Tim Ellsworth

The amount of parental involvement in the lives of college students is increasing, and some colleges are becoming frustrated by parents’ pushiness.

Such parents have earned the title “helicopter parents” for the way they hover around their children, even after they move away to college.

“We noticed what everybody else noticed. We have a generation of parents that are heavily involved in their students lives and it causes all sorts of problems,” said Dean of the College Adam Weinberg. College, he said, should be “a time when you go from living in someone else’s house to becoming a functioning, autonomous person.”

I was talking to our dean of students this weekend, and she told me she gets calls all the time from parents asking how often the cleaning service comes to clean up the dorm rooms. Um, that’d be something the students are responsible for, thank you very much.

One of the reasons given in the story for such intrusiveness by parents is the “tight bond between Baby Boomer parents and their children.” I’m not sure I buy that. Sounds to me like the problem is rooted in a lack of parenting skills. Because parents are so overbearing and meddlesome, their kids aren’t learning how to be independent by doing things for themselves.