" (Clark & Dawson, 1998) Studies have also shown that parents on the opposite end of the spectrum are sheltering their children too much. What parents want for their children is of course a life free of hardships and pain, but in fact what they are actually providing is the future inability to deal with the realities of everyday life. By covering up, or padding difficult situations children are not acquiring the character they will need in the future. Their world becomes unrealistic, they are unable to cope with their failures, and most have a hard time relating socially to others. Parents are buying their children's happiness and love with material possessions and soft-structure so that they will fit into peer situations and become their parents" showpiece in the world. .
The end result of raising children, we hope, should be that they become a productive and responsible member of society. They should become adults who are emotionally capable in coping with daily stresses and be socially adept in many different situations. The overall factor that came to light during this research was the guilt an adult brings to parenting; lack of time with the child, and confusion between parent needs and the needs of the child. The guilt of working so many hours, leads a parent to compensate for this lack of time by not structuring the little time they do have together. Children are given the freedom to do what they please, so as to not upset the harmony between parent and child when they are together. Who wants to argue with a child after a long day at the office? Parents today tend to have very relaxed rules for their children, if they have rules at all. Out of guilt, parents are not expecting their children to participate in the daily responsibilities of home life. Parents want their children to look at them as cool, and this in large part is due to a parents own self-esteem issues.
