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.

Just a few recommendations

No fire and/or brimstone about anything or anyone this time, just some credit where credit is due. (A slightly different version of this entry can also be found on NACAC's website at Admitted Blog)

Coming from the college side of college admission, I didn’t realize how much counseling was involved in college counseling until I started meeting with students and their parents, their divorced parents, and/or their divorced and remarried parents; with students who refused to meet with their parents in the room, with parents who refused to meet with each other, and with children who refused to speak in their parents’ presence. (I won’t mention the times I had to ask parents, as politely as possible, to let their children get a word in edgewise or to review their records a bit more objectively as they considered college possibilities.)

I quickly realized I had stepped into a cultural maelstrom, especially at my very highly competitive school. “College” affected everyone day to day, so knowing the mechanics of the process was only the beginning. Attending to psyches and personalities in the throes of college selection kept me plenty busy.

Now that I work with adults who counsel low-income and first-generation students, I’m in a whole different arena, but the goals are the same. As a result, I often rely on two organizations that have significantly shaped my college-counseling outlook: the National Runaway Switchboard (NRS) and the American School Counselors Association (ASCA). NRS taught me how to listen actively and enable students to express themselves; ASCA has provided an essential framework for joining counseling and college counseling.

I’ve volunteered at NRS, a teen crisis line, for over ten years. “Liners” complete an extensive training that teaches them to listen actively, help callers develop options, and, most important, put callers in the “driver’s seat” as they talk through the reasons they ran away or want to. As a result I’m committed to “guiding without steering.” (I didn’t know how much I’d incorporated this methodology until one of my students who had been through the NRS training came in and asked I thought about his college list. “Well,” I replied, “What do you think about it?” He laughed and said, “Aww, Mr. Dix, you don’t have to do that NRS stuff with me!”)

The ASCA addresses primary and secondary school counseling topics. Its “strengths-based” perspective means being alive to students’ potential and reaching out to students, especially valuable in first-generation contexts. It informs my sessions with counselors and teachers.

Two ASCA publications are important reading: ASCA School Counselor magazine and the Professional School Counseling Journal. The former is for a generalized readership; the latter is “research” oriented (not always rigorous) but full of excellent commentary from practitioners and academics. (Here is one particularly helpful article. For the full publications you need to be an ASCA member.)

The ASCA also has just published two new reports in conjunction with the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) and the College Board: "A Closer Look at the Principal-Counselor Relationship" and "Finding a Way: Practical Examples of How an Effective Principal-Counselor Relationship Can Lead to Success for All Students" that are worth taking a look at. They are publicly available for download here.

My college counseling, as well as my professional development opportunities for colleagues, has benefited immensely from these resources. I highly recommend them.

Footsteps in the Hall: The College Admission Process as Existential Crisis

[NOTE: This essay was published in the Journal of College Admission, January, 2008)

The college admission process puts adolescents in a bind: it asks them to observe and evaluate themselves before they’ve had a chance to develop a consistent sense of who they are. At a time when they’ve been trying on personalities and exploring the world of adulthood in an effort to establish an identity, they’re suddenly asked to manufacture one to the vague yet compelling specifications that colleges impose upon them. They are evaluated, measured and sorted by mysterious strangers, and asked to be “authentic” in an entirely inauthentic situation. Just as threatening, they are asked to submit to what Jean-Paul Sartre calls “the Gaze,” a pitiless stare that tears them out of themselves and forces them to “act” instead of “be.” As a result, adolescents now go through an existential crisis of identity well before they’re ready for it or even realize it’s happening.

The existential moment may come for most of us in our forties or so. We have enough experience to look back at life and wonder if there’s been any purpose to it or if who we’ve become is the person we actually are. Usually married, well into a career, with children and possessions to anchor us, we may face a sudden death, loss of a job, or other crisis that forces us to confront how we’ve defined ourselves. We may feel directionless, hollow, and cynical, unable to hold on to the things we once thought important. The film American Beauty illustrates this condition particularly well. Kevin Spacey’s character, Lester Burnham, goes into free fall realizing that, although he’s done everything according to the rules, he’s “lost something,” even though he’s not sure what it is. He feels his life disintegrating: His marriage is cold, his job banal, and his daughter a stranger to him. The world has become artificial and he sees himself as simply an actor in a particularly bad play, not as a human being. The adolescent struggling with a college application hasn’t even voted yet, but is being asked to be an actor before having become a fully integrated self.

