Like the freedom of going far from home and far from your parents’ judging eyes?
 

Well, don’t get used to it.
 

The New York Times has pointed out a scary, scary new trend. It seems as if an increasing number of parents are following their kids to college:
 

Real estate professionals were the first to figure out that parental purchases of “kiddie condos” for college students, in lieu of paying for dorms, made sound economic sense. That practice is now common.
 

But some parents are investing in college towns in an unexpected new way: they’re following their kids to college. From South Bend, Ind., to Oxford, Miss., from Hanover, N.H., to Knoxville, Tenn., they are buying second homes for themselves near campuses where their children are enrolled.
 

Many, like the Berriens, want front-row seats to watch their family athletes perform. Some seek a gathering place for football games or family holidays. Others long for a retreat that is also a possible place to retire with the amenities of a college town — and why not the one where they have children attending?

Why not? Why not??? Because children need to grow and mature on their own with independence and responsibility.
 

That, and because students don’t want to run into their parents when they are drunk and stumbling down the street with their skirt on backwards.