Giving Up on Letting Go
Marjorie Savage, parent program director at the University of Minnesota, believes that record-high tuitions also inadvertently have affected the issue. "I see frustration among parents that boils down to 'I'm paying the bills, and you're cashing my checks, so why do I have to work through my student to get these records?'" She also cites amendments to the Higher Education Reauthorization Act in 1998, which allow institution officials to contact parents when students are found to have violated campus policies on drugs and alcohol—information that previously was protected. She anticipates more parent demands for access to education records such as grades and billing statements in the next few years.
Mixed blessing?
Although campus administrators have—and often are willing to share—plenty of firsthand horror stories about helicopter parents, it's important to keep in mind that the involved-parent phenomenon is not just about pushy parents. The semi-autonomy of young adults illuminates the value society places on entry into the middle class. In previous generations, college graduation, marriage, family, and financial stability were the key markers of adulthood; financial stability at a certain level by an individual is now the sine qua non of adulthood.
But Cornell's Schelhas-Miller says these cultural determinations are fluid. One need only look beyond the Boomers to the members of Generation X who are now becoming parents. According to "Generation X Parents: From Grunge to Grown Up," a recent study by the Boston marketing strategy firm Reach Advisors and reported by Ann Hulbert in a July 4, 2004, New York Times article, Gen-Xers "have turned into family boosters." The United States' debt-burdened younger parents, the Reach study explains, embrace their prospects of downward mobility with equanimity—even enthusiasm. "Unlike their elders," Hulbert writes, "they value family time over money and status." In other words, while they're less brand-conscious than Boomers, they do value their children, which might mean a new iteration of helicopter parents. Can't you just hear the whir on the horizon now?
This article is from the November/December 2004 CURRENTS.
