Family Ties: When They Just Won't Let Go

The phone rings as she walks through the door. "I knew he would call," she sighs, rushing to pick it up. It's midnight and she's returning from having a drink with a friend after a study session. "Honey, is that you? Where have you been?" whines her mother. "I've been calling for about two hours now... I couldn't go to sleep until I knew you were home safely."

This is an all-too-familiar scenario for many Harvard students whose parents, for one reason or another, have remained...attached. The majority of students are finished with curfews and other embarrassing tokens of parental supervision after high school. Some are not so lucky. Some continue to live their college lives under the watchful eye of their parents. All such parents are not the same, but they can be roughly classified into four types: the Overprotective Parent, the Control Freak, the Parent Who's Living Vicariously, and the Nosey Parent. Admittedly, the above parenting disorders are closely related and often overlap, but there are distinct causes and symptoms that identify each.

The Overprotective Parent

A parents in this category believes that his or her college-age child still needs to be guarded and cared for. He or she will issue warnings about walking places alone, will constantly inquire about "safety," and may seem obsessed with health as well. "Have you been taking your medicine? Have you been eating enough fruits and vegetables? Have your allergies been bothering you?" they prod. Before a child leaves for the weekend, the Overprotective Parent must personally confirm all travel plans and require the student in question to call when he or she arrives at the pre-determined destination.

This sort of continuous regulation can be a nightmare for even the most responsible and independent student. "When I left for school," recounts one flustered first-year, "my mother sent me individually saran-wrapped packages of vitamins to take to the dining hall each morning. What was she thinking?!"

The Control Freak

The Control Freak complex is nearly as common as that of the Overprotective Parent. Eliminating free will on the part of the child, dictatorial Control Freaks decide which classes their children enroll in, which activities they are to be involved in, and who they can socialize with. Sometimes these so-called adults are controlling their children's lives to make up for a lack of control in their own, while in other cases, they don't trust students' judgements enough to allow them to handle their own decisions.

Since many of students are financially dependent on their families, many parents achieve their control through fiscal means. "No matter what I spend, my parents don't mind paying my credit card bill because that way they find out where every penny is being spent. It's a method of keeping track of me," admits one student. A friend agrees that "my dad is paying for me to go to Harvard, so I have to respect his request that I concentrate in a science."

The Parent Who's Living Vicariously

Although it places an unfair burden on a child, many parents unwittingly pressure students to carry out their own unfulfilled dreams. The mere fact that their children are attending Harvard may cause parents to feel jealous or want to adopt their children's experiences as their own. Perhaps they just want to visit, genuinely wanting to hear every detail of every day of college life.

Perhaps these parents may insist that they act the way they do simply because they are proud of their children and want to keep them from repeating parents' past mistakes. But this itself is a twisted idea, as one irked first-year reveals, "My father always tells me and my friends to make sure that we study statistics. He insists that it's `the wave of the future,' but I think it's because he thinks statistics would have helped him in his own career."

The Nosey Parent

Trying to redefine the parent-child relationship now that the child is away from home can prove difficult for many parents. In an attempt to remain close to their children, Nosey Parents think that they need to become best friends. They may ask unrelenting personal questions or try to behave younger; they may even press for intimate details about their child's life on campus.

Such parents aren't really trying to invade your privacy--they just believe that discussing personal things will keep you closer to home.

"My mother would much rather talk about my social life than my classes," acknowledges one student. "If she doesn't think I'm going out enough she'll be sure to tell me. She thinks college is a time to date a lot of people so you can find out what you want in a spouse."

Attached parents are a reality that many Harvard students learn to live with. By developing methods for dealing with the aforementioned complexes, controlled children gradually learn to accept the lingering remainders of parental authority, confident that they will fade with time.