Friends, it’s been a whirlwind of a few days.
My article, "How Parents Hijacked The College Dorm” (gift link) was published by The Atlantic (!!!) on Tuesday, to rather overwhelming response.
The story is a critical look at the Dorm-Decor Industrial Complex that has edged its way into big-box stores, online shopping and now, social media, and the missed opportunities for - and potential harm to - our young people when they aren’t given the space in which to figure this stuff out for themselves.
People have Opinions about this: this Facebook post had, at last count, 750 comments and counting.
If you’ve been reading my work for any length of time, you know I don’t go in for parent-shaming. What difference does it make to me if someone goes all-out on decorating their kids’ dorm room? Not much. But when something turns into an expensive, often wasteful, and certainly pressure-causing trend, I like to take the zoomed-out view and ask “what is going on here, who is it potentially harming, and how can we reframe this?”
There’s so much wrapped up in this trend that transcends personal choice: envy and economics, class and privilege, the role of social media, and the waste and environmental impact of living in a throwaway culture filled with disposable goods, just to start. The walls of a dorm room create a bite-sized container to display how we’re meeting this moment, in all our conformity and knee-jerk consumerism.
But they’re also, I realize, a highly symbolic and emotionally-charged space for a parent. Leaving my youngest son in his freshman dorm was much more difficult than watching my older three drive away to start their adult lives. There was something tender and poignant about seeing, with my own eyes, the small “home” he’d be inhabiting for the next nine months, especially when I compared it in my mind to his much cushier digs at home.
The desire to make that home-away-from-home cozier and more comfortable is completely relatable. The feelings of sadness and loss and anxiety are normal. And, as I wrote in my book, this stage of parenting can be lonely. When we don’t have anyone to talk to about the depth of the loss we’re feeling, we can instead share a photo of a freshly-decorated dorm room on social media.
But at some point - literally and figuratively - we have to walk out of that dorm room. And when we do, what will we be walking back into? Are we excited about it? Does it fit us, and the people we are also - yes, still - becoming?
I interviewed multiple wise thinkers and fellow young-adult moms for my article, including
, , and , and all shared so much wisdom that I regretfully couldn’t fit into the final article.Gretchen Rubin said something that particularly struck me - that it’s normal to crave the fresh-start energy and sense of possibility that our kids get to experience when they move their first independent space. It’s normal for us to want to want a piece of it and to even find ourselves trying to live vicariously through it.
But instead, she suggested that we create that atmosphere of growth, energy, and positive change in our own spaces, by investing energy and time into a project - even a small one - of our own. Then,“instead of just worrying about outfitting your child, you’re outfitting yourself,” she suggested.
Most of us, I think, are just beginning to become aware of our own needs as our young adult kids begin exiting our orbit and spinning off to create a universe of their own. These changes can be huge and grief-inducing. Sometimes it feels easier to avoid this transition by living vicariously through our kids than to face it head-on.
But we do not have the right to live our kids’ lives. We are only entitled to our own. And maybe our lives could use a little attention and TLC. Maybe we could stand to furnish them with a clearer sense of our own purpose, with strong friendships and family connections, with hobbies and interests we love.
When we feel that inevitable loss at separating from our children and our old identities, we have a choice. We can numb the pain or put it off by via shopping and staying over-involved in our adult kids’ lives. Or we can step into that hurt, feel it, and allow it to act as a catalyst to create something fresh and new for ourselves.
Last night I had the pleasure of doing an author talk (at my childhood library!) (my sixth-grade teacher came!) in conversation with novelist
. We talked about how writing books has been one way for us to redirect our time and creative energy in this season of life; there are countless ways for us to use these hands that were once so busy and full with the tasks of rearing small kids.It was a wonderful and affirming conversation with other parents who are walking this same path. We need to keep talking to one another - in person, whenever possible. Otherwise, the layered richness of what we’re experiencing just gets flattened to sound bytes and memes.
Before we talked, Sara had sent me the following to spark conversation. It’s the sort of thing that twinges our feelings of loss and maternal sentimentality, and also seems deep and wise, and therefore, it’s highly share-able.
But my response to this meme was viscerally negative. I’m not buying it.
I’m still the main character in my show; now my kids get their own spinoff. I may tune in from time to time, but I’m not in anyone’s audience. I can get excited for them about the new worlds they get to step into, but I still have a life of my own to live, and my own spaces (literal and figurative) to fix up. The spaces they inhabit are theirs to own.
And while I can’t necessarily win against the sentiment that it is our absolute job as parents to outfit our adult kids with every comfort of home (one Facebook commenter said that to leave one’s offspring in an un-decorated room would be subjecting them to “utter despair”) I will leave you with a few photos of me in my college dorm, circa 1995, to prove that our children can experience a happy and exciting new life on their own without the need for matching headboards or neon name signs on the walls.
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"I'm still the main character in my show; now my kids get their own spinoff." SO FUNNY!
This is great, Meagan! Absolutely bolstering my resolve not to get involved with dorm room decor when we drop my daughter off at college in a year. (It was easy with my son as he wanted nothing.)
“Utter despair” over room decor 🤣🤣🤣 zoom out even more and we see two wars being fought overseas, famine, disease, threat of natural disasters and marginalized groups feeling even more marginalized…uhhh…priorities? Perspective? Sorry for shifting the focus even more Meagan! As always, a great post from a brilliant, thoughtful and authentic voice. I love your writing!