Next door neighbor growing up is the epitome of a helicopter mom. She drove son to and from school, he didn't get to do any activities unless she was there and when she left the house to go shopping, he had to follow after her. When he did try to socialize as a teenager she was the weird mom who waited outside nearby in her car. Her son never left home. He works locally, comes home for lunch which she has on the table ready for him. His mother still buys all his clothes, and he has no friends that I can see whatsoever. He is in his early 30s, gorgeous looking fella, soft spoken but tied to his mother's apron strings. I mentioned I was running a charity pub quiz once and asked him to come, figured it would be good for him to get out, meet some people. Said I would put him on my team and introduce him to everyone. His response? He would have to ask his mom....FS. Yeah. He never appeared at that pub quiz.
In my wider group of friends growing up we had two girls with helicopter parents. Although, I think the title seems too innocuous and is a euphemism for abusive in the cases I witnessed. I think I knew their mums better than I knew my friends at one point because they were always in their business. Very controlling about school work, constantly landing at school, getting to go out with friends involved a business proposal, an interview and regimented schedule as well as phone calls to check in when we were all out. Even just a cinema trip or a meal, never mind discos etc as we aged...it was exhausting and I always felt sorry for them. Their careers were pretty much determined by their parents and they lived these regimented lives of scheduled activities, their very beings micromanaged down to what they wore, who they could be friendly with, how they had their hair cut and how they spent their leisure time.
When we went to university one of my friends rebelled. Her mum had been calling down to university digs (we were only about two hours from our home town), checking in on what she was eating, going to class, reading her university work and questioning who she was meeting/making friends with. My friend seemed to just have had enough and basically started sofa surfing with friends and acquaintances so her mum couldn't find her. (This was such a pain in the tit when she would land at our digs and I would have to go through the interrogation to explain that no, I have no f-ing clue where her daughter is) She started drinking and partying and just...yeah, I was having my own rebellion for different reasons but even I looked at her and thought...yeah she needs to slow down. In later half of second year of university, it all came to a head when she fell pregnant. Her mum hit the roof and landed down and tried to drag her DD back home, police were called, there was a huge scene and pretty much she stopped talking to her mum. She had some support from the baby's father and got a flat of her own, finished university and got a good job. She had a few rough years where she was dependent on the baby's father's family for support, and he was a real gaslighting waste of oxygen, but she became really successful. We are all early thirties now and she only started talking to her mum again about five years ago. Their relationship has a weird tenseness now since the mum still tries to take over and revert to helicopter mode but my mate is financially secure and has toughened up through life so has none of it. Although there is a weird pettiness about it now, like, if she is meeting her mom she will purposefully wear clothes/makeup she knows will annoy her mother and she will drop comments about her life and friends like she is baiting her mom. It's...weird and unhealthy.
The second friend, similar but worse situation. Real abusive helicopter parents, she wasn't even allowed to live away from home for university. They often felt more like her stalkers and jailers than her parents. She hated her subjects in school but did them because those were the subjects her parents wanted her to do and that her mom was an expert in. I remember one rare night she came out clubbing with us and she was staying at my student digs. The whole night was weird cause she was on tenterhooks about 'mum said I should wear this' and 'mum said I shouldn't drink this' or 'mum said I shouldn't talk to people who are studying x/y.' Anyway, we get back to digs and are just dropping off at 3am, when the door starts banging. It's her mum demanding she come home, despite the fact she had okayed her having a night out and staying over. She was 19. She looked like she wanted the floor to eat her. After university her family used connections to get her a job in a cousin's business and this was another way for them to regulate her life. She wasn't allowed to leave home to rent somewhere to live because her mum had a plan for her to be able to get a mortgage before she was 26 and her income was regimentally controlled into savings accounts. She had to take a packed lunch every day and was only 'allowed' one social outing a month on a strict budget. Her mom blocked numbers and deleted numbers of friends she disapproved of as bad influences from her daughter's phone without telling her. When the talk started of how nice the managing director of the company was and her folks could arrange for her cousin to set her up with him she snapped. She had let them organize her life for years, helicopter all the time but this was a step too far. She packed a bag, left like she was going to work and disappeared. She left a letter saying she couldn't take it anymore. Her parents went ape, tried reporting her missing to the police, harassed all of her friends trying to find out where she was. She stayed with me for two weeks and basically moved around friends before she went to a different city to sort herself out. Lived in a HMO for a few months and worked temporary jobs while she figured out a plan. She ended up leaving the country, and now lives in OZ. Had to go half way around the world to escape her mother who kept tracking her down and harassing her. She revealed later that she had been planning the escape for years and had been saving up her 'house deposit account' as an escape fund but the talk of 'good husband' from her mother had kicked her plan into high gear. She has no contact with her parents now although she does have contact with her siblings, especially a younger sister who she essentially helped escape her parents clutches too.