COLUMN: Parents' changing roles in our lives

From Sarah Giulian's, "From Under My Rock," Fall '97 From Sarah Giulian's, "From Under My Rock," Fall '97A couple of free meals, a few hundred photographs and some meaningful hugs. And then they're gone. Our families send us off to Penn with hope and a handful of cash and return four years later to celebrate the conclusion of our undergraduate education. We're not just reflecting with nostalgia on the past four years. We're not just excitedly gearing up for the next few. Each one of us is forced to evaluate our present relationships -- high school buddies, college friends, and family. With graduation, we must choose where we're going to set up camp, a choice with even more profound implications than our decision to leave home and come to Penn had. We are forced to decide which people we need to be close to. We must redefine our family. Among other things, family seems to be a couple of people who -- despite infinite differences -- live together for a few decades. Even though we may have very little in common, we're expected to love and support each other unconditionally. My parents nurtured me for eighteen years. So do I thank them and move on or somehow try to pay them back? As I consider my own future and goals, how important is the familial obligation? Graduation gives us the license to use what we've learned to sculpt our futures. Maybe you are getting a degree in investment banking, chalking up job offers across the globe. You've earned the right to create a life anywhere you want, with the possibility of permanently distancing yourself from those who have raised you. We didn't always have such choices. Our pre-college identity was composed of our last name, address, style of living, siblings and homes, all determined by our families. But college has given us a chance to play a bigger part in constructing our identity. We select our friends, who we surround ourselves with, bond with, support and care for. They are like a family except this time we chose them. With that choice comes new definitions of the self. We actually begin to fit with the most important people in our lives. What place does this leave our original family in our lives? Will they just become people to turn to when rain leaves our cardboard box house soggy? Different people fulfill our different needs. Family cannot satisfy 100 percent of those needs. Neither can friends. It's easy to take for granted the importance of family. When you've spent 18 years with someone, your lives deeply intertwined, you inevitably develop a complicated and intense relationship. Some aspects of it push us away. Some aspects encourage us to leave. But the strongest components allow us to remain willingly bound. This isn't such a bad thing. Our need for family waxes and wanes yearly. We can't split the scene without looking back. And most of us don't want to. As we've matured and grown more complex, so have our social needs. We no longer need anyone to hold our hand while crossing the street. We do need relationships with people who care, listen, appreciate and try to understand. Family can offer an opportunity for this kind of friendship. We've been developing it for 21 years; we must choose now how to continue it. This relationship is undeniably entering a new stage. Their parenting tasks are diminishing as we take the reigns. The past four years we've been learning to take care of ourselves. We've begun to revise the rules they taught us, establish our own limits and create our own morals. We're about to see how successful this rewriting has been. As we test our capabilities, we may not need the training wheels of our parents as desperately as we need the support of close friends. Our parents can move into this different role. This new relationship will involve its own difficulties and its own rewards. The strength of the already founded bonds should prove up to this challenge. After all, they loved you during your awkward stage. [Editor's Note: This column was co-written by College senior Libby Bachhuber]