How Parents Are Robbing Their Children of Adulthood

Today’s “snowplow parents” keep their children’s futures obstacle-free — even when it means crossing ethical and legal boundaries

Helicopter parenting, the practice of hovering anxiously near one’s children, monitoring their every activity, is so 20th century. Some affluent mothers and fathers now are more like snowplows: machines chugging ahead, clearing any obstacles in their child’s path to success, so they don’t have to encounter failure, frustration or lost opportunities.

Taken to its criminal extreme, that means bribing SAT proctors and paying off college coaches to get children into elite colleges — and then going to great lengths to make sure they never face the humiliation of knowing how they got there.

One parent in the college bribery scandal was accused of lying about his son playing water polo, but then worried that he would be perceived by his peers as “a bench warmer side door person,” according to the affidavit. (He was assured that his son wouldn’t have to actually be on the team.) Another was said to have paid someone to take the ACT for her son — and then pretended to proctor it for him herself, at home, so he would think he took it.

The parents charged in Operation Varsity Blues are far outside the norm. But they were acting as the ultimate snowplows: clearing the way for their children to get in to college, while shielding them from any of the difficulty, risk and potential disappointment of the process.

In its less outrageous — and wholly legal — form, snowplowing (also known as lawn-mowing and bulldozing) has become the most brazen mode of parenting of the privileged children in the everyone-gets-a-trophy generation.

It starts early, when parents get on wait lists for elite preschools before their babies are born and try to make sure their toddlers never do anything that may frustrate them. It gets more intense when school starts: running a forgotten assignment to school or calling a coach to request that their child make the team.

Later, it’s writing them an excuse if they procrastinate on schoolwork, paying a college counselor thousands of dollars to perfect their applications or calling their professors to argue about a grade.

The bribery scandal has “just highlighted an incredibly dark side of what has become normative, which is making sure that your kid has the best, is exposed to the best, has every advantage — without understanding how disabling that can be,” said Madeline Levine, a psychologist and the author of “Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies or ‘Fat Envelopes.’”

“They’ve cleared everything out of their kids’ way,” she said.

In her practice, Levine said, she regularly sees college freshmen who “have had to come home from Emory or Brown because they don’t have the minimal kinds of adult skills that one needs to be in college.”

One came home because there was a rat in the dorm room. Some didn’t like their roommates. Others said it was too much work, and they had never learned independent study skills. One didn’t like to eat food with sauce. Her whole life, her parents had helped her avoid sauce, calling friends before going to their houses for dinner. At college, she didn’t know how to cope with the cafeteria options — covered in sauce.

“Here are parents who have spent 18 years grooming their kids with what they perceive as advantages, but they’re not,” Levine said.

Yes, it’s a parent’s job to support the children, and to use their adult wisdom to prepare for the future when their children aren’t mature enough to do so. That’s why parents hide certain toys from toddlers to avoid temper tantrums or take away a teenager’s car keys until he finishes his college applications.

Lost in the real world

But snowplow parents can take it too far, some experts say. If children have never faced an obstacle, what happens when they get into the real world?

They flounder, said Julie Lythcott-Haims, the former dean of freshmen at Stanford University and the author of “How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success.”

At Stanford, she said, she saw students rely on their parents to set up play dates with people in their dorm or complain to their child’s employers when an internship didn’t lead to a job. The root cause, she said, was parents who had never let their children make mistakes or face challenges.

Snowplow parents have it backward, Lythcott-Haims said: “The point is to prepare the kid for the road, instead of preparing the road for the kid.”

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South Carolina Democrats Fight Against University Constitution Course

South Carolina Democrats argued for more than an hour to prevent legislation that would require state universities to teach a “Constitution 101” course Tuesday.

The Republican-proposed bill would update an existing 1924 requirement to teach the course, which the University of South Carolina has hitherto ignored. The legislation has already passed in the Senate, but Democrats in a Tuesday House subcommittee hearing argued the update would be too burdensome on students both financially and academically.

The bill would require students to take a three-credit, semester-long class covering America’s founding documents, including the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist Papers.

Democratic South Carolina state Reps. Ivory Thigpen and Wendy Brawley argued the cost of the course, which Thigpen referred to as “Constitution 101,” may be transferred onto students. They also pointed to a representative from the university who argued against the bill’s requirement that students pass a comprehensive exam covering the course material to graduate.

