College and Parental Involvement: Overview

Introduction

By the 2020s, a significant number of high school graduates in the United States were going directly from high school to college, typically at around eighteen years old. In earlier generations, age eighteen and graduation from high school marked a significant milestone: the beginning of adulthood and independence. High school graduates who went to work full-time could be expected to move out of their parents' home and establish independent lives. In the early twenty-first century, however, college administrators and other experts noted that the parents of many college students were remaining deeply involved with their children. Many parents reported talking to college-age students by phone several times a week, sometimes daily, and sometimes several times each day. Parents inquired about topics from academics to finances as well as health and safety. One important driver of parental involvement was the fact that many parents had come to take on significant financial responsibility for their children's higher education due to the ever-increasing costs of college tuition. Some psychologists wondered whether this increased involvement indicated an advancement of adulthood to age twenty-two, or even beyond. Topics in the ongoing discussion around greater parental involvement with college students included the delayed maturity of students, parents' ability to let go of parenthood and allow their offspring to live independently, and other factors altogether. While many largely condemned and argued the harmful impacts of such a high level of parental involvement during this period of their child's life, others contended that this trending extension of involvement into the college years was a side effect of the role that advanced technology had continued to play in the parent-child relationship rather than a concerted shift in parental attitude in favor of micromanagement and excessive control.

Understanding the Discussion

Adulthood: In the United States, a minor becomes a legal adult at the age of eighteen. Generally speaking, young people under eighteen are restricted from driving, voting, purchasing alcohol, and signing legal documents and contracts, and are legally required to attend school.

Empty-nest syndrome: Feelings of psychological emptiness and unhappiness on the part of parents whose children have moved out of the house. For some parents, these feelings conflict with expectations of being liberated from the responsibility of putting their children's concerns and activities ahead of their own.

Helicopter parents: Parents who hover over their college-student children in such a way that the students do not have the opportunity to make their own decisions.

History

Just as the baby boomer generation brought about a myriad of changes in American society, most notably the sharp changes in social norms during the 1960s, observers wondered whether they redefined the passage from childhood to adulthood. This question was specifically raised in regard to parents' involvement in the lives of children attending college. If an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old and their parents are mutually dependent, just when does adulthood start?

In 2003, almost 65 percent of high school graduates went straight to college, which means that most college freshmen were about eighteen years old. While they would always be the children of their parents, there was some question about whether they were still considered "children" at age eighteen.

The statistical fact that so many high school graduates were attending college immediately after high school clearly marked a change in US educational trends. In earlier years, high school was the logical end of education, only a minority attended college, and that minority carried with them a reputation of being the coddled offspring of upper- or upper-middle class parents who could afford to finance an extended adolescence for their children.

During the last half of the twentieth century, this trend began to change. Veterans of World War II received financial help to attend college through the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, or G.I. Bill. For the first time, college became the norm for young people, bringing about a dramatic change in American social and class structure.

Along with the rise in the number of people continuing education after high school came a change in many parents' behavior. Whereas age eighteen used to mark the end of school and the start of working life, that moment was now delayed to make time for college. Parents who might once have expected their children either to move out of the house or to begin contributing to the cost of their room and board after high school were now supporting their children well after high school. To put it another way, parenthood as traditionally defined (providing full support for an offspring) had been extended by four years for a large segment of the population.

The new situation underscored the intersection of parental financial support and control on the one hand, and young adult independence on the other. When adolescents of sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen years old live at home, their relationship with their parents typically remains the same as it was at age six, seven, and eight in at least one important respect: the parents set the rules and try to enforce them. There is a strong cultural sense that paying the costs of room and board gives parents continued authority, whether that authority involves setting rules or being recognized and respected for their wisdom and sought out for advice.

