Loco Parentis: The New College Try

Now, though, we’re not so sure our offspring will be better off than we are. Boomers are soaking up all the money that’s been socked away for Social Security. We’re saddling our kids with global warming and the bill for Iraq. And in one generation, we’ve turned the parent-child paradigm on its head, veering from our moms’ and dads’ glam cocktail-party universe to family-friendly, teetotaling “First Night” New Year’s Eves. We still feel that evolutionary push to have our offspring be more successful than we are. But we’ve lost the upward trail; we’re no longer sure of the way. So we grasp at anything we think might give them an advantage — grasp at everything.

And we face a dizzying array of options: Ice hockey or basketball or track? Art camp or horse camp or music camp? Magnet school? Prep school? Catholic school? Homeschool? What will maximize our kids’ potential? With every decision we make, doors slam shut.

What if Marcy was born to row crew? She’s never tried crew. Could she have been an opera singer if she’d ever been to an opera? Another Meryl Streep if I’d hauled her to theater auditions? I made decisions based on Marcy’s inclinations, sure, but also on what I was willing to pay for and drive to and sit through — on my inclinations. What if my decisions were wrong? What if she could have been Penn material if she’d had a more worldly, sophisticated mother than me?

I DON’T KNOW everything, but I know dangling participles and mixed metaphors. I contemplate Marcy’s Short Answer. She has finally calmed down.

“Know what the problem with this is?” I say. “It’s not you. It’s not sincere. It’s too pat.”

She nods. “It’s just like having said Martin Luther King,” she sighs, and we laugh. “I was thinking about starting over,” she offers.

“I think that would be a great idea.”

She trots off to begin anew to elaborate on one of her many, many extracurricular activities. And the question occurs to me: Why are the colleges asking her to fill out this stuff? She’s 17 years old. What does she know about her activities — or, worse, about the Common App essay topics: “Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.” “Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.” Yada yada yada. Why don’t they ask just ask me?

There should be a space on the Common App for me to tell those hebetic admissions officers (look it up, dude; it was on the SAT) about her. (And a much smaller space for my husband Doug to weigh in: “A helluva kid!”) After all, I brought her up. I imparted my values, my beliefs. I made her a Democrat, taught her to love field hockey, counseled her to wear a skirt to her interviews. Told her to be herself: her fearless, skittish, blunt, funny, tender self.

When you come right down to it, though, the colleges aren’t judging her. They’re voting thumbs-up or thumbs-down on all those decisions I’ve made for her along the way. They’re accepting or rejecting her based on my core values, on what lies at the heart of me.

Jesus. No wonder I’m so frantic. Though I still say Penn would be lucky to have her.

Now go ahead and turn us down.