If you want to raise an educated achiever, be a pushy, helicopter Parent, writes Pamela Druckerman in the New York Times. She cites a new book by economists Matthias Doepke and Fabrizio Zilbotti, Love, Money and Parenting.

As inequality increased in the ’80s, parents began investing more time and energy to make sure their kids would be winners, the economists argue.

“Middle- and upper-class parents who’d gone to public schools and spent evenings playing kickball in the neighborhood began elbowing their toddlers into fast-track preschools and spending evenings monitoring their homework and chauffeuring them to activities,” writes Druckerman.

In the U.S., parents added 12 additional hours of weekly child care, compared to the ’70s. the Japanese began referring to over-involved “monster parents.”

Intensive Parenting correlates with higher test scores, the authors write. The children of “authoritative” parents are more likely “to graduate from college and graduate school, especially compared with those with authoritarian parents.”

The benefits aren’t just academic. In a British study, kids raised by authoritative parents reported better health and higher self-esteem. In the American study, they were less likely to use drugs, smoke or abuse alcohol; they started having sex at older ages, and they were more likely to use condoms.

In The Formula, Harvard economist Ronald Ferguson and journalist Tatsha Robertson reveal “the secrets to raising highly successful children.”

Drawing on interviews from Harvard’s “How I was Parented Project,”  Ferguson and Robertson identify eight essential parenting roles:  the Early Learning Partner, the Flight Engineer, the Fixer, the Revealer, the Philosopher, the Model, the Negotiator, and the GPS Navigational Voice.

“Success” means having a sense of purpose, Ferguson tells WTOP’s Rachel Nania.

“Virtually every one of these families, the parent has spent a lot of time before the child started school, basically beginning from birth, interacting with the child, playing games, doing things that the child perceived as fun, but that were building a love of learning and a love of problem solving, in particular,” said Ferguson.

Some parents make sacrifices to keep their children on track, he said. One mother sold her wedding ring to pay for flute lessons for her daughter.

The authors started with Harvard students and asked about their parenting. I wonder what they’d find if they interviewed a cross-section of young people. Maybe some of the B- students had very involved parents too.