<p>Garland, No doubt! My mom was left with 5 kids, 4months (twins) to 12. Talk about a heroic effort! and we all turned out well, 2 grad degrees, 1 BA, and two more productive citizens! </p>
<p>Momof2inca, Sorry, but I think we are tied! I graduated HS is '81 as well! </p>
<p>Interesting, Garland, that my H, too, was instrumental in my education. Isn't it great to have someone believe in and push you? that's what we tried to do for our son.</p>
<ol>
<li> Parents were from working class immigrant families. Thought girls didn't need college--just learn how to cook, do housework. I was in a vocational program, but also was a NMF (parents didn't know what that was--"That's nice, dear, now go clean your room. . .") and got some scholarships/work study. I figured that if someone would pay for me to go to college, I ought to go. (Cost was about 3,200 the first year). Went to a state u. --along with 100s of others from my high school. Graduated in 4 years, later grad degree.<br>
(When Dad handed me off at my wedding, he said "No returns!" to my husband--He couldn't understand why anyone would marry a girl who couldn't cook).</li>
</ol>
<p>Momof2inca -- you might be the youngest, but then again (as has been pointed out numerous times) you seem to have 2 of the oldest kids on the board!</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I had absolutely no input from parents who both have Masters degrees. Almost as an afterthought I appled to Flagship U on the deadline day, got accepted. My friends and I went on a "road trip", the eventual destination was my college. I had a few suitcases, I was a light packer, LOL. We didn't even know where the college was located, we pulled over to the visitor info center on the highway and asked for directions and somehow bumbled into the dorms. </p></li>
<li><p>My husbands parents (both with Masters degrees) gave him $50 and the address of his dad's old frat house. Husband took the train to college 500 miles away with one duffel bag, moved into the frat house, and despite 4 years of keg parties managed to graduate. Then he got drafted. He later got a PhD in Physics at a well known CA university. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>funny thing: We both got our BAs at the same Flagship U but he was older than me and I didn't meet him til he had graduated.</p>
<p>carolyn and quiltguru - your stories are very poignant on why involvement in college selection for your kids/other kids is so important to you. You are paying it forward and your kids and all the cc kids and parents thank you.</p>
<p>Me? I'm just overinvolved. :o</p>
<p>I do think it's a question interesting to ponder, and I'm thinking it's just part of a larger picture. Why do we attend every soccer/baseball/lax/tee ball/Little League game? Parents didn't do that when I was growing up, or at least it was rare parents. And those were the days of "at-home moms" being the norm. Why are we focused on every little detail of ways to hang pictures on dorm room walls/jersey vs. non-jersey sheets/egg-crate or not, etc. etc. Guilty as charged, by the way, but my parents (and I'm guessing most of our parents) figured whatever was in the dorm room was what we needed; or if it wasn't there we'd find a way to get to some place or other and get what we needed.</p>
<p>Maybe the lesson here is it is time for us to back off and let them handle the typical 'bumps in the road' solo from here on out... be there for any big crisis, be there to offer advice if it is solicited, but maybe now we should turn into our parents a bit, to let them gain the competence we were allowed to gain.</p>
<p>My parents were 85% hands off. At the time, I longed for a more "overinvolved" mom, like many of my friends had, who made everything pleasant and kept things humming. For example, you should see my school pictures. I think in 50% I have dirty hair or a crummy outfit. 3rd graders need to be reminded it is picture day, right? Clearly nobody at my house was keeping track. Sometimes I was raising myself, and that hurt.</p>
<p>OTOH I did stuff like take public transportation to visit summercamp friends who lived 3 hours away WHEN I WAS 12! :eek: I would never let my 12 year old do that! This hands off parenting meant that I was really, really capable, confident, etc-- way beyond my kids' capability levels at the same ages.</p>
<p>I have mixed feelings about all of this. I think my parents backed off too far, too soon... but backing off is good in many ways.</p>
<p>1967 - Berkeley. My parents had divorced when I was a toddler, and by the time I was in high school my Mom had moved out of state and out of touch. My Dad made the grand gesture that I should go anywhere I wanted and he'd pay for it. On the other hand, he didn't seem to notice that by spring of my senior year in high school I hadn't actually gotten around to applying anywhere... This along with being an NMS semi-finalist and not following through with the paperwork to become a finalist (I didn't know anything about it.) I also realized later that there was no way he could or would have paid for more than the state school, so luck was on my side when due to a computer crash they re-opened the application process at Berkeley in April of my senior year and I got in. (Yes - they had computers in 1967. Big ones!)