Role Reversal
In the past, the college admission process was primarily functional and had little to do with identity development. It was simply the mechanism to reach the next step in one’s education. Through the seventies and early to mid-80s, even as the number of students applying to and attending college rose significantly, the procedure was relatively simple: Most colleges drew from their geographic regions, most students didn’t go much farther than 250 miles or so from home, and there was less concern about competition to get into the “best” colleges. Teens took their high school courses, took their tests, and took their chances, filing a few applications and going where they were accepted. The idea of planning years ahead so one could get into a particular type of college or even a particular college was little known. An application rose or fell on one’s history, the day-to-day decisions and activities pursued in high school. Choices were made on the basis of interests and needs that had to do with the student’s immediate concerns. Those choices were “authentic” in a Sartrean sense: They were immediate and not calculated, essential to the adolescent’s “self.” Students participated fully in activities and developed their personalities and characters as they went along; college followed out of these choices.

The college process today turns adolescent development on its head, creating an existential dilemma well before high school students are prepared to handle it. Rather than resulting from authentic life decisions, it dictates them, forcing students into an “inauthenticity” that separates them from their own lives. They learn they’re supposed to take AP courses, be president of a winning Model U.N. club, and do significant community service, so that’s what they do, even if they have no genuine interest in those activities. (One current book even suggests that students who play the violin find time to play in nursing homes so they can look more compassionate.) They become cardboard cutouts and assume that others are as well.

“Authenticity” as a Challenge
Up until this point, even in today’s competitive environment, adolescents (with many precocious exceptions, of course) may see their lives as confusing and chaotic but not necessarily “inauthentic.” There’s an immediacy to what they do even if it’s a short-term commitment. They live essentially and for the moment. As adults we see this when our children do impulsive or reckless things: They’re fully in the moment, not considering the long-term consequences of their behavior. The college application process, however, asks them to reach a conclusion before they’ve had a chance to have a “being.” They’re asked to define themselves before they’re capable of doing so, bringing on a crisis that challenges their sense of who they are. When Lester Burnham is asked by a consultant to write out a job description (read “college essay”) for himself he realizes his days at the magazine are numbered. Being forced to contemplate himself sends him over the edge. Asked to do so by colleges, adolescents struggle with the same angst and see the same blankness.

The college admission process tears adolescents out of an environment of relative certainty and throws them into a confusing arena that has no clear boundaries. They are suddenly asked to sum up their lives, to construct a consistent personhood they have yet to develop, and to consider themselves in the context of a larger world they have yet to fully understand. In the process they lose the authenticity of simply “being” who they are and become “performers” of parts they have not yet fully developed. Like nearly all the characters in American Beauty, they must present artificially constructed lives to the world, rather than their own realities, in order to be “successful”: Lester’s wife Carolyn is a real estate agent who has to psych herself up to meet clients (“I will sell this house today!”) and “perform” for her biggest rival; Ricky, the boy next door, pretends to be “an upstanding young citizen with a respectable job” so he can carry on his profitable drug dealing; Ricky’s father disguises his attraction to men with a brute military bearing; and so on. Even high school girl Angela (Mina Suvari), who seems in touch with her sexual power and even her reputation as the school “slut” is only playing a role to disguise her insecurity. (Anecdotally, I’ve noticed that college freshmen are often attracted to the works of Ayn Rand. I used to wonder about that until I realized that Rand’s exaltation of individual identity and fidelity to oneself is the perfect antidote to the Sartrean dilemma.)

The Dilemma of Being Looked At
All of these characters, like our adolescent college applicant, are caught in “the Gaze” of others, another element of existential anxiety. Consciousness of the “Other” prevents us from having genuine interactions, whether those others are potential home buyers or admission officers. Becoming subject to “the Gaze,” of the college admission process, adolescents’ “personhood” is disfigured. No longer able to be “authentic,” they create a shell for those Others, becoming “objects” and not authentic persons.

