Out of Control Parenting

The "helicopter parenting" phenomenon seems to be getting nuttier by the minute and it's easy to harrumph over the latest anecdote about a mother calling the academic dean of a college to ask why her child got a bad grade. As a college counselor at an "elite" private high school I often had to deal with mommies (seems like it's more often mommies than daddies) who wanted to know how their child could get an A instead of an A- so he or she could get into Brown. Or who basically ran the college process while the children lazed about in blissful torpor. These stories tend to validate our feeling that the current generation of college-aged students has become way too pampered for its own good.

Unfortunately for us, Margaret K. Nelson has written an interesting and level-headed book on the topic called Parenting Out of Control: Anxious Parents in Uncertain Times. Rather than gleefully narrating the various misbehaviors of these over-involved parents, she approaches the topic from a sociological perspective. (Nelson is a professor of sociology at Middlebury College in Vermont.) Using class divisions and technological innovation as prisms, she looks at why parents might behave the way they do and provides some clear, if incomplete, insights about why parents these days do the things they do.

Nelson bases her conclusions on a relatively small sampling of individuals she divides into "working class," middle class," and "professional middle class" parents. As a result, her brush paints a rather broad picture of child-rearing practices in each group. She writes that WC and MC parents "are...less interested in intimacy and engagement [with their children] than they are in clear rules of authority within the family." In contrast, the PMC parents she describes have "a lengthy perspective on children's dependency without a clear launching point for a grown child," and "put child rearing front and center: even in the midst of extremely busy lives, they highlight the significance and meaning they find in this activity, and they avoid shortcuts (such as playpens) that could make the job easier."

But more interesting is how Nelson contrasts the WC/MC and PMC views of their children as individuals in a way that puts most of the helicoptering onus on the PMC parents. Less privileged parents, according to Nelson, "insist that by the end of a comparatively short educational career a child should be ready to pick a career, find a job, and begin the next stage of life as a fully formed adult." They "want to encourage their children to grow...But their role involves acceptance of the particularities of their children and does not rest on a view of unlimited potential, of children who can become 'the best.'" Especially in relation to college, WC/MC parents want their children to do something productive, not play around for four years.

In contrast, PMC parents see their children as ongoing projects with unlimited potential. As a result, there's no end to the work of seeing them develop, which is why they insist on being "present" so constantly. For them, college isn't a "vocational training ground," it is a place for personal self-development: "...in lieu of job preparation, elite parents talk about the important opportunities colleges might provide for self-discovery and for gaining self-confidence. Rather than viewing college as a launching pad to independent adulthood, parents see it as a time for their children to acquire the necessary cultural and social capital to be able to seize any opportunities for status that may arise." No wonder my students' parents wanted them to go to Brown and not Tufts!

If you perceive your children as "out the door" when they turn 18, there's no need to keep a continual eye on them. As a parent, you've done your job and what results is what you've got. PMC parents have created a never-ending process that needs continual tweaking and adjusting. They see their children as extensions of themselves and their parenting, and so must always be involved. College is a place to refine their projects in the never-ending drive toward "perfection," whatever form that may take.

Nelson makes the case that technological devices such as baby monitors, security bracelets, and cell phones have changed the ways parents connect with their children, often making them more fearful, not less, and promoting a sense of needing to be continually in touch with their offspring. She notes, however, that PMC parents are less likely to rely on technology to monitor and control their children than are MC/WC parents because of their commitment to molding their children's "potential" and being intimately involved with every detail of their lives. PMC parents make calls, write emails, and so on as a natural extension of their involvement with their children; MC/WC parents are less likely to do so because they see their children as already on their way to independence.

Parenting Out of Control does a good job of delineating some of the possible sources of helicopter parenting even while it remains frustratingly shallow. It relies too heavily on Nelson's small sample and seems to lean too much on stereotypes of privileged versus non-privileged parenting and family life without offering real three-dimensional analysis. However, using class as a way to talk about families' expectations for their children and college is a fresh way to talk about the subject, and readers attuned to the relationship of college attainment to status consciousness will find Parenting a good source for further discussion and observation.

Our Modern Choices: Engineered or Free-Range Kids?

