to become the overparent of all its people." writes Judge Ben B. Lindsey in the Newer Justice for January.

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