Virtually dependent

“Don’t pick up,” by Terry Castle, might once have been called “Cut the apron strings, already.” In the June issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Castle explores what she views as an unhealthy attachment of parents to their college kids and vice versa, as made evident to her by their cellphone habits.

When Castle told a class of Stanford students that her own dorm had only one wall phone, thus reducing the number of calls one could make to parents, the room fell silent. Then she asked her students how often they were in touch with parents and the kids offered, “At least two or three times a day” and “My mother would worry if I didn’t call her every day.” One student admitted that she talks to her mother six, seven times a day. “We’re like best friends.”

Castle was stunned. “All we wanted to do was get away from our parents!” she sputtered. “We never called our parents!”