How to spot a snowplough parent

In the competitive sport that is London parenting today, no one feels able to take a day off. We — and I speak for most of my friends here — believe that our kids should experience their own failures and setbacks, and make their own way in life, yet we keep acting on their behalf because we fear that the consequences of failure are too great. We’re terrified for them — and they feel it. As one 19-year-old student said to me just the other day, ‘If I don’t get the Goldman Sachs internship my first summer at uni, my life is over.’ But then, for every classroom you’ll find a snowplough parent (SPP), an exaggerated version of all of us pushy parents put together. It’s scary stuff.

SPPs clear all obstacles out of their child’s way to ensure a smooth path to success. At the moment of birth they are put down for the best nurseries, which feed to the best schools, universities and on to the Bar or the bank. They barge through London playgrounds, leaving nothing to chance.

‘Parenting has become so vicious that mothers are literally at each other’s throats,’ says Karen Doherty, a London-based parenting and family specialist with four children of her own. ‘I’ve seen mothers ostracised because their daughter got into a competitive school, but the worst I’ve seen was a mother whose daughter wasn’t offered an interview at a top day school. She called up the school and demanded it change its mind. She snowploughed her daughter in. At the school gates they saw another girl who had come on her own, who asked the mother if she knew which building to go to. The mother replied: “This is a competition. Go find it.” ’

When their children are as young as five, SPPs are already hawkishly looking ahead. You can spot them by the use of the first person plural, as in ‘we are taking our GCSEs’. They believe one bad maths exam at junior school is enough to be demoted permanently to the B list; end up on that and the top prep schools won’t consider you.

I saw this all first-hand: one mother at my sons’ London school called the headmaster and demanded her son be moved into the A set or she would pull him out of the school. The higher the scholastic stakes, the more snowplough parents believe their children should not be bogged down by any kind of tedium or adversity so rules are set down: no parties, as that might encourage drinking; going out during exam week might make the child feel anxious; taking the Tube might be exhausting.

They are equally hard on themselves. Unreachable between the hours of 4pm and 6pm because they are supervising ballet, piano or Mandarin lessons; they can’t do lunch or dinner during half-term even though they have a full-time nanny; they refuse to be godparents because they can only push one child forward at a time. Worst of all, they consider all other parents ‘pushy’.

Charles Bonas, founder of tutoring agency Bonas MacFarlane Education, defends them. ‘I have a lot of respect for parents who push. Once a child gets into a top school, it’s unlikely they will flunk out. But the system is making it harder — everyone now gets brilliant GCSEs. As a result, parents are pushing further, demanding their children study things way beyond the curriculum.’ They have evidently been great for his business. An Ipsos Mori study recently found that in Britain, nearly a quarter of teenagers use tutors to help boost their grades to get them into the best schools and universities.

As the competition hots up, snowplough parenting is only getting worse. Over the past 20 years, the proportion of 18-year-olds going to university has risen from eight per cent to 50 per cent; and top schools and universities increasingly have the cream of the rest of the world to choose from, making the competition fiercer than ever. Central London private schools have non-native English speakers from Russia and China in practically every class. Central London state schools’ catchment areas are shrinking and Church of England schools have caused a spike in church-going for the on-your-knees, avoid-the-fees brigade. SPPs are found in all three types of school. One teacher I know has confessed to feeling powerless in the face of London’s highly educated, affluent — and litigious — mums and dads. After all, who would dare take on a snowplough parent?

At its best, snowplough parenting is about excessive love; at its worst, it’s about maintaining success at all costs, even if it means cheating. ‘I know of a boy whose parents paid £5,000 for someone to write his AS level History and English coursework. He got into a top university and feels it’s his right to be there,’ says Doherty. ‘People are smart enough to work the system. If your parents are highly educated, it’s unlikely they won’t want the same advantages for you,’ she adds. ‘Kids mature at different ages and if you don’t help them when they’re younger, they may miss the chance. We inoculate them when they’re babies to prevent illness; why wouldn’t we hire a tutor to get the best start in life?’

When a child finishes at their (no less than brilliant) university, they are then expected to tackle the next step: work. But robbed of self-motivation and filled with fear of failure, many are suddenly paralysed — too status-conscious to consider taking menial jobs (answering telephones or working at the local pub, for example) while they look for long-term jobs. And once they are in the world of work, a snowplough parent’s role is redundant: ‘Graduating from a top university might land you the best first job, but that’s it,’ says Alvin Rosenfeld, MD, a professor and psychiatrist based in Connecticut. ‘It’s personal performance that counts after that.’

As one woman I know quickly found out to her cost. Her daughter won a much-coveted three-month internship on a magazine, but was asked not to come back after two. The mother called the office demanding to know why and was given short shrift: ‘Ask your daughter. Goodbye,’ was the response. It turns out she had been using her position to ask for generous discounts in order to furnish her new SPP-financed flat.