On New Year’s Eve this year: The ball dropped, interesting combinations of people kissed each other, champagne spilled … and then everyone picked up their cell phones and called their parents.
Apparently, my entire demographic partook in this activity, because no one’s calls connected.
Fifteen minutes later, four female friends smoked on the balcony while wishing daddy a happy New Year’s. A friend deadpanned, “New Year’s Resolution No. 1: We will stop calling our parents.”
The holiday moment highlighted a new phenomenon: The invention of cell phones and unlimited calling has led to a new magnitude of adult-parent communication. Everyone I know calls their parents constantly.
I can almost guarantee that when T-Mobile introduced its Family Plan, they weren’t aiming for teenagers who live 10 yards from their parents. The suits were envisioning 28-year-old Jennifer in Chicago who constantly calls 56-year-old Ruth in San Francisco for everything from relationship advice to insurance suggestions. As far as empty-nesters are concerned, the child with the smelly laundry and lack of cleaning skills has morphed into a yapping voice that calls at inconvenient times and expects immediate responses. It’s a lifetime commitment.
The big question is, how much is too much? I used to talk to my mother every day, usually en route from one place to the next. My boyfriend used to roll his eyes and mime a cutting motion, short for cut the cord.
Admittedly, Frequent Parent Calling is predominantly an affliction of the female unmarried twentysomething and young gay male, though in recent years it has increasingly spread into frat boy territory, characterized by beefy guys careful to not audibly drop the word “mom” into the conversation. Those who hate their parents are not afflicted.
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Frankly, after years of daily advice from mom, it’s hard to stop yapping when easy answers are just a phone call away. If you’re lonely, mom will talk to you. If you’re sad, mom will talk to you. If you screwed up at work, mom will talk to you. And if she says things you don’t want to hear, you can politely hang up on her. She’s like an omniscient phone buddy who happens to know you strangely well.
And she’s just so damn happy that you called–further proof that you’re alive and well today–who can resist her?
A recent Time magazine poll shows that almost half of Americans age 18 to 29 talk to their parents daily. A quick survey of my own friends’ cell phone bills shows that parental calls tend to be brief, around 6 to 15 minutes, a habit born from those quick parental calls between college classes. Are the calls long? No. Frequent? Yes. Are we too dependent on our parents? Probably.
The experts are, as usual, unamused, pointing fingers at cell phone dependency developed during college: “It’s not healthy for parents to stay in daily contact with their college students,” Mary Alexander-Ellis, associate dean of Lesley College, told USA Today. Those who do are “truly doing a disservice and hampering their college students in becoming independent thinkers and doers.”
My mother would balk at this statement and point out that I don’t do what she asks anyway. But she would also gag at the thought of following the accepted once-a-week call widely suggested for adult-parent communication. Frankly, I’ve been trying to cut back for years, but with a family of gabby women and free calls at the touch of a button, there’s no motivation to stop.
Granted, we can console ourselves with the knowledge that we haven’t yet reached the parental dependency levels of Italy, where 30 percent of males age 30 t0 34 still live with their parents, a disastrous situation that has caused, among other issues, an unsustainable birth rate.
Compared to them, if you’ve made it out of the family home, cell phone or not, you’re doing great.
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