I am married to a college professor and while you might now be imagining smudged reading glasses, hot tea and sweaters with patched elbows, don’t. Life with an academic involves lots of swearing, boring parties and a glimpse at unbelievable new failures in American education.
All that, and helicopter parenting. You get to see lots of helicopter parenting.
At the end of each semester, minutes after cheaters are busted, grades filed, and GPAs recalculated, the whirling blades descend into our home in the form of late-night emails. Parents write in defending the honorable intentions of Precious and Mr. Man. “She’s a hard worker,” Daddy writes of his plagiarist daughter. “Why the Gestapo tactics?” Or, “He must have misunderstood the directions,” Mommy argues on behalf of her flunking son. “He needs an A in this class!”
“Isn’t there any way they can retake the exam?” these baby-boomer parents demand to know.
It’s not just my husband, either. Anyone who works at a university has a story of an over-involved mother or father (or both). Here’s a report from ABC News about these helicopter moms and dads who – and I don’t want to give away the ending – have no idea that calling the university to complain about salt content in the chicken is, simply put, pathetic.
According to a researcher in the report, at least 60 percent of all college students have what fits the definition of at least one “helicopter parent.” That’s more than half. That makes it the norm.
The researcher breaks down that 60 percent into five neat categories: black hawk (angry, abusive, straight to the president's office); toxic (paranoid, researches child’s friends and roommates on MySpace, 24-hour web cam (!)); safety expert (anxious about school safety, forms emergency plans); consumer advocate (negotiates discounted tuition and fees); traffic and rescue parent (first sign of trouble heads to campus with supplies and tender hugs).
These parents argue that college is an expensive investment, and they have a right to protect it. I would argue they had 18 years to get it right and now it’s time to let Princess make a few phone calls on her own or have a private email account. Seriously, Scooter has got to figure out how to do his own laundry. And I can’t even process the fact that there’s a kid with a web-cam on his computer so mommy can check on him any time she wants. Did she see Sonny Boy nailing that hot chick from Psych? Is she listening to him fart? Reminding him to floss? Coaching him during those special moments with himself?
If you can get through the first video without calling your parents to thank them for nothing – no, really, thanks for leaving me the hell alone in college, Mom and Dad -- then watch the second one. It’s about parents who are firing up the Black Hawk so they can attend career fairs and job interviews, and negotiate starting salaries. Look at those phone boards light up when Bear can’t find coffee filters in the break room!
I know we Gen X/attachment/kid-as-equals/emotional IQ parents will be scrutinized some day for how we handle our kids' transition from childhood to adulthood. But somehow I think we sort of front-loaded our over-involvement by sharing beds, forming co-op preschools, working from home and nursing to the end of time. I think we're getting it out of our system in the early years, hopefully nudging them out of the nest when it's time and letting them figure out the rest.
Just shoot me now if I come even close to exhibiting these helicoptering behaviors. I mean, where will these parents show up next? Med school internships? Real-estate offices? The fertility clinic? When do these “kids” get a chance to try something and fail, and figure out how to pick up the broken pieces without Mother first fetching a pair of safety goggles and work gloves? The first time Junior's dentures go missing at the nursing home?
Image: Duke University magazine
