Parent Power

The rise and rise of the school-run is a familiar story.  In the 60s and 70s my own virtuous generation used to get ourselves to school  on foot, by bus or bike. Now the kids get driven there in the 4 by 4, Ford Fiesta or whatever. Whatever the reasons (parental anxiety about murderous traffic and/or wandering paedophiles), the results are obvious in the shape of pollution and overweight/underexercised kids. Not to mention the fact that the average 10 year-old has lost the only half hour or so of independence that they used to enjoy during the day.

What people don’t realise is that the same phenomenon extends to universities too. When I was a student we used to go from home to college by train or bus, sending our assorted possessions in a large trunk – dozens of which you would see piled up at the Porters’ Lodge. (There was a British Rail service, I seem to remember, called “Passenger Luggage in Advance”, which I don’t imagine exists any longer.)

Now, most of them seem to get brought and picked up by their doting or long-suffering parents, in cars stuffed to the gills with clutter (and I confess that, wearing my parental hat, I do this too). Part of the reason may be practical. When we came home at Christmas and Easter, we used to stuff our things in cupboard and hop on the train. Certainly at Cambridge many colleges, with an eye on conference business, insist that the undergraduates – unless they can prove that they really do live on the other side of the planet – remove all their possessions every vacation.

But it’s not just practical (after all, there’s still the trunk option). Mums and Dads seem to appear much more often around college than their traditional single epiphany at graduation.

They bring the kids to open days, and sometimes assume that they too will sit in on the talks and the meetings with the staff. They turn up with them at interview – even waiting for little Johnny or Suzy outside the interview room and probably trying to catch some signs of how it is all going (loud laughter .. is that good?).

Many colleges have given up trying to discourage this by frosty glances – and have taken to providing parents' facilities, coffee etc, just to get them out of the kids’ way.

So what’s all this infantilization about? I’m tempted to think that it’s related to the other – quite opposite – trend we’re witnessing. If you’re a parent, it’s actually hard to have dealings with any institution on your child’s behalf once he or she gets to be 16 or 18. In college, we are told very firmly not to talk to any parent about their daughter’s progress. Which means that when an anxious Mum calls, distraught that her daughter is struggling and unhappy, and when a few words from me would be kind and reassuring (she’s doing very well – was she perhaps hungover?), I am supposed to say pompously that I am not able to discuss the girl with anyone but her.

An even madder version of this happened to me a few years ago. My daughter, aged 17, was sleeping off a very late party – when I knew that she had a doctor’s appointment booked for sometime during the day. Should I wake her up, or let her sleep? Well, obviously it depended when the appointment was. So I rang the doctor’s surgery. The nice receptionist explained that she was not allowed to divulge the time of the appointment. So these two middle-aged women tip-toed around the issue for several minutes (“so you don’t think I would be foolish to et her sleep now”) until I could infer that she was booked in for late afternoon.

Maybe parents have taken to being taxis because they’ve been squeezed out elsewhere.

Comments

[David Bradbury]

Even in the early 1980s it was not unknown for parents to bring large amounts of stuff to Oxford for their offspring. One of my more sybaritic acquaintances (who shall remain nameless) used to get his parents to tow the family caravan up to Oxford to accommodate his luggage. At one point he had to shift rooms from the college annexe into the main building during the course of the year, and enlisted the support of various fellow undergraduates to help him carry his stuff. They were at it all afternoon, to general amazement. The last straw was when someone was seen carrying his electrically heated towel rail - it took him a long time to live that one down.

[Radoprof]

When I was a grammar school boy in south Bucks in the 1960's the walk to school was a precious moment in the day. As a six former, for example, that was my time to be with my girlfriend -- every single day. It was always a completely special time (and I happily dawdled to and from home). Now I live in upstate New York where the kids are all piled on hideous yellow school buses, and they never have any moments away from authority. As a slight attempt to rekindle my old memories and feelings of independence I persuaded my son to walk to school with me (half a mile) when he was in the elementary grades. I could not let him go it alone because there are no sidewalks here in the rural areas, and I would have been had up on charges of abuse if I had let him walk by himself. Even so, the sense of freedom at being out in the open and not trapped in the buses was palpable for my son. He used to call the bus kids "prisoners" because when they arrived at school they had to wait in their safe little coccoons until the bell rang for them to enter the buildings. He could stand outside completely alone and free (and I would get him there a little early and leave him, so he could enjoy those moments while the prisoners looked on him with a mixture of bewilderment and envy). Because of our subversive actions all manner of SCHOOL RULES were initiated supposedly to protect children against the dangers of walking to school. But that just made us all the more persistent. Being considered dangerous and subversive was just fine with us, and I am glad to have raised a boy with a free spirit.

[Emma]

O tempora! O mores! Whoever said that change does not signify decline?

[Claire King]

Dear Mary,
Thank you for a small flashback to a happy place.

When I first went up to Newnham in 1990 I arrived by train and then taxi, lugging whatever I could carry and nothing more. As someone who had always walked the couple of miles to school and back I was absolutely astonished, and a bit disheartened, to find that most other people had arrived in the clutterful cars with clucking parents. Of course the porters were wonderfully kind to me, especially as my room turned out to be on the 2nd floor of Piele.

In fact everyone turned out to be wonderfully kind and supportive - from the porters to the principal and the tutors to the third years...and isn't that a great part of university - finding a new network of support in a venture that is all your own?

As a parent now, albeit of a toddler, I can appreciate how in future years I may feel tempted to circumvent an uncommunicative daughter to get more information on her situation. And I can also sympathise with you that it could be easier and kinder if you were able to offer a few words of reassurance to worried parents. But goodness me, if my own mother had ever done that, and been given the truth, she would have been more worried than ever.