Sartre illustrated this quandary in Being and Nothingness. He describes a man peering intently through a keyhole at some (presumably salacious) activity in the room beyond. His intense curiosity focuses his entire being on what he’s doing—he has no consciousness of his “self” but simply is that self. For those moments he is entirely “authentic” (think of how we feel when we are completely involved in an activity we love). Suddenly, however, the man hears footsteps in the hall. He becomes conscious of another person as well as himself spying on the room’s occupants and now sees himself acting as well as actually acting. He is embarrassed, aware of the implications of what he’s doing, worried about the other person’s reactions to what he’s doing, and so on. He stumbles as he rises, straightens his clothes and tries to act “normal” but has lost the ability to do so. Even the phrase “trying to act normal” implies that he can’t really be his normal self. To the inadvertent observer (the Gaze), the man at the keyhole is “acting,” not “being.” His equilibrium has been upset and he cannot function as “himself.” He is torn from his personhood and left in a kind of purgatory of uncertainty.

Looking for the “Genuine” Applicant
The college admission process has become those footsteps, seriously undermining adolescents’ sense of self by demanding that they “act” instead of “be.” Students submit to the Gaze and twist themselves in knots under its power. It causes adolescents (and those with a stake in their success) to forsake their “authentic” selves in order to create a persona that will be acceptable to those mysterious observers. This situation gives rise to a particularly poignant irony: Colleges, saying they want “genuine” or “authentic” students, guarantee that they will get exactly the opposite. The stage is set for the artificially enhanced super-student who feels compelled to do what’s necessary to gain admission to a particular school or group of schools instead of doing what engages him and insisting that colleges judge him accordingly. Their lives become “constructed” instead of organic, less and less in touch with a reality they can readily recognize. By the time they are accepted to college they’re living a life like Lester and Carolyn Burnham’s, “an advertisement for ourselves,” and not a reality.

Holding Yourself Together
High school students thus become “inauthentic” at an early age, a situation Sartre also calls living in “bad faith.” They not only have to develop their identities, they have to be aware of themselves doing so. Appeals to “live in the moment” and “enjoy what you’re doing” in order to be accepted by a college fall on deaf ears because they know they need to do certain things and not others to “succeed.” Is it any wonder that cynicism and ironic detachment follow? Students have succumbed to the power of the Gaze and in doing so have sacrificed their authentic lives. Worse, adolescents often end up negating their own being and desires to achieve something that may or may not be in their best interests. This is more than just doing what one’s parents want, it’s an active denial of one’s one authentic existence. Knowing all this on some level, they become like Lester at forty: cynical, sarcastic, and unable to inhabit themselves fully.
In the process of acting for others rather than being for themselves, adolescents also become dependent upon the Gaze because it’s what holds them together. Applying to college implies that there is a meaning to what they’ve done so far in life, yet dependence on the Gaze turns them into people who cannot embrace the freedom to explore, discover, and take chances. They become objects, subservient to the will of others, just as the servant at the keyhole is subservient to the one who discovers him, and therefore unable to truly “be themselves.” Lester Burnham’s slavish obsession with the adolescent Angela’s “Gaze” is an adult case in point: His attraction to her and his consciousness of her consciousness of him permanently disables his ability to act rationally, leading to his death at the end of the film.

The Process and Its Products
Students going through this process think less about authenticity than they do about being accepted and looking good to admission deans. Yet it does several things that are antithetical to healthy adolescent development: It creates a situation where one’s “self” must be defined before it has been truly developed. It also puts that “self” at the mercy of others, forcing the adolescent to create an artificial rather than authentic self, leading to a feeling of acting rather than being.