However, many began to argue that some parents became too over-involved with their students' college lives, resulting in the coining of the term "helicopter parents" to describe them. Starting from the admissions process, those parents are on the phone to college administrators and staff, visiting campuses to solve day-to-day problems, and in other ways taking over their children's progress to adulthood. The frequent student-parent communication can aggravate this tendency, because parents intervene to act on issues the student might well be able to resolve on their own. Georgia Tech dean of students John Stein said he congratulated parents of new students for their hard work and investment in their children and then reminded them "that it's time to step back and allow their son and daughter to go forth in the world."

Sociologists have studied the issue by surveying the frequency of communications between parents and their college-age children. One survey found that 74 percent of parents communicated with their children two or three times a week; 20 percent communicated about once a week; 4 percent communicated two to three times a month; and just one percent communicated less than monthly. Hidden within these figures were some parents who reported communicating two to three times per day with their college students, almost always by cell phone.

In another survey, conducted in 2006 by the College Parents of America, one in three parents reported that they communicated in some way with their students one or more times each day. Overall, 82 percent of parents who themselves had gone to college said they were either "more involved" or "much more involved" than their own parents had been.

At the same time, some colleges established programs intended to welcome and encourage parental involvement. In part, these programs stemmed from ongoing concerns about how effectively students adapt to an independent lifestyle in college, as well as the college dropout rate.

For colleges, students represent tuition-paying customers. Programs that help to reduce drop-out rates are thought of as "customer retention," and keeping customers makes the college a going concern without fear of diminishing its reputation or reducing its resources. Nearly 90 percent of respondents to the College Parents of America survey said they had attended a parent orientation on campus, and three-quarters said that they visited the campus at least once or twice each semester. Parents, the survey reported, were most concerned about academics, followed by finances and then by career planning as well as health and safety issues.

An early twenty-first-century reason for parents' frequent communication with students may be their alarm regarding ongoing reports of violent incidents on college campuses. The April 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., left thirty dead and untold numbers of anxious parents around the country. An article that appeared shortly after the tragic event advised parents on ways to reduce stress and recommended that they teach their children to report suspected crimes and learn the signs of potential violence. Another article, by campus safety expert Tom Nelson, encouraged parents to check out safety issues during pre-enrollment campus visits, including talking with current students about whether they felt safe on campus and checking the school's record in a national campus crime database.

Some social psychologists studying the issue suggested that parents in the first decades of the twenty-first century found a new way to cope with "empty nest" syndrome, delaying the day when their offspring are truly independent by continuing to treat their college-age students as children. Other explanations for changed parental behavior pointed to the importance some families place on attending college, and specifically on gaining admission to the "right" or "best" schools. Having obsessed over this issue for years and years, parents may feel that the college experience belongs as much to them as to their children. For other parents, the expense of a college education may absorb a large part of their resources, and they are also concerned with how well their investment is being used.

College and Parental Involvement Today

Discussions about parental involvement during children's college years persisted into the 2020s as trends such as enrollment in college, increasingly higher college tuition, and everyday societal technology use continued. By that point, parents had become used to a greater emphasis on educational involvement encouraged at the K–12 level by more instant technological communications with teachers and administration, as well as access to progress reports and grades shared through online platforms. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that occurred between 2020 and 2023, which resulted in the temporary closure of schools at both the K–12 and collegiate levels across the country as well as abrupt adjustments for both parents and students to different methods of learning and socializing, also greatly affected parental involvement in children's education at all levels. While many college students struggled to balance their academic and social lives during the interruptions of the pandemic, impacting parental concern, parents of students in K–12 were compelled to cope with directly overseeing their children's education, now conducted virtually or in a hybrid format, from home instead of the classroom. Some theorized that though students eventually returned to classrooms later that year and into 2021, this disruption of traditional education and socialization would have lasting impacts on both students and parents, including as or if those students went on to attend college. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 39 percent of people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four were enrolled at college in 2022. Additionally, Sallie Mae reported in 2024 that 74 percent of families relied on parent income and savings to pay for college. Inflation and increases in the cost of living contributed to this trend continuing into the second half of the decade.

These essays and any opinions, information or representations contained therein are the creation of the particular author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of EBSCO Information Services.

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