A Kenyon College administrator details the trends that are creating “therapeutic universities,” the sort of places where parents nervously helicopter about, non-parents think students are hopelessly coddled, and students hand administrators their cell phones and say, “Here, talk to my dad.” In fact, Wood describes a frequent new practice: hiring employees to deal with frequent calls from parents. Other factors in the “slouch” toward therapeutic U include consumer orientation, grade inflation and nothing less than attacks on the principles of free speech by schools; helicoptering by parents; rampant careerism, narcissism and the culture of self-esteem as enjoyed by students.

For a researcher studying Boomers and texting, there is little specific data here. But it does place texting between students and parents–one of the reasons why Boomers bother to text in the first place¬–in a larger and not very flattering context, specifically, the cell phone as the “world’s longest umbilical cord.”