A recent post on the NACAC listserv was shocking in its obtuseness and demonstrates how blind many of us have become as we supposedly try to be of service to students. The request to fellow listers was as follows:

I am working on college planning with two intellectually bright high school juniors who are very unmotivated about preparing for an SAT test. They come from very high income families and their parents have hired very expensive individual SAT tutors. I personally know that their tutors relate well to high school students and have remarkable records for helping students to significantly improve their SAT scores. These two students are extremely resistant about seeing the tutors on a regular basis and doing outside practice assignments. I have reviewed the studentҀs PSAT scores with each student and their parents, and the students have ideas about colleges they would like to apply to׀and could easily be realistic--with SAT scores that are somewhat higher than their PSAT scores. Learning and emotional disabilities, and ADD have been ruled out. I see the above situation as more of a parent/discipline issue rather than a college planning issue, but at the same time would be most appreciative of any suggestions for getting these students more motivated.

To summarize: Two "intellectually bright" juniors from "high income" families are "unmotivated" about spending time prepping for the SAT with "very expensive" tutors. This resistance led initially to worries that they had "learning or emotional disabilities" or attention deficit disorder. The family is desperately seeking ways to get these non-conformists to submit to SAT prep.

Has it come to this? Are students who prefer not to waste their time on SAT prep now threatened, like refuseniks, with being branded as mentally unstable? Are they to be diagnosed by "experts" who classify them as unbalanced because of their refusal to submit to the idiocy of test prep? Has the execrable advice of writers like Judith Wissner-Gross, which basically demands that students be engineered by their parents for college (and not just any college, damn it!) from the time they can fill in a test bubble, finally taken over the college process? Will we start sending these nonconformists to testing gulags where they are re-educated to embrace the charms of the College Board?

I cheer these "intellectually bright" students and hope they get some support from the testing underground, which will provide them with safe haven and copies of "The Origin of Species," "Huckleberry Finn," Mozart's piano concertos, and "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit," to get them through this trying period in their lives. (To find out more about the testing underground, go to any public library and get lost in the stacks near the Byzantine history section. They'll find you.) If I were a college, I'd admit them right now simply for their audacity.

Contrast this insidious effort to "re-educate" these smart kids with an amazing story that appeared in today's Chicago Tribune. It is the story of two parents who sent six kids to Northern Illinois University, all of whom went on to receive Ph.D.s and all of whom are now leaders in their fields. How did this happen? What music did Mrs. Sereno (for that is her name) play to those babies in her womb? What tapes or tutors or special schools did she drive her kids to so that they would rise into the world of genius? How often did she drill them in their cribs to know their timestables and the capitals of the world? How many summer programs did she enroll them in? Did she write a book telling me how to do it all? Most important, how did she teach them to get past all the stupid kids who stood in their way to success? (One child, Paul, is a world-famous paleontologist at the University of Chicago who has contributed vast amounts of knowledge to the field; his brothers and sisters are all neurological researchers working for universities in England, Scotland, Oregon, Texas, and Kansas.)

Mrs. Sereno's diabolical plan amounts to this: "We encouraged the idea that learning was exciting...I know how butterflies have sex, because we made a mating chamber for them so the kids could see all the stages of moth and butterfly life. We had slime mold growing upstairs. We had art in the house and a kiln for firing pottery. They all played instruments, though only two of them had any talent. I wanted my kids to go out and have their own adventures, to learn to fly on their own." So, her children were what we might call "free-range" kids, with plenty of support from mom and dad. There was lots of give and take, plenty of love, and what sounds like a happy chaos encircling the family.

Paul did not do well in high school and in elementary school teachers wanted to hold him back. Perhaps he was like one of those intelligent kids who know instinctively that SAT prep, endless worksheets and things like them are gigantic wastes of time and antithetical to everything that makes education interesting. As he says in the article, "I didn't do well with the structured way things are taught in school. I liked the more free-form, hands-on way of learning, like we did at home." Imagine that! Kids trying to learn on their own! Running around as their curiosity and interest lead them!

It scares people now when kids are like that--there's no way to measure "outcomes," no number that can be used to sum up progress, no "metrics" to gauge how each step is evaluated. You sort of have to leave things to chance, inspiration, and a love of learning (which test prep decidedly is not) and that's never going to get your kids into the Ivy League! They might end up at Northern Illinois, for God's sake! And then what would happen to them!!!!!

