Reply to Purdue President’s Op-Ed

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Seems like a lot of you are taking this op-Ed personally! [b]He’s not wrong[/b], although I do take issue with the timing and singling out moms - because there have to be a few examples of dads doing this too even if it’s not as frequent. It could’ve been more balanced.

[b]The point is that we are doing our kids a huge disservice by not stepping back and encouraging independence.[/b] [/quote]

No one is disagreeing with the idea that encouraging independence is part of college (though people vary in what constitutes support vs. helicoptering--though few would disagree that he provides extreme examples).  It's just that the college president added up the handful of crazy anecdotes over the years and then wrote as if it had something broader to tell us about moms (or dads, or students, as a group). So I think he is wrong.  I think some people like to think that there are all these crazy helicoptering parents (rather than a few) because it makes them feel better about themselves and their own very reasonable level of parenting involvement.

Of course we all have to make complex decisions about how much support/independence to give our children and when. And we question whether or not we are right.   It's an age-old question.  It's in proverbs (roots & wings and whatnot).  Just a few generations ago people rarely left their home towns, commonly worked in family trades and businesses and women typically lived with their parents until they were married.  There's nothing unusual about this, and there's long been men condemning too much 'mothering'.  It's sexist.

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