House of Eratosthenes

A month and a half ago I wrote about Marissa Leigh’s mother who is burning both ends of the candle, and spending Marissa’s dad’s money, to make sure Marissa turns out just right. Pretty, popular, conceited, spoiled rotten, and stunningly useless. This kind of parenting fits into my Yin and Yang theory, which explains what nothing else can: People who go through life looking for attention rather than to actually achieve anything, want everybody else around them to also look for attention rather than to actually achieve anything. This kind of person is actually offended once they become aware of someone else, within line-of-sight, actually trying to achieve something, and/or willing to sacrifice or waive surplus attention. They’re offended by such a thing. Nothing else explains the determination and drive on the part of Marissa’s mom, to raise Marissa the way Marissa is being raised. Nothing else, save for abject parental hatred, which does not seem to be the case there.

Well, the same thing must be going on with these parents — “helicopter parents” who “hover” over their college-attending children, waking up said children in time for the first class, logging on to the university web site to check on grades, calling up the Dean on the cell phone if they don’t like what they see.

Mommy, tell my professor he’s not nice!
By Janet Zink and Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler, Times Staff Writer
Published June 19, 2006

Parents of University of Florida students log on to their children’s personal Gator-Link accounts to check grades, then call deans when they don’t like what they see.

University of Central Florida parents call administrators to complain when their kids can’t get into classes they want.

At Florida State University, parents of graduating seniors haggle with job recruiters. They want to make sure Junior gets a good salary and work schedule.

University administrators have a name for these baby boomer moms and dads who hover over their offspring’s college lives.

“Helicopter parents,” says Patrick Heaton, FSU’s assistant dean of student affairs.

The worst of them – those who do unethical things, like write their kid’s term papers – are branded “Black Hawks,” a nod to the souped-up military helicopters.

“I also call them tether parents,” says Heaton, who directs FSU’s freshman orientation program. “It’s like a leash. Students are afraid to make decisions about classes or anything without calling home.”

Good luck finding a parent who admits being a helicopter, much less a Black Hawk. But across the nation, college administrators are struggling with what they say is a growing phenomenon, a product of the unique relationship between many boomer parents and their millennial-generation children.

Administrators say they know these parents mean well. But their frequent phone calls and unreasonable demands stunt student development and test the patience of college officials.

“Where parent behavior becomes a challenge for us is when they encourage dependence, and they become too involved because they are afraid their son or daughter will make a mistake,” says Tom Miller, a University of South Florida dean of students.

“Our students are graduating,” says Jeanna Mastrodicasa, associate dean of the UF honors college. “But they are not ready to go into the real world.”

Administrators noticed the hovering problem a few years ago, when the first members of the so-called millennial generation entered college. Millennials are the children of baby boomers, born between the early 1980s and 2000. Sociologists and higher education officials say this generation is unlike any other, thanks to the child-rearing approach of their parents and the unprecedented influence of technology.
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“The biggest change is technology,” says Robin Leach, interim dean of students at FSU. “Where students in the past might just write home, now they’re on the phone with their parents all day, every day. If something goes wrong or right, parents know about it very quickly.”

An online survey in March by College Parents of America, an advocacy group formed 2� years ago for the parents of college children, found that one out of three parents communicates with their child daily two to three times a day, typically via cell phone. More than half of the 839 parent respondents said their involvement with their children is “much more” than what they experienced with their own parents during their college years.

“When I went to college in the ’70s, contact with my parents was standing at a pay phone on Sunday afternoon,” says James Boyle, College Parents of America president. “And there was no expectation beyond that.”

I’ve seen parents like this. I’ve spoken with them. I’ve lived with them. I’ve had sex with them. And hell yes, this subject comes up: What is up with this promotion of dependency?

It’s not ignorance.

It’s not apathy.

It’s not “concern.”

I have not been chastised to mind my own business. I have not been asked “gee, come to think of it, do you suppose maybe I could be crippling them in the long run?” It has not been asserted to me that, don’t worry, I can make this one harmless phone call and it won’t hurt anything. No, I’ve never seen any of that, not once.

It’s a drive. It’s a mission. Parents like this want to make their children more dependent. They know something else must suffer in order to bring about this dependency, like independence, individual creativity and and personal resourcefulness — and they simply don’t care. The parents’ sense of “I’m still relevant” is more important than these things.

It’s the promotion of one culture over another. They are driven to contribute their own offspring toward a movement, and they hope the offspring contributed toward the competing culture are outvoted, converted, or simply go away. Like I said, resourcefulness and creativity offend these people. They don’t like having it, they don’t like dealing with it, they don’t like seeing it.

And if their precious babums is off to college, and they’ve only talked to that precious babums five times on the cell phone that day, they’d rather make the sixth phone call than sit in a bucket when their asses are on fire. And it isn’t to tell the babums how much they love them, it’s got nothing to do with companionship or supporting anybody. Those things could easily wait until later in the week. No, it’s to keep a job. To keep a sense of importance. To make sure we still live in a world where everybody leans on everybody else for the basics of life, and nobody rises above mediocrity to actually make a unique contribution or to make something work better than it did before. That would be awful and must be prevented at all costs.

So the cell phone calls continue…

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Feelings First, Education Second IIIMonday, June 19th, 2006

Feelings First, Education Second III
Monday, June 19th, 2006