Trusting and handing over autonomy can't be easy. Perhaps keeping an eye on the kids is the easier option for the parents?

[Annie P]

To my amazement my Year 12 daughter asked me to go to a University Open Day with her, because 'everbody else goes with their parents.' Thirty years ago we would not have dreamed of such a thing. I went with her and sure enough, everything was set up for potential students and their parents. My perception was that the day was intended not just as an introduction to that University, but to University in general. Perhaps this is part of the drive to reach the children of parents who left school for work?

[DAVID VINTER]

Ma'am. From September 1940, aged four and a half, I used to walk over a mile to our local primary school and back every day, alone from age 6. I doubt my mother had worries about my being assaulted. However there was Hitler and his lot to worry about! I know what it was like to run for the school shelter, gas mask in hand!

[anthony alcock]

The kids here mostly make their own way to school (primary and secondary), largely because the school is not so far away or difficult to get to with public transport. Kassel is a medium-sized town with good public transport. German school teachers definitely do not encourage parental input, except for the supply of food and drinks on festive occasions. As for parents turning up to universities, I don't think I've seen more than a handful of what look like parents on our campus in the last ten years or so.

[Jackie]

John, congratulations and the best of luck with your MA. As for your (non) daughter in law, just tell her it's fine as long as you get to define 'unsuitable'!

[John F]

Mary,

Parent power is one thing, but what about children power? I'm a late developer, about to start an MA at a London university college.

So, by analogy, should I ask my children to accompany me to my interview? and should they guarantee my tutorial fees?

And what are the conventions for social life? For some of the week, I shall be boarding with one of my sons and his partner. My (non) daughter-in-law is threatening to draw up a set of rules - no 'unsuitable' women after ten, that sort of thing. Is this still standard practice in university halls of residence?

If anybody has any tips, please let me know.

[Oliver Nicholson]

Having been driven out of my home by my wife, her legal team and a High Court judge, I find that being the taxi service of my teenage children is one of the few ways I have of spending time with them.

[Maria Black]

Mary

I think the last comment is difficult. To my mind, parents have a duty to teach but the child also has a duty to learn and to help societally the parent and the school should have joint mentoring duties. Kids make mistakes for themselves and learn the parameters of life and death for themselves, formulating their character at correct times. It is gross for "perceived norms" to be inflicted. It is easy to preach on the need to travel and to experience a life of danger, when one has the ability to do such a thing. But what of the people who cannot? What of those kids who are hugely bright and who have to nurse, elitely or non, an aged grandparent or someone like that, in addition to living up to pressures at school, university and work? Should this not be made easier for them by those around? What of the child whose mother is single and they have to decline membership of the school sports team because they have to do the Sainsburys shopping instead? Do contemporaries have the right to judge these children, when the "problem" could be staring them in the face when one parent turns up to parents' evening? Should they be undermined for taking decisions and assuming responsibilities that they may not want to discuss, that they just "have to do"? To my mind, the answer is "No". What would happen? "Oh blogs has to do shopping for Mummy and is still at home.". Is this right or is it wrong?

[ricardo moraes]

dear Mary, here in São Paulo, Brazil, the parents get paranoid with the kidnap risks and they became their children's drivers. I never agreed with this conduct. My son always get back home alone,on foot, or by bus. He has been stolen twice ( a cheap watch and ten reais,five dollars) but he is not a "babaca"( a stupid boy).Our major writer Guimarães Rosa once said "To live is dangerous". And one thing that the parents must learn is to teach their sons to live.

[Richard]

Dear Mary,

So much has changed, not least the age of undergraduates since I was up in the early '50s. Our parents were nowhere near when we went to be interviewed, or took college entrance exams.

The place was scruffy, there was still rationing but, above all for those of us who had escaped straight from school, the life was one of release and of a rapid increase in maturity. Many were back from the Korean war and Malaya and, as one don said to me, "At times like these there are few petty disciplinary problems but only occasional serious ones". The college was 'in loco parentis', never heavy-handedly, and discipline was largely dealt with in college or by the proctors, not the police. The effect for, I believe, almost all was an urge to be in college, to get away from parents and to get on with work, sport and making friends.

The number of dons was small and we knew most of them, some well: as a result pastoral care was very effective when needed, although friends were the more usual first port of call. At that time I felt that, however odd or different one was, there was always a compatible spirit to be found somewhere. The determination to work was, by and large, marked.

I was back for a year in '64/'65, when life was more comfortable but not especially different. Can it be that the current generation of undergraduates is not only very immature, in spite of a wider vicarious experience of some aspects of life, but actually more dependant on the parents from whom they would perhaps like to distance themselves, and who are allowed so little input and information in this part of their childrens' education?

From personal experience I found it frustrating and troubling that I was unable to obtain any information as to the progress of a son, for whom as it happened I was paying, who was plainly having problems, not only with his work but also with his choice of subject. The result, in the end was that he dropped out of university, not Cambridge, and eventually did well. However, I do think that, preferably with the undergraduate's full agreement, there are occasions when parental contact is an advantage, while letting him or her get on without a heavy parental presence at all other times.

I do enjoy your blog.

With best wishes,

Richard.

[Candadai Tirumalai]

Many American schoolchildren are ferried between home and school every day by the ubiquitous yellow (at least that is the colour where I live) school bus, supported by public funds.
And if you ask a doctor about even the simplest matter relating to a friend or relative, you will find him about as responsive as the Secret Service. "Privacy" is all.