“They’ll Be Fine”—Two Takes on Indifference to Psychology

The chiding phrase “they’ll be fine” can be found abundantly on the Internet aimed, deservingly so, at the hysterically paranoid helicopter parents who hover endlessly over their children.

In a different way, the phrase is also used dismissively when, say, a child must be away from the family.

Consider the helicopter parents first.

The anxious, and now self-righteous, helicoptering has become so pronounced that some hoverers use the law to have working moms arrested if they dare leave their nine-year olds alone to play in a crowded park (1, 2).

One such nine-year old left in a park was sent to foster care and the mother went to jail. How good is that for the child (or mother)?

And four children, ages five to ten, were recently taken from a widow who left the children home alone while the mother pursued her college education attending night classes; the children were split up by social services, bounced around, and possibly even abused in the bureaucratically indifferent and incompetently run foster care system.

Power over others, as this mother observed, not empathy or protection, is what the busybody hovering is all about.

Virulent Absolutism in an Age of Relativism

In today’s world of ethical relativism we seem confronted with the incongruity of a militant and unapologetic self-righteousness.

This should come as no surprise. Relativism argues that there are no objective or universal moral values, because values are dependent on, and therefore relative to, such things as culture, social class, race, gender, ethnic group, or time period. Nothing is absolute and anything goes.