Bad Parents

Perhaps it was anxiety that drove the parents’ behavior, a fear that any blemish on their children’s résumés would destroy their chances at getting into an elite college. Then again, maybe it was just another example of a generation’s valueless, enabling parenting style: Daddy’s not sure taking a dump in the piano was a good choice, champ. Fortunately, Daddy’s attorney thinks we can bury these judgmental cretins in so much paper their eyes will bleed. Now give Daddy a hug.

IF THERE IS A MOMENT when all the bad aspects of The Way We Parent Now reach their rococo stage, it’s in the college application and selection process. On a recent Friday morning, I am having coffee in Wayne with Janet Walkow, the consultant and mother of three I referenced earlier. When she was choosing a college back in the ’70s, the world was a simpler place, and she handled the whole thing on her own. “The first time I saw Vanderbilt was on my first day of school freshman year,” she says.

Today, in upscale communities like Wayne, that approach would probably get you brought up on charges of child neglect, which is why Janet and her husband took a much more active role in helping their three daughters — two of whom went to public school at Conestoga, one to private school at Agnes Irwin — with the college process. Still, Janet sounds a little rueful about how much has changed. “Before, people’s worth wasn’t wrapped up in where you went to college,” she says. “I never worried about my résumé. I didn’t wake up worried about how I was going to account for every minute of the day.”

I was introduced to Janet by Luisa Rabe, who runs an education consulting business in Haverford. Her job: to guide kids down the now-treacherous path of choosing and getting into the right college for them, one that’s “the best fit.” Luisa likes to meet with kids as early as possible and help them identify what they’re interested in. This, in turn, helps them shape their high-school career, from the kinds of classes they take to the extracurricular activities they’re involved in. It’s a service for which she’s well paid — $6,000 per child — and for which she’s in high demand. “Parents see me as a good investment,” she says. She now starts seeing kids as early as eighth grade, to help them plot their strategy.

I like Luisa Rabe. She’s intelligent and down-to-earth, and she struck me as very much having the kids’ best interests at heart. Still, I can’t help but wonder if her job isn’t utterly absurd, a sign of a culture that has got a lot of things turned upside down. For starters, who knows at 14 or 15 what they’re really interested in? Isn’t adolescence the time in your life when you should feel free to explore a lot of different possibilities, without a lot of risk and without having to worry how it will look to someone on the outside? What’s more, it strikes me that there’s something off in the idea of a school that’s the right fit, as if choosing a college is like trying on a pair of shoes. Certainly, some kids — some people — do better in certain kinds of situations, but I wonder if it all doesn’t underscore a message that kids have gotten since they were young: You’re great just the way you are; if something doesn’t fit, it’s not your fault; you just need to find someplace that will accommodate and appreciate the full wonderfulness of you, you, you. People: Isn’t it possible the kid might need to do some adjusting? What a shock that this is the most narcissistic generation ever.

Mostly, though, I guess I wonder this: If a child is mature enough and competent enough to go to college, shouldn’t he or she be able to manage the process of applying on his or her own, with perhaps a small assist here and there from Mom and Dad? Apparently, though, I’m smoking crack.

“Parents act as if it’s their process now,” Janet Walkow tells me. And sometimes, that’s what it is. A friend recently confessed that last year, after bugging her applying-to-college daughter to send an e-mail to the admissions officer at a particular school, she finally hacked into her e-mail account and did it for her. The admissions officer e-mailed back, and they ended up in a lovely little online exchange, college rep and “student.”

What was driving my friend, what I suspect drives most of the parents caught up in this, is fear — a gut-wrenching anxiety that strikes on so many different levels. It’s evolutionary: If your son doesn’t get into a good school, his career prospects will be dim, and he won’t be able to feed himself and his offspring, and your genetic line will die off. It’s cultural: Without the right diploma, your daughter will never be able to do better than you, as every generation of Americans has done better than the one before it. It’s a status thing, an achieving yuppie’s worst nightmare: You were given a task to complete — raise a thriving, “successful” child — and you failed. You, friend, are not a professional.

It’s a fear that trickles down easily to kids. “The students feel they have to not only satisfy their parents, they also have to satisfy their teachers, they have to satisfy their peers, sometimes even their peers’ parents,” says Jim Nolan, another college consultant on the Main Line. “So there’s tremendous pressure, and I think it’s really gotten all out of perspective.”

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