Voyage of the Paradigm Ship

My wife and I sent our oldest daughter off to college this fall. She isn’t our first child to go to college, but she is the first to go to a college that is a very long day’s drive away from home. After that initial bout of homesickness, she’s been doing OK—great actually. She is engaged with a positive and supportive group of friends from her dorm and the dance program. She is being challenged academically, she studies hard, and it is showing in her grades. It’s especially heartening for me, the librarian dad, to have her report that she also spends a lot of time studying in the library!

Practically born with a mouse (a computer mouse) in her hand, my daughter is part of a generational group called “Millennials,” also known as “digital natives” or the “Net Generation” from the standpoint of “from day one” familiarity with and use of computer and network technology. All my children grew up with computers and Internet access in the home. We started with an Apple Macintosh 512ke back in 1987, and first got “connected” to the Internet with a 14.4Kbit dial-up modem in 1994. (Incidentally, I recall that in 1994 Yahoo! was little more than a running list of web page links. The “search engine” we all take for granted had not yet been invented, and Google did not yet exist.) When we first went with broadband “high speed Internet access” around 2000, it was such a great experience for everyone that I could actually feign threats of a return to dial-up if the kids were misbehaving!

I have read a fair amount of the literature to prepare our library to respond to how “Net Geners” are inclined to interact with libraries and the larger information environment over the course of their college career. Two especially good treatments I read last year included: Studying Students: The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester, edited by Nancy Fried Foster and Susan Gibbons (ACRL, 2007), and Susan Gibbons’ related The Academic Library and the Net Gen Student (ALA, 2007). In describing Millennial or Net Generation students, the University of Rochester study observed characteristics in their own students echoing the larger literature (e.g., the now classic study of Neil Howe and William Strauss, Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation [Vintage, 2000]), including the observation that

“Our students seem to be much more in touch with their parents than in previous generations,… The University of Rochester students we studied mentioned a great deal of communication with their parents as well as parental involvement in their research papers, such as in the search for a topic or in proofreading drafts. Several mentioned communicating with their parents via instant messaging. Clearly, and somewhat to our surprise, these students maintain quite close ties back home” (65-66).

The explanation offered for this close parent-child relationship is that Baby Boom parents have tended to shelter their children more than they themselves were sheltered, reflected in changing American cultural attitudes toward children, and rising concerns about child safety. The study continues

“Some Boomers even want colleges to return to in loco parentis [serving as substitute parents]. These attitudes have given rise to what is now referred to as the ‘helicopter parent,’ who hovers over a child’s college experience, trying to exert as much control as possible and generally interfering in even the smallest details of the student’s life” (66).

In her treatment, Susan Gibbons refers to a 2006 College Parents of America survey revealing that “81.6% of parents rated their level of involvement with their college-bound children to be either ‘more involved’ or ‘much more involved’ than they experienced when in college” (77). This high level of involvement is facilitated by now common communication technologies such as cell phones, email, and instant messaging.

I read all this last year with considerable interest, intent on making the appropriate connections with my library context. But I was otherwise personally detached from this experience. I was even inclined to disparage this description of parents who “hover” over their child’s life in college. All that changed this year, now that my daughter is in college. It seems I’ve now become a “helicopter parent.”

I’ve become a “helicopter parent,” but I hope I don’t “hover” that much. I concur that my wife and I are more involved with our daughter’s college experience than our parents were involved with us. But I would like to think that my wife and I are not seeking to control or interfere in our daughter’s college life. Yes, we sent her off with a cell phone, and we have our IM clients open whenever we’re at our computers. We’re all on Facebook, and we even have webcams for periodic video chatting. We want to communicate that we are supportive of and available to our daughter if she needs or wants to connect with us. We are thankful for the technology that facilitates this connection.

I would echo from our own recent experience what was observed in the University of Rochester study. Although there is a writing center on campus, and our daughter has made use of this service more than once, she prefers and routinely solicits our involvement in topic development and proofreading of her writing assignments and research papers.

My daughter’s experience has led me to consider with greater personal interest the approach taken by the libraries at the University of Rochester to the helicopter parent. The tone of the study document excerpted above seems to communicate that they were perhaps put-off by the level of parental “interference.” But the study was a learning experience for the library organization, too. The tone had changed in what Susan Gibbons subsequently relates in her book. In 2006, the libraries revamped their freshmen orientation activities, and instead of trying to get a message across to distracted and overwhelmed in-coming students, they actually decided to focus on the parents.

“While conversing with [parents] the librarians delivered a simple, concise message: ‘Every class has a librarian.’ If the parents retain that message, when their son or daughter calls home for advice and help on a class assignment, perhaps they will suggest that their child make contact with the librarians” (15).

This is a great idea—to simultaneously reassure parents and encourage them to advocate for the library and librarians with their children. I suppose that as an academic librarian it is natural that I should already be doing this with my daughter. But again, I’m seeing this whole dynamic in a new light now that I am personally (and not merely professionally) involved. My wife and I bring a fairly high level of educational experience that may not be shared by all parents of college students. But this makes me wonder if librarians might extend their advocacy and strengthen their collaboration through the development of a program of information literacy instruction for parents. What might it mean to give added tools to parents when their children call home for help? Hmm, let me give this some further thought.