If it hadn't been for that, I'd have ended up at "Empire State University" in New York City which invited me to attend even though I hadn't technically applied. Or actually, constructively or implicitly applied, for that matter, since I'd never heard of the place. (Did I hallucinate that? it was the 60's... but I swear that's what it was called. I can't find any mention of "Empire State U" on the internet these days.) Ahhh. What could have been...</p>
<p>1978
Zero parental involvement, mine were also of the opinion that females should stay home and keep house. I went to college because my best friends were going. (not to the same schools) How is that for positive peer pressure?!!
Lest you think my folks were totally heartless, they did drive me to school and helped me move in. So is that 98% involvement?</p>
<p>I think my parents figured it out when I was gone for a few months in the Fall of 1967. Let's call it no involvement. Paid my own way with decent financial aid and summer jobs.</p>
<p>Anyone see the movie "Far From Heaven" with Julianne Moore? She played a typical 50s housewife. While not part of the plot at all, it was fascinating to see how the children were treated - "don't bother your father - he just got home from work", etc. After seeing this, my mother asked me if that was how I felt I was raised, and yes, it was. Parents were much more distant from their children. Interesting how families have changed (from the height of the so-called "family values").</p>
<p>kluge, Empire State University, huh? Sounds like the sort of place where you enter as Clark Kent and leave as a Superhero.</p>
<p>Interesting thread. Many of my friends now have kids at the end of or finished with college (I have 2 juniors and a freshman) and as a group we are somewhat convinced that our involvement has been OVER-involvement to the detriment, in some cases very serious detriment, of our children. And it all started with those soccer games, where we registered and coached and managed and scheduled instead of saying "Go out and find someone to play with." It seems that we are now, as a local group of friends and as a whole society, engulfed by a generation of kids who think it's fine to move home and need endless support and encouragment in the most basic aspects of the job search. And that's assuming they didn't drop out of college altogether, which some very capable chidlren of college-educated parents have done, to the tune of much family angst and heartbreak.</p>
<p>You know, come to think of it, there wasn't too much stinkin' orientation back in 1979. Like virtually NONE! No faculty advisors. One RA type in the dorm. That was IT. Maybe two mailings during summer.</p>
<p>My D has gotten at least fifteen mailers and is going to a veritable festival of orientation!!</p>
<p>Do you think there so much more orientation at college nowadays because we've hovered too much & thus raised a bunch of nonfunctional, namby-pamby kids?</p>
<p>geena - I am not sure there is a straight line between our involvement in the teeball/soccer etc. and the move home of so many twenty-somethings. But I think it is truly something we need to think about as a society and as individual families.</p>
<p>Since I'm not there yet (oldest=one and only=rising freshman), I am on the receiving end of many condescending remarks when I voice my expectation that S will not be coming back here to live after college. Now, both H and I would have rather been skewered than move back in with parents, and S seems to be cut from the same cloth. But, who knows? Yet, so many parents believe - and set their kids up to believe (imho) that it's soo haaard out there, that they just can't be expected to make it on their own anymore. I fully agree with you that this is not doing them any favors.</p>
<p>We have always let S know that we fully expect that he will be on his own from age 21/22 onward. I KNOW the economics are more daunting now. But there is always a way - roommates, frugal lifestyle. The adventure of making one's own way. </p>
<p>I am really just touching the tip of this topic - as you did, but it is a worthy one.</p>
<p>SBMom - I recall something like one assembly - maybe an hour long - that constituted "orientation." </p>
<p>I don't know that Orientation exists now because the kids are non-functional and namby-pamby. I'm more thinking that the colleges are on the same bandwagon as us parents - making a "Big ToDo" out of everything, whether it's needed or not. Partly to "be sure" the little darlings are well-cared-for, but partly because it's fun. Plus! They have to have a full slate of activity for the key players - the Overinvolved Parents! At least DS' school does, and then we get to come back 4 weeks later for Overinvolved Parents' Weekend! Better than a cruise!</p>
