Hello Maverick Parents!
This month we have asked M. Faye Hanson-Evans. M.A., an adjunct assistant professor of Sociology at UTA, and loving parent of a college student, to write on her experience and perspective about the emerging adulthood of college students at UTA. We are so excited to share her powerful message:
The Paradox of Anomie and Organic Solidarity for Parents and their UTA Students.
The great C. Wright Mills reminds us that sociology makes each of us a promise. Sociology’s promise is to be able to view our private troubles in the context of our point and time in history – and to understand the relationship between the two in society. When our personal lives feel like a series of traps and our troubles seemingly insurmountable, sociology can offer both our UTA students and ourselves as parents understanding and hope.
Anomie is a sociological concept used to describe a societal status in which the usual societal norms (often suddenly) become dynamic and often disintegrate. When anomie or normlessness occurs, it often results in high levels of uncertainty, anxiety, and confusion among a society’s members.
Here at UTA, as elsewhere, we are all – parents and students, experiencing this frightening anomie in many areas of our lives – from changing work expectations to trying to “parent” our young independent adults during this global pandemic, to our UTA students themselves feeling and being unexpectedly restrained after getting a brief taste of independence and adulthood.
As parents, we ourselves may feel confused as official and governmental advice changes rapidly and from day-to-day. This necessarily affects what may or may not be allowed for our UTA student in terms of social engagement and socializing (and often creates much role strain and role conflict for ourselves and our UTA students) on any given day, creating frustration for all involved.
How should we as parents help our young college adults navigate this confusing time when we ourselves do not know what to expect and may not know what to do? How do we successfully parent in this time of such frightening and enduring anomie? Sociology offers us both an answer and hope in its concept of organic solidarity.
Organic solidarity is social cohesion that results from the interdependence all individuals within a society have because of their inherent reliance upon one another. Emile Durkheim offered an example of farmers producing food for factory workers who produce tractors so the farmers can keep doing so. In this way, organic solidarity can be understood as the cyclical nature of social cohesion and relationships which are often unseen or unrealized.
While it may seem there is currently very little social cohesion to be found in our current state of affairs, I argue that it can be found in the relationships and the organic solidarity between ourselves and our UTA students (even if it doesn’t feel like it right now). To my fellow UTA parents, I offer this: consider parenting your young adult or UTA student during this historical time as an exercise in organic solidarity.
Our young adult depended on us for their first 18 years of life: for their socialization; how to tie their shoes, how to use their manners, how to respond with kindness when they were treated unfairly by a peer, to help others who might be struggling, how to help and fight for change, and ultimately how to properly “do adulting”.
Organic solidarity has in this regard flipped the interdependence between us. We as parents of young adults are now dependent upon our UTA students. And while we know the work of a parent never ends – it is a strange and uncomfortable (and frightening) experience to acknowledge as the parent of a new adult. – Did we do the right things? Did we teach them *everything* they might *ever* need to know as a young adult? Will they do what they need to keep themselves and those around them safe? How will they know what to do and when to do it if *we* ourselves aren’t even certain? How many of us as parents had “global pandemic” on our young-adulting-parenting bingo card?
Both parents and students can find comfort in our organic solidarity. We can utilize our organic solidarity to fight the anomie and use it to offer our students and ourselves hope for our shared future. Simply put – it is their turn now. We as parents must trust that we have raised socially conscientious, scientifically and media literate young adults who will figure out and do what it takes to not only keep their parents, grandparents, and fellow members of society safe – but to begin the dangerous and challenging work that we will all come to rely on in our collective futures.
We are now reliant upon our students, our young adults. While it must be frightening for them to realize, our students know full well that they will not fail us. Our students are already teaching us in this new world: new ways of working remotely, new ways of being social and staying connected. And, they will continue to teach us what they will learn – information we will all need in our shared future. Whether it be a better understanding of the delicate balance between public health and personal responsibilities, to new methods of treatment and vaccines.
It is in this mutual dependency, in our organic solidarity – that students and parents can together find comfort in this time of extreme anomie. In our interdependency, we will all come to understand how our personal troubles our bound together in the pages of history. In this, we can all see hopeful new days ahead.
Our UTA students may have been thrown into the ultimate generational test of “adulting”, but I for one, have no doubt they will more than rise to the challenge – they will meet it and we will all be stronger for it. Each of us as parents have done our very best, and our student will certainly do the same by us. It is their time now. I cannot wait to learn what they will have to teach us.
Faye Hanson-Evans. M.A.
Adjunct Assistant Professor
UTA Sociology & Anthropology
Biography: M. Faye Hanson-Evans is an award-winning adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Her specializations include the sociology of poverty, political sociology, and quantitative data analysis. Hanson-Evans regularly teaches courses on the sociology of poverty, gender, social problems, and more. She earned her MA and BA in Sociology from UT Arlington and is both a McNair Scholar and Honors College alum. Hanson-Evans is certified through the Online Learning Consortium for Online Teaching and Course Development with a Mastery Series in Social Media. Hanson-Evans was awarded UT Arlington’s College of Liberal Arts Outstanding Teacher in Distance Education in 2017 and named an IDEAS Teaching Fellow for the 2018-2019 academic year.
We are so pleased to bring you the personal thoughts and perspectives of our very own Maverick Family members. We hope that you enjoyed this hopeful message. If you’d like to know more about the possible paradoxes of emerging adulthood, don’t forget to read our summary article – Parents and College Students can Definitely Survive the Summer Break Together!
Your UTA Parent & Family Team
Note: If you’d like to be featured in our blog, please send an email to parents@uta.edu. We love to hear stories directly from our students, parents, and their families! (Topics may vary by month)