Why Do Parents Feel Compelled To Help With Their Children's Homework?

The point here is that many parents insist on having their children turn in perfect homework assignments to get good grades. To get that "Gifted and Talented" designation, perhaps so they can display it on their car bumper. (Sorry, this must be an American thing.)
I have seen Middle School science fair projects that would make a 3rd year college geneticist student proud. Parents competing against parents for empty bragging rights. Teachers are blown away having to deal with demanding parents and lagging students.
Learning is a process. Failure is part of the lesson. Other ancillary lessons such as the importance of neatness, punctuality, independence, resolving conflicts, making good excuses ("My dog ate my homework"), time management skills….and a host of other necessary life skills are being developed gradually. Parent interferences deprive them of all that. What you end up with is a young person with great academic credentials, deserved or not, entering the real world as a bewildered and even dysfunctional worker, or boss.

I agree that parents should teach their children, but there are a hundred other things they could be teaching them other than schoolwork. They can even help them study, but the kids need to do homework on their own. As zuhail said, the Internet is a good source of information, but that has nothing to do with parents helping kids with homework.

You're right to let them do it on their own. There was a debate on the site about all tests being open book tests. That way teachers would never know how well their students had learned anything, By helping their children with homework, teachers can't tell if students learned their lessons so to speak.

You are also correct about allowing children to stumble and even fail. Those are two things parents should be teaching their kids. Schools are turning out a generation of people who don't know how to fail. How will they ever be able to deal with and recover from failure if they never know what it is to fail?

There was no compulsion like that in our school. Children can learn from anywhere and they can seek help in the same way.

It is a good point to build confidence in your children not to seek help from parents but I am against this opinion. Children should learn from any source they would like. Internet is a good source to get any useful information. In my opinion, knowledge increases when you teach others. Parents should help their children but it doesn't mean to make their whole assignments. There is way to teach and I am sure that educated parents can teach their children as well as a school teacher.