Professors and administrators say parents who do too much for their adult children hurt students in the long run.
SAMANTHA BLONS
News Assistant
They e-mail the professor when their student’s course grade dips. They call the International Programs Office when their student is waitlisted to a program, administrators when he is in academic trouble, or the Housing Office when she is having a roommate conflict.
They are helicopter parents, parents who hover over their college students lives, unwilling to relinquish control.
“A helicopter parent is one who does not allow his or her child to become an individual, and is constantly in contact, at least once a day,” said Dr. Susan Helm, associate professor of nutritional science. “The student who is helicoptered is less resourceful, because someone’s always solved his or her problems.”
Some in the Pepperdine community believe the university is far from immune to the hovering parent.
Others say the issue is exaggerated, and that Pepperdine’s high-caliber student body is more independent than at other colleges.
The phenomenon has become more prevalent with the advent of technology that allows parents to keep in close contact with their college-age kids.
Cell phones and e-mail allow almost instantaneous communication, according to Timothy Horton, International Programs dean of admissions and student affairs. Horton and his wife, Connie, director of the Pepperdine Counseling Center, hosted a workshop on helicopter parents in 2005 at a local conference for international educators. He said hovering parents prevent students from learning to resolve problems by themselves.
“Parents call me wondering about how they can get their kid off the waitlist,” Horton said.
Each year he gets phone calls from parents of students who were waitlisted from international programs.
He said he likes talking to parents, and understands their concerns, but would prefer that these parents encourage their students to speak to him instead.
“We like to see students advocate for themselves,” Horton said. “We’ve had students come in and ask for my e-mail so that their moms can e-mail me. My question for those moms is, ‘When do you want your son or daughter to become an adult?’”
Dr. Tomas Martinez, professor of psychology, said he has had only few instances in which “well-meaning” parents called him to speak about a student.
“I do think as professors, we don’t necessarily respond well to helicopter parenting in general,” Martinez said. “Our assumption is that the students coming to Pepperdine are trying to [become individuals] and separate from their parents.”
For many parents, the helicopter effect is short-lived, especially in the beginning of a student’s college career.
When freshman Andrew Widmar started at Pepperdine in August, his mother and his two older sisters unpacked and set up his dorm room.
“For the first weeks of school, I had to call and ask where my mom and my sisters had put some of the stuff I don’t use all the time,” Widmar said. “Now that I’m settled in, I pretty much know where everything is.”
Junior Cady Tolan said her parents hovered when she was a freshman, but have since learned to yield control.
“My mom was really worried that I wouldn’t go to church when I got to college,” Tolan said. “My mom asked my SLA to encourage me, coerce me to go to church, even though I’d never shown any sign of quitting myself.”
Martinez said he understands parents’ desire to protect and support their children after they have left for college. He encourages them to call professors when their child is facing certain emotional or psychological difficulties, to not ask for special favors, but for support.
However, he warns against too much involvement.
“If a parent continues to have control over that student, the student may become more insecure and dependent on their parents, even when they leave school,” he said.
Some college and career counselors are concerned about the effect of a hovering parent on a graduating student’s post-college career. However, career counselor Sheila Benko said in her four years working at Pepperdine she has never had a negative helicopter parent experience. She said she has never seen a parent come to a job fair or had a parent speak for a student.
“I was a little surprised at the extremeness of the reports about helicopter parenting,” she said. “For me personally as a career counselor, I would not qualify it as a problem.”
11-16-2006
