Healthy boundaries: Jeff and Carson Howard, standing, have been able to maintain close ties to daughter Cameron while encouraging her independence

Megan Morr

Last February, Hollingsworth distributed a report titled "Duke University Students: Mental and Physical Health Challenges and Needs" to her colleagues in student affairs. Co-authored with William Purdy, executive director of the university's student health center and a specialist in pediatric and adolescent medicine, the report notes that many Duke students report that they are held to extraordinarily high standards by teachers and "intrusive parents who have trouble letting go."

Last year, Hollingsworth and her staff met with 1,400 new clients, 53 percent of them undergraduates; 47 percent, graduate and professional students. The top problems reported in counseling sessions were schoolwork and grades, but those stated concerns are deceptive, Hollingsworth says. "When a person's identity is wrapped up in being a gifted student who makes good grades, they will try to hold that together at all costs. We see straight-A students who have serious eating disorders and are cutting themselves. Grades are the last thing to go."

By law, parents are not allowed access to the academic or health records of their children once they reach the age of eighteen. Hollingsworth says she often reassures concerned parents that "they need to trust us to assist students in making decisions for themselves. Today's parents are often reluctant to trust this process, however, so it may be a no-win situation when you've got an anxious parent on the phone and a student who is not in imminent danger and who doesn't want the parent involved."

Reassuring anxious parents is not always easy. On a breezy Tuesday morning after Labor Day weekend, Wasiolek prepared to meet with a father who had flown to campus to intercede on behalf of his daughter. The young woman's roommate, it seems, liked to party. A lot. In a moment of frustration, the young woman had vented about the situation to her dad.

"Often when a student has a disappointment or a setback, they immediately call their parents on the cell phone," says Wasiolek. "They don't wait to cool down, or until they've resolved the problem themselves. So the parent gets this high-pitched, anxious voice on the other end, and, like any good parent, they want to help. And that is precisely what they do—they get on the phone to someone at Duke or send an e-mail, and now the student is out of the picture."

In fact, that's exactly what had happened in this particular case. By the time the father's plane landed, a number of Wasiolek's student-affairs colleagues had already worked with the two roommates to help them hash things out, improve communication, and set mutually agreed upon dorm-room rules. "The young woman had asked her father to go back home," she says, "but since he had come all this way, he insisted on meeting with us."

Wasiolek says that although she has no statistics to back her up, she thinks the majority of parents who cross the line into "helicopter parent" territory have college and often post-baccalaureate degrees; parents of only children often need additional hand-holding. (Parents of first-generation college students tend to be the most hands-off.)

Faculty members are not immune from the interference of helicopter parents—and the children who rely on them. At the start of her public-policy journalism seminar a few years ago, Susan Tifft '73 reviewed the syllabus, emphasizing the quantity of thoughtful writing required, particularly for the final assignment. One young woman raised her hand and asked whether Tifft would be willing to read drafts of the final paper in advance and provide feedback, the better to ensure an excellent grade. When Tifft declined, on the grounds that it would create an unfair advantage, the young woman nonchalantly told her it didn't really matter because she routinely has her mother read and critique her homework anyway.

"I was dumbfounded," says Tifft, Eugene C. Patterson Professor of the practice of journalism and public-policy studies and a member of the Duke Magazine Editorial Advisory Board. "I opened up the discussion to the class and asked if this was a common practice. Many students told me that their parents were very involved with helping them write papers."

Tifft reminded her students that they all had signed the university's honor code, which prohibits, among other forms of cheating, unauthorized collaboration with others on tests and assignments. When the students tried to argue that getting parents to edit and evaluate homework didn't constitute collaboration, Tifft was shocked—and adamant.

"This stops," she told them. "I'm grading you, not your mother."

Since then, Tifft says, she's found it necessary to be explicit with students that disinterested help, such as that provided through Duke's writing studio, is perfectly acceptable, but parental co-authorship is not.

Stephen Bryan, an associate dean of students and the director of judicial affairs, says he's not surprised to hear that some families don't grasp the questionable ethics of having parents run interference for their children. Bryan manages the disciplinary process for a wide range of cases, including plagiarism, disorderly conduct, and drug and alcohol violations.

In an era when parents scramble to put their newborns' names on the waiting lists of prestigious preschools, getting to the next level of achievement becomes an endless pursuit for parent and child alike, Bryan says.

"There's an attitude that you have to get into a good prep school so you can go to a good college. Once you're in a good college, you have to prepare to go to the top medical school or law school. It's almost as if failure is not an option."

When an academic or conduct violation brings students to Bryan's attention, the most common reaction from families is attempting to minimize the detrimental impact of the behavior on any long-range plans, rather than focusing on the transgression itself, he says. "This is the time when students should be testing their wings, flying from the nest to see if they can make it," he says. "And it's to be expected that some of them will stumble. That's normal. What I tell parents is that their child is not a bad person, that they made a mistake, and that we want to work with them to learn from that mistake."

Unfortunately, he says, there has been a rise in the number of cases in which students fail to be accountable for their actions. During a recent plagiarism case, the parents initially insisted that all communication from the university go through them, rather than the student, Bryan says. "If parents have concerns about the way that an incident will be handled or questions about a process, I encourage them to call. But I want to deal directly with the student. I have had to write e-mails or tell parents over the phone that my job is to communicate directly with their son or daughter."