The Parental Overinvolvement Quiz

ItҀs only natural for parents to be part of their childҀs college selection and application process: YouҀre paying for it, after all, and this is a climactic moment in your offspringҀs life. ItҀs also one of the visible results of primary and secondary education. With few rituals left to mark the passage from childhood to adulthood, the process enables your child to relish this significant moment in the safety of home and school, with guidance from you, teachers, and counselors. In important ways, itҀs also a test run for college and life itself.

But this American walkabout often suffers from too much parental involvement. At a time when a child should be taking the reins and learning to direct his or her own life, parents can unwittingly short circuit the process. They see this moment as theirs instead of their childrenҀs, or in the name of ӀhelpingԀ or Ӏpreventing mistakesԀ they take over, situations that can cause a great deal of conflict and ill will as a child heads into the future. Anyone who has been through it knows the signs: increased mumbling and eye rolling, dark looks, eruptions at the dinner table, and a refusal even to say the word ӀcollegeԀ or fill out applications.

But there are ways to tell if youҀre doing too much and need to back off. Below is a short quiz to see if youҀre letting go or holding on.

1. Do you say, ӀWeҀre applying to collegeԀ instead of ӀJohnnyҀs applying to collegeԀ?
2. Do you insist that your child apply to your alma mater or other college of your choice regardless of his/her interest in it?
3. Do you look forward to telling friends at cocktail parties where your child is applying?
4. Do you let people know your childҀs GPA, standardized test scores, and other personal information?
5. Are you planning college visits with little or no input from your child?
6. Do you ridicule your childҀs college choices because he/she clearly doesnҀt know whatҀs good for him/her?
7. Do you know more than your childҀs college counselor does, even if you havenҀt applied or been to a college in 20 years?
8. When you have college conversations with your child do you talk more than listen?
9. Do you insist on scouring rankings lists for ӀbestԀ colleges rather than listening to what your child wants?
10. Do you lose sleep worrying that your child will go to a Ӏno nameԀ college?
11. Do you talk about your childҀs talents/gifts/abilities or lack thereof to others with him or her present?
12. Do you (or a surrogate) do all the college research, all the calling, and all the typing of request letters and applications?
13. Do you make admission interview appointments for your child?
14. During college visits, do you ask questions for your child or otherwise take center stage?
15. Do you worry that you havenҀt done enough as a parent to ensure that your child gets into a ӀgoodԀ college?
16. Do you prod your child, even as application deadlines approach, to join more clubs or take up exotic activities like bungee jumping or spelunking?
17. Do you insist that your child begin taking honors or AP courses even if he or she has never taken them in the past, and do you berate school officials if they think thatҀs not a good idea?
18. Do you see college as a reward for your efforts at raising a child?
19. Do you see college as a judgment of those efforts?
20. Do you interpret your childҀs college choices as a comment on you as a parent?
21. Have you read all the college guides, getting-into-college guides, secrets-of-getting-into -college guides, and "how to" books about essays, tests, and everything else?

If you've answered "Yes" to any of these questions, it's time to pull back and take stock because you're taking control of something that should belong to your child. Allowing him or her to take the driver's seat in the college process is like, well, letting him or her take the driver's seat. You can't do it for your child; at some point your offspring has to drive alone. You may panic that he's not taking that corner properly or she's changing lanes too quickly, but true knowledge and independence, not to mention maturity, only come with experience. If your child is resisting college planning, perhaps you're pushing too much' he may want to take his own time and make his own plans.

Naturally, you need to keep an eye on things, but stay in the passenger's seat; don't try to grab the wheel. Make suggestions, keep the nagging to once or twice a week, and remember that, overall, the college process is actually a lot more forgiving than driver's ed: despite the panic over early admission and "regular" deadlines in November and December, many colleges have deadlines that run into February and even March. Now, it may be difficult, but you may want to acquaint your child with the idea of being responsible for her/his actions, if you haven't already done so: Late applications can mean being shut out of a college or being last to be considered for financial aid. But put the responsibility on your child, don't do applications for him or fill out forms for her. Be resolute and insist that your child do the work. In the long run, this will be much better for your child's development and your long-term relationship.

Remember, itҀs your childҀs future at stake here, not yours. Give him or her the power to make decisions, even to make mistakes, with your support and guidance, not your direction or judgment. Take a virtual vacation and ӀreturnԀ only when an application check needs to be signed or youҀre asked for advice. Let your child feel the thrill of controlling his or her own destiny. Above all, parents, enjoy this moment of watching your child begin the process of becoming an independent, well-adjusted adult. YouҀll be glad you did.