<p>Jmmom, I agree with everything you've said. One friend of mine, flabbergasted by the return home prior to graduation of an exceptionally talented child from an outstanding college has said, as I have, "I would have found a job as a waitress and moved in with a group of friends if that was what it took -- no self-respecting 20-something would have come home to live after going to college in the 60s-70s." On the other side, another friend with a dd the same age as mine and just about off to college said, "Well, I wanted her less than an hour away, so I can help her. She NEEDS my help."</p>
<p>I would be fine (and if truth be told, delighted for awhile) to have my children return home after college provided it was a temporary measure that included looking for housing as they settled into grad school or work.</p>
<p>I am trying to convey the message to my children that we love them dearly and would be thrilled to have them settle nearby, but the decisions and processes are theirs to make. But there I was last week-end, explaining to a junior son that, as his dreams for the future are rather substantial, he will need A JOB to effect them, and that means he needs to take certain steps this year and next to make that happen. </p>
<p>You're right -- the issue needs a long look -- I suppose each generation faces anew the challenge of producing the next self-reliant generation.</p>
<p>Freshman year: 1966; The George Washington Univ.; Parental involvement: not much.</p>
<p>Dad was among the oldest males of 8 brothers and sisters and 8 step-brothers and sisters, so he was expected to work to support the family. His schooling formally ended after 6th grade, though I was told that his sisters completed his homework for earlier grades, because he was too busy making a living.</p>
<p>Mom had 2 older brothers, and though she completed high school, her culture felt it was really unnecessary for women to go to college. Dad wanted me to go to school locally (CT); Mom was more open to letting me leave home for DC.</p>
<p>Both were quite bright (Dad had technical brilliance; Mom was more literary). Neither parent accompanied me on my college visits, which were made mostly with my high school teachers and a friend's family. </p>
<p>My guidance counselor was worthless. Although I graduated 4/352, he focused more on the boys and the kids that came from wealthier financial backgrounds than mine. That's why I'm committed to helping our DS make informed choices about his future.</p>
<p>Our DS is bright enough (tho some ADD & LD plague him), but at time can be downright lazy. So, we told him that whatever college costs are not funded by academic or athletic money (as a nationally ranked swimmer he quit to have time for himself), will be financed via a loan in his name. In this way, he will see that he would have had a smaller loan, had he won more scholarship money. And, we told him that we would help him pay off the loans only if he did reasonably well in college. In this way, he can lead the life he pleases, but will face the natural consequences should he screw up. After all, in my day, one year of tuition, room and board was only $2,300/year; it's a little different now.</p>
<p>Oh...as an addendum...I had a free ride...I had a full scholarship.</p>
<p>jmmom, Amen! Amen! Amen! My D has been told since she was an early adolescent "Whatever you chose to do with your life, you need to be good enough at it that you make enough to feed and house yourself...cuz the gravy train stops at age 21!" I, too, have been accused of being hard-hearted or looked at in disbelief. They way I will measure my success as a parents is when I see she is self-sufficient and giving back to her world.</p>
<p>quiltguru - Happy to have the company (you, me, geena and whoever else). I truly believe part of the problem is that some kids expect (and their parents expect right with them) to step into a parallel lifestyle at age 22 to the one their parents had attained in mid-40's or later. The house, the neighborhood, the car(s), the goodies, the travel, the clothes etc. etc. I think "starving artist" or "starving-starting-out-on-my-own" is quite appropriate for a new college grad.</p>
<p>Bring on the cinderblock bookcases, spool tables, tuna noodle casseroles, and parties where someone makes a huge lasagne, someone brings garlic bread and cheap wine is served in jelly glasses!</p>
<p>In fact, I think that could be a great theme for one of our cc parties ;).</p>