On a Saturday in late August, two days before school started, Mindy Horwitz pulled up to Anthony Equale’s apartment complex with the glassware she had been storing for him. When he emerged, Horwitz hugged him and then pulled out a surprise four-pack of his favorite sugar-free energy drinks.
It was the kind of moment a mom might share with her child. But though Horwitz, 56, has taken to calling Equale “her very independent son,” they are not related. Rather, Equale’s parents, who live in Houston, have paid her about $1,600 for unlimited support since he was a college freshman at Washington University in St. Louis.
Horwitz is in the business of playing a version of mom for local college students. Concierge companies offering student support have existed for decades. But in recent years, a new crop of upstarts — such as Horwitz’s company, MindyKnows; the Bama Mama in Alabama; the GA Mom in Georgia; and Campus Mom in Texas — have met additional demand from a new generation of worried parents.
Historically, college has been a time for young adults to gain a sense of independence. They run their own errands, do their own laundry, organize their own lives. That’s changing, according to Monteigne Long, a co-founder of Campus Mom, who said the parents of this generation of college students are much more involved in their children’s day-to-day lives.
“When I came to college in 1998, my parents dropped me off on a Saturday and were gone,” Long said. “Parents are staying much more tuned in and connected with their students’ college experience than they have in the past. When they can’t be here, they want someone who can be that stand-in for them.”
The arrangements, though, have drawn occasional criticism online and from experts who worry young adults won’t learn enough essential life skills with so much additional support.
“Sometimes people think that we’re coddling students,” Horwitz said, “and I just don’t think that anything could be further from the truth. They’re 18, 19 years old, and they’re just off independently for the first time. We’re just a support system.”
The specific services vary here and there, but share commonalities. Campus Mom offers “holistic wellness check-ins,” laundry services and sorority recruitment support packages, sent to the sisters to up a child’s odds of acceptance. Carrie Eckhardt, the Bama Mama, will clean students’ dorm rooms and check in if parents haven’t heard from their child in a few days (“just pop in and say hi, and take a picture and send it to their mom”).
This month, one parent told Eckhardt it seemed like her daughter was going out to a bar every night. But she had opted to stay in, and the mother wanted to celebrate the decision with a “stay-in basket” that included her favorite ice cream, cookie and socks.
Horwitz, for her part, brings students balloons on their birthdays and chicken soup when they’re sick, sits with them in the emergency room and picks up their prescriptions if they’re busy. She bakes homemade challah, coordinates with the bedbug exterminator, texts photos and updates to faraway parents and doles out recommendations on the best local doctors and landlords.
For Equale’s mother, Cathleen Equale, what brought peace of mind “was just her being a mom and knowing that if I can’t be there and my child needs something, there’s someone there,” she said. “To me, it’s insurance.”
After visiting Equale, Horwitz headed to a restaurant to meet with Margot Kades, 21, and return a laptop she had gotten repaired for her. Once inside, Horwitz kissed her hair and called her “sweetheart.” “It’s ‘mom’s best friend’ energy, like, my mom trusts you, but I also won’t get yelled at,” said Kades, a senior.
The inspiration for the new companies came in different forms. For Eckhardt, it was while working as an Uber driver, she said. At times, she couldn’t help but offer advice to young women preparing for a night out: remember to hydrate, keep track of one another, make sure no one puts anything in your drink.
“They would all say, ‘You sound just like my mom,’” she said.
Horwitz said she first got the idea around 2018, when her son started college at Washington University in St. Louis. After joining a Facebook group for parents of students, she noticed out-of-state moms trading what she saw as subpar advice. By the pandemic, she was persuading security guards to bring students packages from their parents. (She does have her limits — no party planning and no illegal substances, for example.)
MindyKnows has since expanded to nine other campuses — including Northwestern University, the University of Florida and U.C.L.A., each with its own price structure (the unlimited WashU package costs $525 a year). And she has inspired offshoots, including Campus Mom.
Though the company has grown, Horwitz still does plenty of the local work herself. Hamid Haidari, a client of Horwitz’s, said that when his son got hurt playing soccer, it was Horwitz who took him for X-rays.
“It’s not a DoorDasher,” Haidari said. “It’s like a surrogacy.”
Annette Lareau, a sociologist who studies family life at the University of Pennsylvania, said she could see the advantages of services like Horwitz’s for both parents and children. “It might save parents, especially moms, valuable time,” she said. And students clearly reap short-term benefits, Dr. Lareau added.
Her worry, though, is that young adults might not learn to rely on themselves or their peers. Larry Nelson, a professor of human development at Brigham Young University, said that helping students learn new skills can foster growth, but there is a fine line between support and coddling.
“There’s nothing wrong with a care package,” Dr. Nelson said. “But as soon as anything crosses the line into doing it for them, that’s where it gets problematic.”
Horwitz said she is simply trying to make the world a little gentler by offering support to students. And Karen Allen, the other co-founder of Campus Mom, argued services like hers can free up time for children to focus on what’s important: school.
“If you asked me to go to class with them, that might be overstepping,” she said. But a little laundry? Wouldn’t any mom do that if she lived close by?
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