Argumentitive Essay on ‘the Case for Breaking Up with Your Parents – Prof Terry Castle
Why it is better for students to take the wheel “Parental engagement even in the lives of college-age children has expanded in ways that would have seemed bizarre in the recent past. (Some colleges have actually created a “dean of parents” position – whether identified as such or not – to deal with them. ) The “helicopter parents” who hover over nearly every choice or action of their offspring have given way to “snowplow parents” who determinedly clear a path for their child and shove aside any obstacle they perceive in the way. – Prof. Terry Castle, The case for breaking up with your parents As seen in Prof. Castle’s article ‘The Case for breaking up with your parents’ (The Chronicle Review, May 6, 2012), there are a few reasons why she is right when she says that the highly expanded parental engagement jeopardizes students’ intellectual and emotional freedom. They need to separate so that students will be able to engage in a kind of self-orphaning.
First of all, the high involvement of parents is not advantageous at all by thinking that students are not even able to make their own choices – sometimes they would even do something just to make their parents feel satisfied. To prevent this, parents should really start to think about the abilities of their own child. Would they really not be able to make the right decisions? Of course, one has to overcome a few difficult steps in order to be able to make right decisions, but still, the students need to be given the chance to walk their own way to their future.
It is apparent that these helicopter-parents are not inept parents at all, such parents are rather too careful, well, maybe they care a little too much. Nevertheless, they do not have bad intentions so that is why students should start to talk about those involvement-issues with their parents. If they do not talk about it with their parents there would not be anyone else would convince them to stop doing so to their lovely children. Still, caring so much about their child is another reason to let them choose.
If the parents love them so much, they should also love their preferences, or if they really disallow them, they can still advise them not to do so. This way, they can learn to guide themselves and still have the parents’ opinion at the same time. Breaking away from your parents? is not something easy to do. Some students do not know better than their parents’ conceptions, or at least, that is what they assume. That is why there is also a possibility that those students have unconsciously developed a fear of making own choices.
Well, here again, this is another opportunity to help your child to become more independent. As life is full of surprises, there will definitely be moments where your child will have no choice but to make a decision, and if it has never been done, it will also be very difficult. Caring parents would not want their child to be put in a difficult position, would they? Having said this, breaking away from such fanatical and willful parents would definitely be the best thing to do.
