Annotated Bibliography #5

Bachman, Teri. (Fall 2002). Parents as Partners. UC Davis Magazine.

This article explains in detail about how parents are helping children so much more than they should as they go to college. Administrators at UC Davis are seeing parents so overly involved it's hindering their growth in responsibility and independence. The number of parents attending freshman orientation has increased and its the parents asking most of the questions instead of the students. They are calling the school asking questions, helping there kids pick a major, and which classes to take, making sure their living situation and ability to do homework is just right. This article gives another definition of Adultolescence which is also important. It is "Parents were staying involved in their college students’ lives, hanging on to their roles as decision makers, problem solvers and safety officers. "and “overgrown kids [who] seem content to enjoy the protection of their parents as they drift from adolescence to early adulthood.” Parents can be very helpful and supportive, but doing everything for them is taking the responsibility off of the kids to have to step up and learn the stuff for themselves. That's what makes strong adults.

Quote 1:

An expert on stress and coping, Aldwin also notes that the last 20 years have seen a preoccupation with stress. “There have been literally thousands of studies showing that stress is bad for people, including children, and parents got the idea that they needed to protect their children from stress, to take over if things got a little rough.”

Protection not only from stress but from any form of harm has been an overarching concern of today’s parents, notes an article in the September–October 2001 issue of the higher education journal About Campus.

“Today’s parents are going to unprecedented lengths to avoid their worst fear—that harm will befall their child,” wrote author Karen Forbes, director of counseling services at Lafayette College in Easton, Penn.

Quote 2:

To be sure, parental involvement, if excessive or inappropriate, can be a problem. Parents who are too quick to step in don’t give their children an opportunity to develop coping skills or the ability to handle their own problems.

Young people who are not held accountable for their mistakes but are rescued from messes of their own making learn no lessons. And sometimes, in the rush to help their own children, parents forget about the rights of others involved in a situation. “Parents may be supporting their son or daughter at all costs, while not realizing how their child may be impacting the community,” said Diane Russell, associate director of student housing.

I could use one of these quotes or part of one to bring in the point of how parents are aiding and enabling adultolescence.