From the Home section of the New York Times:
"ONE recent afternoon, the writer Amy Sohn sat at the Third Street
Playground in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, a few blocks from her apartment,
and explained the central paradox of her neighborhood. “Every mother
knows what a Park Slope Mother is, but no one thinks she is one,” she
said.
Playground in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, a few blocks from her apartment,
and explained the central paradox of her neighborhood. “Every mother
knows what a Park Slope Mother is, but no one thinks she is one,” she
said.
"Ms. Sohn was referring to the
stereotype of the overprotective, militantly organic, so-called
helicopter mom. Looking around the playground, there appeared to be a
few in attendance.
“If you went to Pierrepont Playground in the
’70s, when I was there,” Ms. Sohn, 35, said, referring to the Brooklyn
Heights neighborhood where she grew up, “the mothers sat on the
benches, and let kids work things out. If you come here, you see
parents on the structures. There’s a quickness to intervene. Shouldn’t
we allow some degree of ‘Lord of the Flies’?”"