If you have not yet, I suggest you take a look at the Brandeis Parents Facebook page. Proceed with caution: What you will find is both equally enlightening and disturbing about the parents of Brandeis students. It is not a fair sample, as not many parents are very active on social media and have no reason to be. However, what you find on that page includes parents answering too many questions, worries that could be easily assuaged by looking on Brandeis webpages and arguments about the food their children are subjected to. Complaints about financial aid and food quality are warranted most of the time. There are parents who have never sent their kids to college before, who have not been to college before themselves and find pages like this a resource to deal with their worries and uncertainty.
The Facebook page reminded me of an article in The Atlantic, “The Partnership Between Colleges and Helicopter Parents,” which details the real challenges that parents with no experience with the college system face when their children move on to higher education without the financial benefits or support structures available to other students. What I’m referring to are the parents that seem to let no complaint of their child go without feeling the need to address the issue for them, those who answer other parents’ questions without their student even completing a year at Brandeis and those who seem to have nothing better to do than spar with other parents over what “hardships” their children are facing at a private university.
As I have said, I am not talking about kids who are barely making it and who have real struggles to stay well and even on campus. Instead, there are parents who are complaining about the lack of air conditioning in buildings when we all know that generations of students have survived for a warm few weeks with no lasting ill effects. Yes, classes are difficult. It’s college. Dorm rooms don’t have a ton of space, but we all deal with it. The article in The Atlantic goes on to detail how some parents may have different approaches for focusing on their child’s social or academic life, but what unites them is an effort to try to affect the outcome of the experience at college as much as possible. Seeing the discourse between parents on Facebook and the personalities they produce in students is quite alarming.
My parents are firmly in the “paramedic” camp, only really responding when something important goes wrong or when I ask for academic advice. It is a luxury not all students enjoy, and I am greatly thankful for it. Too much contact can cause problems in personal development. There are many students who deal with the neoliberal parent and I wonder how they would perform in an interview, how they could land a job, etc.; how could they function outside of the university environment? In a school like ours, so consistently beholden to stakeholder interests, I can only imagine the problems that over-caring parents have on our campus environment. No wonder so many among us are so sensitive to criticism. Private schools and coddling parents, sometimes at the same time, will do that to you. Coming to college and encountering a swath of new personalities and ideas can be a shock. I am taking into account progressive, liberal and conservative leanings into this as well. Parents have always imparted their biases and ideology onto their children, but at the height of a culture of narcissism and constant contact, the control parents have over their children’s lives can be both beneficial and disastrous for development.
I’m no parent, and I probably won’t be one for a long time. I just wonder how Brandeis, and other colleges, can prepare young people to make a better world without being able to function within existing institutions. There are experts claiming that technology is devaluing romantic relationships and friendships, and clearly the effects are not limited to this area. I think everyone on this campus should find ways to give each other more agency and that parents should be aware of what they’re doing. Every generation has qualms with their parents, sometimes real and sometimes unfounded, and we certainly have come up with our own. This age of constant contact and the ability to track your children is a new development. It is entirely different and comes with entirely new problems. I do not think our environment that so depends on parents’ opinions is good for us, and our institutions that keep us doing what “feels right” only exacerbates this trend. Many of us have not had the time to really think for ourselves, so who knows if what we feel is right is actually what’s best for us? Yet parents are what keep our school going, and there is very little social pressure telling them to stop.
It is a slippery slope cycle of parents wanting their kids to be protected, rendering them inept and then wanting more protection on the part of the administration. I’m sure some of them wonder why they have to take care of us for longer, while others are fine with it and don’t want it to change. All I can really encourage is that students actively do things that make them uncomfortable. There is no real solution to this other than us students recognizing the problem and actively seeking to make ourselves better, rather than giving in to what feels bad or good. At least realizing the problem is moving in the right direction. Everyone in academia would benefit.