We wonder why there seem to be more problems on college campuses with binge drinking, casual sex, studying, and relationships in general. While one can’t blame the college admission process for what is largely part of a social and cultural phenomenon that crosses many boundaries, one can see the whole process as a shock to the system: Adolescents previously fully involved in creating their own being are suddenly asked to create a “being” that can be gazed at before they’re ready. This acute self-consciousness, like that of the man at the keyhole, deforms their ability to behave unselfconsciously. They arrive at college not having a sense of themselves as integrated individuals, but as constructs that hold together only as long as they are “seen.” As a result, they look for ways to assert themselves meaningfully, to fill the emptiness of that construct. Unfortunately, that includes surrendering to the intensities of sex, drinking, drugs, and dangerous “extreme” behavior, all of which can be seen as attempts to re-experience a time when each moment was unique and for them alone. Thinking again about American Beauty, one can see how the sudden realization of emptiness, of having lived for the Gaze instead of for oneself, might put adolescents on the brink of despair. Deprived of a meaningful life in high school, they try to fill the void and reestablish that meaning, a situation Sartre and Lester Burnham understood all too well.

Earlier and Earlier

As we suffer through the indignities of a national election process nearly a year before any primaries actually occur, I can't help thinking that this pushing back of start dates seems to be of a piece with other forms of starting things earlier and earlier. High school juniors do math that was once strictly college level; they read Anna Karenina as if they were grad students; we expect them to have an intellectual maturity that is at deep variance with their physical and emotional maturity. Yet most people see these things as good. Kids are getting smarter, they say; they don't need to dwell on the basics any more; they can go right into higher level college courses because they do well on the AP exams. And colleges themselves, especially the most competitive ones, seem to want students who are closer to being grad students than undergraduates.

There's a contradiction inherent here, I think: We try to hurry kids along so they'll be smarter, faster, more talented than anyone else sooner than anyone else, yet we also drag out their lives in intolerable ways by making them super-conscious and super-burdened about what they need to do to "get ahead" in a world that's imagined to be ultra-competitive and dog-eat-dog. Watching the Democratic and Republican candidates (I even hate to call them that now) trying to rev up for a campaign that is not even supposed to take place until next year, I can't help thinking of middle and high schoolers who are pushed into roles by their parents before they're ready for them. They're prodded to take APs, pushed to be on every team, goaded to load up their resumes for that inevitable "primary" season of college admission. They begin their campaigns so far ahead of the actual "election" that they lose their freshness well before the ballots are counted. We've arrived at a ridiculous moment when people are running for office before they've had a chance to grow into the office they currently occupy, or who run when they should be doing their jobs.

An interesting side effect of all this hurry is that some schools are finding that even with high AP scores students can't really place out of the courses AP courses were designed to place them out of. They've learned "higher-level" ideas and concepts, but never had time to master the basics that would have given them the solid foundation they need to build strong educations. It's as though they've been taught a Beethoven piano sonata before having mastered scales and other musical basics. Now perhaps one can memorize a Beethoven piano sonata without knowing these basics, but even if that were the case, it would not make that person a musician. So what does it mean when a high school student can go through AP calculus BC but has to return to pre-calculus in college or has to take calculus all over again? Students become performers, not students; they memorize the tricks that will get them through school and win the approbation of parents and teachers, but then they come loose at the seams in college, wondering why they feel so empty.

Colleges, expecting students to arrive fully formed, drive some of this hurry, but at the same time lament its results. Professors increasingly do not want to teach survey courses or dinky underclassmen; they want to teach their fields and specialties to older students who presumably already have the skills they need to write and think well. But such is not the case and again we see the contradiction: colleges want to admit those who are already spectacular, but professors treat those students as annoyances once they're there. I applaud Tulane University in this regard: Radically rethinking their structure in the aftermath of the hurricanes, Tulane's president decided that full professors should teach underclassmen so those who needed that kind of contact the most would get it. It's still an experiment, but a worthy one and I hope it works.

As brain science increasingly tells us that adolescent brains are not fully formed and lack rational controls and logical thought centers, we are forcing them to be more rational and logical. We are piling on academic hard labor and wondering why we have epidemics of teen suicide and depression. The ambition (of parents, teachers, and others) doesn't fit the reality. How strange that even as we learn more about what makes teens tick, we seem to be ignoring it more and more.