Republican South Carolina state Rep. Garry Smith, R-27th District, who is sponsoring the bill in the House, pointed to several classes not required by law that the university could stop offering if it wanted to cut costs, such as a class on “Global Citizenship.”

“I would argue that if you can’t pass a comprehensive exam on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, then maybe you shouldn’t graduate,” Smith said.

The bill is the latest attempt from South Carolina Republicans to get the university to require a class that is already mandated by law. The first push came in 2014, which University of South Carolina President Harris Pastides rebuffed with a letter listing several reasons the university would offer, but not require, the class. The primary reason was a mandate to test students for “loyalty to the United States.”

“It appears that an update of these statutes is necessary to strike the balance between compliance and application,” Pastides wrote at the time. “The University of South Carolina is committed to working with members of the General Assembly on a favorable solution.”

The updated legislation appears to address each of Pastides’ concerns, putting the university in a difficult situation should it again insist on not requiring the class.

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White House proposes caps on student loan borrowing

The Trump administration on Monday proposed new limits on federal student loans taken out by parents and graduate students as part of a broader proposal to curb the cost of college.

White House officials included the plan in a list of suggested changes to the Higher Education Act, a sweeping federal law that governs student lending. The legislation is getting its first overhaul from Congress in more than a decade.

Ivanka Trump, the daughter and adviser of President Donald Trump, unveiled the plan at a meeting of the National Council for the American Worker, an advisory group that Ivanka Trump helps lead.

“We need to modernize our higher-education system to make it more affordable, flexible and outcomes-oriented, so all Americans, young and old, can learn the skills they need to secure and retain good-paying jobs,” Ivanka Trump said on a call with reporters.

A primary goal of the proposal is to curb the growth of college tuition rates and reduce the nation’s student debt load, which has reached nearly $1.5 trillion and has more than tripled since 2003.

The White House’s proposed solution is to cap federal loan programs available to students’ parents and to graduate students. The plan doesn’t propose specific limits, but officials suggested it could vary based on academic program.

Underpinning that idea is a belief that colleges are largely responsible for the nation’s debt woes. The White House says easy access to federal aid has led colleges to drive up prices, adding that they are “unable or unwilling” to make education more affordable.

Colleges often argue they have been forced to raise tuition to make up for reduced funding from their states. Many Democrats have echoed that position, with some calling for greater government support for schools.

Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate education committee, says the plan misses the “root cause” of the problem: “that college costs are rising exponentially and most students can’t afford college without taking on massive amounts of debt.”

“In fact, this proposal would end up hurting students by reducing the amount of federal aid for students and taking billions out of the pockets of borrowers,” she said.

Borrower advocates said they welcome attention to the topic but don’t think the White House plan will help. Federal loans for students’ parents and graduate students total about $25 billion a year, compared to $151 billion in total federal student loans.

James Kvaal, president of the nonprofit Institute for College Access & Success, said the plan takes the wrong approach, adding that there’s “no evidence” the availability of federal loans has led to higher college costs.

“The solution is to invest more in Pell scholarships for low-income students, to work with states to make public colleges and universities more affordable,” said Kvaal, who is also a former policy adviser to President Barack Obama.

White House officials say they also want to simplify the loan repayment process, a goal shared with Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who chairs the Senate education committee and is leading the push to update the Higher Education Act.

Lamar said it is “helpful” to have the White House’s perspective as he works with Democrats on the overhaul.

“I share the administration’s goals to make a college education worth it and to make it simpler to apply for federal student aid and pay back student loans,” he said.

Several items on the White House’s wish list were also included in the Education Department’s budget proposal for next year, including the elimination of public service loan forgiveness, a program that can erase debt for certain borrowers after 120 months of repayment.

Instead, the White House says all federal borrowers should get undergraduate debt wiped clean after 180 months of repayment.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos praised the White House plan as “an important roadmap for working with Congress to rethink higher education and pass meaningful reforms.” She added that legislation to simplify lending “should be passed immediately.”

The White House is also asking Congress to make federal Pell grants available to be used in short-term certificate programs, and to take other steps intended to help workers gain skills outside of traditional colleges and universities.

“The higher education system has been slow to adapt to the changing nature of work,” the White House said. “Millions of jobs remain unfilled in part due to a lack of Americans with appropriate skills.”

Congress is still in the early stages of its work to reauthorize the Higher Education Act. Alexander has made it his mission to update the legislation before he retires in two years. The law, originally signed in 1965, received its last major update in 2008.

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