Are you a jet fighter or a helicopter? Why we should lose parenting labels.

It seems everyone with a book to sell or the desire to make it onto the morning news shows comes up with a new parenting label. We’re continually bombarded with names such as lawn mower, tiger, elephant (the opposite of tiger), snowplow, and relentless.

If anything is relentless, it’s the number of labels used to describe parenting. Yet the word parenting, first cited in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1918, was almost unheard of until the 1970s.

“It was then when parents first became absorbed with an increasingly broad range of responsibility for their children’s well-being, happiness, and futures,” said George Mason University professor Peter N. Stearns, author of Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America.

“School and the college admissions process were more demanding, social expectations rose, and parents were, increasingly, both busier in two-income households and more anxious about their children’s success, far beyond the child-rearing years.”

Parenting books and labels started flooding the market. We went from Benjamin Spock’s Baby and Child Care in the 1940s which gently assured parents they knew more than they thought, to books that made them question every move they made.

The newest label to hit social media is the jet fighter parent.

According to Austyn Rask, a generational analyst at consulting firm BridgeWorks, “These parents keep their distance, swoop in for emergencies, then fly out.”

The concept grew out of a backlash against helicopter parenting.

“Millennials know they get tagged with the negative connotations for being parented like this, and have taken a lot of heat for being protected and guided,” said Jack Mackinnon, who tracks family trends at marketing firm Gartner. “They say they don’t want to do that to their kids.”

And that’s the problem with parenting labels. They attempt to define a wide range of complex behaviors in one catchy buzzword. They also are laden with judgments — right, wrong, good, bad — and a heaping serving of guilt.

Everywhere parents turn they’re getting messages about doing too much for their children or not enough. None of this is helpful. In fact, parenting labels can be downright hazardous if they lead to even more stress and indecision.

No matter what you label it, the one consistent is that most parents want what’s best for their children.

It’s little wonder parents are looking for answers. Roles are less defined. Society is more competitive. In many cases mothers and fathers are both caregivers and breadwinners, often living far from extended family members.

Parenting defies simple labels.

Good parenting means seeking the middle ground, providing rules, routine, structure and love. Being consistent and trying to stay on track, but knowing when to switch paths if necessary. And having some fun!

Everything new is not always better. Some of the best parenting advice came from Benjamin Spock who wrote in 1945, "Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do. "

You really do!

Anita Kulick is president & CEO of Educating Communities for Parenting and a founding member of the Pennsylvania Parenting Coalition.