PROF. JENKINS: Don't let college infantilize you

Rob Jenkins is a Higher Education Fellow with Campus Reform and a tenured associate professor of English at Georgia State University - Perimeter College. The opinions expressed here are his own and not those of his employer.

A few years ago, after graduating from college and landing his first professional job, my son was engaged in the frustrating process of renting an apartment, changing his address, getting his utilities hooked up, registering his car in a new state, buying his own automobile insurance, and so on.

He called to ask my advice, as someone who’s been through that process several times. At the end of the conversation, he sighed and said, “Adulting sure is hard.”

Yes, it is. It always has been. But don’t let that stop you. My son not only survived but thrived, and so can you—even after spending several years in an environment dedicated to turning you into a 22-year-old infant. 

I thought about that conversation with my son recently while reading Emily Sturge’s story about Gen Z’ers whose parents accompany them to job interviews. A 2025 survey conducted by Resume Templates found that “77% of Gen Z respondents admitted to bringing a parent to a job interview, and 53% said their parent had spoken with a hiring manager on their behalf.”  

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It gets worse. Even after entering the workforce, “73% of respondents [say] they’ve had their parents help complete work assignments and 45% [report] regularly having a parent talk to their current manager.”

As the article points out, the responsibility for this failure to launch rests partly with mom and dad. “Parents are supposed to support your children and prepare them for the future. You’re supposed to prepare them but not do things for them as adults,” says Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich. 

Still, I can’t help but conclude that four years of college, rather than making things better, too often makes them worse. Instead of teaching young people to live on their own and cope with life’s challenges, college just provides them with another set of “parents” to help solve all their problems.

 In other words, young people get used to having their hand held all their life, first by their parents and later by professors, administrators, and counselors at the university, in loco parentis. And when there’s no longer anyone there to hold their hand, they struggle to adapt. 

Consider the trend, in recent years, of designating sites on campus where students can go to color and play with Legos, along with the heightened focus on “trigger warnings” and emotional “safe spaces.” College campuses used to be places where young people went to learn how to be adults. Now they seem more likely to produce overgrown children.

We refer to this as “infantilization,” and it appears rampant across today’s higher education landscape.

That impression was reinforced recently when I read an article in the New York Post about adults using pacifiers. That’s right—pacifiers. Binkies. The trend apparently started in China but has made its way to the U.S. and other Western countries, where putative grown-ups “destress” and “calm themselves” by sucking on faux nipples.

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Clearly, this represents the nadir of infantilization. And although the article doesn’t say what percentage of these newly-minted binky addicts are college graduates—or students—I can’t escape the sneaking suspicion that it’s roughly 100%. For some reason, I just can’t picture auto mechanics or HVAC techs popping pacis into their mouths.

The question, then, if you’re a college student, is how can you avoid being infantilized? And I believe the answer is to be as independent as possible while utterly rejecting the whole safe-space regime. Start “adulting” even while you’re still in school. 

Get and hold onto a part-time job. Rent an apartment off campus with some roommates. Buy and prepare your own food. And do as much of this as you possibly can without help from your parents or campus services.

And if you’ve already graduated and find yourself longing for the relative ease and comfort of college and/or your parents’ home, well, suck it up, buttercup—and I don’t mean on a pacifier.

Learning to “adult” may be difficult and stressful at times, but it pays huge dividends, long term—not the least of which is that your mommy won’t go off on some hapless hiring manager during a job interview.