What exactly does “launching” mean, anyway

Readers of this blog and those who know me professionally probably know that I focus on something I call “complicated launchings.” Usually, I focus my thinking on the first half of that label, the  “complicated” part. But a recent journal article I read (“Helping or Hovering? The Effects of Helicopter Parenting on College Students’ Well-Being” in the Journal of Child and Family Studies – 2013) made me think more about the other half of the label, the “launching” part.

The article touched on what the authors called “the orthogonal relationship between the dimensions of independence/dependence and autonomy/control.” Yes, that did send me racing to my dictionary to find out that orthogonal means “at right angles.” Other than the cool new vocabulary word, what caught my attention is that the journal authors were pointing out that there were two different scales to be measured. One was how dependent/independent a young adult was and the other was how much autonomy did they have or were most of their actions controlled. The notion of these things being orthogonal is that one didn’t have any necessary bearing on the other. A person could have all the autonomy in the world and not be independent in the least, or could be completely independent, and yet have no autonomy.

I realized that the word “launching” might mean two very different things to the young adults I work with and their parents.

I brought the dimensions (dependence/independence and control/autonomy) to one of my young-adult groups to explore. A very clever young woman, who has given me permission to acknowledge her efforts, took over the inquiry and quickly made the dimensions into x and y axes so that we might graph and locate the various group members in space. She seemed to have an immediate comprehension of the whole orthogonal thing. The young adults in the group were not very interested in the independence/dependence scale. By virtue of their age, limited earnings, and/or needing an education, they were resigned to their dependent status. Their concerns were more focused on how much autonomy they felt in making their own decisions. They saw launching as a process of gaining more autonomy.

Their parents, however, usually look primarily to the dependence/independence scale to gauge whether their kids are launching themselves into the world. In an effort to get kids to check the boxes that lead to independence (education, job, etc.) parents assume more control over day to day decisions. Many parents believe that if they could only get their young person to make better decisions, the route to independence would become clearer, shorter, and cheaper.

Parents focus on the independence/dependence scale and their efforts to launch their kids often result in pushing kids further down on the autonomy/control scale, the very scale that young adults see as the path to launching.

There is a “you can make your decisions when you can pay your rent” aspect to this whole thing, but there is something to be gained in getting each side to recognize the scale the other is using to gauge progress.