The Rise of Helicopter Parenting on Campus

During Kate Hanna’s second year at an Ontario university, one of her roommates’ moms—we’ll call her Jennifer—started micro-managing her daughter’s household. She organized the move-in and tracked household expenses using an app called Splitwise, making sure everyone was paying their share. She texted the moms of her daughter’s roommates, trying to get them involved in overseeing things, too. Hanna, whose name we’ve also changed, found the involvement of her roommate’s mom off-putting—and couldn’t believe the mom tracked her daughter through the Find My app on her phone.

Eventually, the involvement crept into the friends’ social lives. On Homecoming weekend, Jennifer asked to see pictures of the girls’ shenanigans. Then, when her daughter sent a video of one of the roommates doing a keg stand at a house party, she texted back judgy comments. “Her mom is trying to helicopter our entire household,” says Hanna. It’s bad enough feeling smothered by your own parents when you’re trying to transition to adulthood, she adds. Let alone someone else’s.

It’s not just students who complain about over-the-top moms and dads parachuting themselves into university life. Deans, professors and support staff at universities across Canada have grown accustomed to increased parental involvement, resulting in a blurred line between support and intrusion. Because the emotional, financial and practical involvement of parents in the lives of their young adult children has become so normalized, some parents and kids aren’t aware the behaviour might be inappropriate. The outcome of maintaining the umbilical cord into the post-secondary years largely depends on the kid and the context. Some students benefit from the extra guidance, while others may miss out on opportunities to develop independence and resilience—and learn some helpful life lessons. 

The term “helicopter parenting” was coined in 1990 by child development experts Foster Cline and Jim Fay to describe a range of behaviours that stifled kids’ independence and kept them reliant on mom and dad. As a parent of a university-age kid, I can confirm this style of parenting is alive and well—especially in online groups for parents of university students. Posts flood in asking for grocery delivery recommendations, who to contact about residence cleanliness and whether an exam can be rescheduled due to illness. All these issues are things kids could reasonably figure out for themselves from a quick Google search, or by asking their residence adviser or professor. 

I’ve spoken to several staff and professors at Canadian universities, who recount scenarios such as parents asking for the dorm coordinator’s phone number to ask them to check up on their child, and incidents where parents have attended class with their child to take notes for them. A University of Calgary professor I spoke to on the condition of anonymity was stunned in her first year of teaching, when the department chair visited her office. The chair had received a call from a mom concerned about the course reading list. Her specific complaint: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, which deals with themes of racism, child rape, incest and pedophilia. In the mom’s view, the professor was putting ideas about these acts in the child’s head. “None of the texts were an example of rape endorsement,” the professor says. “We were critically discussing how the writer unfurls the themes.”

The involvement is often behind the scenes—calling students to make sure they are up for class. Keeping track of assignment deadlines and making sure the student is on track to hand them in. The staff and professors I spoke to say anxiety causes parents to insert themselves into their child’s university life—they worry that if they don’t personally oversee academic progress, terrible things might happen, like flunking out. If they don’t call their kid to wake them up in the morning, they might miss class (and flunk out). If they don’t manage their child’s household expenses, they may miss rent payments and get kicked out of their housing. 

Aryan Karimi is an assistant professor in the department of sociology at the University of British Columbia. He explains that two societal shifts happened in the late 1980s and early 1990s that paved the way for more involved parenting at university campuses. First, a university degree became the key to a white collar job—and upward mobility—across all groups in Canadian society, including immigrants. Second, parents began practising a more hands-on (read: helicopter) and attachment-based parenting style—partly to ensure their kids achieve the success in childhood that will allow them to get into university and achieve that upward mobility. When involved, emotionally supportive Boomer and Gen X parents—many of whom are university grads themselves, and familiar with the workload and stressors on campus—pay to put their kids through school to earn the golden ticket, they become invested in the outcome. In this climate, overstepping almost becomes an expectation. “The message is that this is part and parcel of parenting,” says Karimi. Overinvolved parenting has been further fuelled by society’s hypervigilance around health and safety. Parents hear alarming stories about what can happen on campus—roofied drinks, sexual assaults, depression, suicide—so they touch base obsessively, or track their kids’ phones to make sure the blue dot is where it should be.

One mom I spoke to admitted that, during her son’s first year at the University of Toronto, she checked his Snap Map nightly to see where he was—it comforted her to know he was safe so far from her home in Kelowna, British Columbia. In the lead-up to first year, she logged into his email and flagged important university correspondence, and helped him through the process of registering and picking courses. In high school, she had regularly texted her son’s football coach and helped him stay on top of his school work—in her mind, she was pulling back from what she had been doing previously. So, when he called her at Thanksgiving that first year saying he didn’t feel ready to handle university, Johnson was gutted. She wondered whether her involvement in high school had left him unprepared for the rigours of university life. “It’s very hard to see your children in a position where they’re uncomfortable or struggling,” she says. “You want to mitigate that, but at a certain point you realize that’s not really helping them.” 

Chat with most parents who have a child in college or university and there’s a sense that young people aren’t as equipped to leave the nest as they once were. Parents report kids spiralling over the daily pressures of independence—managing their course load, shopping for groceries, preparing meals and feeling lonely in the single dorm room they so desperately wanted. Parents constantly hear how hard it all is, and find it’s difficult to know when to step in, and when to pull back.

Andrea Howard, an associate professor in the department of psychology at Carleton University, was the lead author on a study that examined how helicopter parenting—or assisting with tasks the student is capable of doing on their own—affected student success and well-being. The result: it didn’t affect it, either positively or negatively. On the other hand, age-appropriate involvement contributed to student success. In order for parents to draw the line between helping and overstepping, they can consider whether their behaviour interferes with their child’s own goal for independence. Imposing a curfew, for example, would not be appropriate—no young adult wants a parent controlling their movements. But offering advice and opportunities for communication is a reasonable role for a parent of a young adult. Instead of texting the residence adviser or emailing the department chair, parents can talk through problems with their kids and encourage them to come up with solutions. Rather than sending a reminder to buy groceries, they can let the fridge empty out so kids can see for themselves the importance of regular grocery delivery. 

Universities—with their wellness services that include counselling, crying rooms and even napping pods—are the ideal environment for kids to make mistakes and learn how to be adults. Professors are more accommodating now, too, rescheduling exams or giving an extension due to illness without a doctor’s note. In environments like residences and student housing, students learn from each other. 

The mom I interviewed in Kelowna no longer tracks her son in Toronto on Snap Map or checks his emails. She’s learning to trust that he’s in a supportive environment getting two educations—one in his program and the other off-syllabus, learning the skills necessary to be a self-sustaining adult. Like checking his own email.

This story appears in the 2025 edition of the Ultimate Guide to Canadian Universities. You can buy the issue for $19.99 here or on newsstands.