10 Oct 2025 6 min read Personal

Piling on the 'Dorm Mama' Drama

Keeping up with the Joneses at college

Anne Helen Petersen at Culture Study has a piece up analysing over-the-top dorm room decorations and the crafty, arguably clingy, moms behind them.

I am guessing Anne Helen didn't go to college in the South, because these kinds of setups have been around for a while.

I went to college in the early '90s, and we all knew a girl or 10 whose parents showed up with a truckload of coordinated bedding and accessories, meticulously matched and monogrammed, to start freshman year.

Many of these girls corresponded with their assigned roommates extensively over the summer to make sure nothing clashed. And, yes, of course, the moms were the driving force.

The difference now is social media is doing its thing – amplifying and altering what was once a niche trend and commodifying it to the masses.

In the same way that it's now normalized for regular middle-class people to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a wedding, having an artfully designed, expensively furnished dorm room has moved out of the purview of the wealthy to those who want to be so.

YouTube has been awash since the early aughts with popular influencers showing off dorm rooms filled with carefully placed sponsored products. I'm not at all surprised that there are now Facebook groups dedicated to sharing decorating themes, product promotions, and tips.

What stood out to me, again, is the conspicuous hyper-consumption of it all.

In the American psyche, there is still a strong Calvinist undercurrent equating wealth with industriousness and high moral character. Poor people must be that way because they are lazy or stupid. Therefore, if I am wealthy, it must be because I am good.

And, we 'invest' in status symbols that telegraph our value to others. We have the money to buy lots of beautiful things. So, we are good and worthy.

That's why I think Americans have also been conditioned to buy things in times of stress. During COVID, we were even encouraged to buy online in order to help the economy! It's patriotic.

white pillar candle beside 100 us dollar bill — Photo by Gabriel Meinert / Unsplash

In the upscale suburb we used to live in, whenever there was a crisis for a particular family – illness or death or house fire – friends would immediately set up a GoFundMe, regardless of the financial situation of those affected.

It always struck me as so crass, like, 'So sorry to hear about your wife, here's some cash to make you feel better.'

And, yes, I know that even seemingly wealthy people can experience unexpected financial needs. But, shouldn't we wait and find out what they need before we literally throw money at them?

But in the U.S., it seems that it has become a cultural belief that consumption is the solution to whatever problem you have. (To be sure, if the problem you have involves lack of food or shelter – then, yes, money is going to be the primary remedy.)

But we've extended that impulse into a belief that one can simply buy happiness and security. One of the commenters on the original article spoke about American parents need to exert control over what they could in the face of an "uncontrollable world."

And I get it.

I can see a lot of maternal anxiety about sending one's child out alone in the world for the first time can get projected onto buying every. last. little. thing. for the dorm room. After all, I wrote this article for Alte Frau, New Life, about spending an hour picking out pens for my son's first week of ninth grade.

But the commenter went further, explaining how she bought her children expensive monogrammed backpacks to let others - those who might think of harming said kids - that those children are loved by someone, so maybe they should leave them alone.

I mean, yikes... that's a lot to unpack.

red and white leather bag — Photo by Erik Mclean / Unsplash

But, I guess through that lens--it's also not hard to understand how some people decide that super fancy dorm rooms are how they show that their children are loved. That they want them to feel at home.

I don't really share the moral panic that these students are being infantilized and kept from developing the needed life skills of finding their own room decorations. I know people my own age (54) who still call their parents to ask what kind of dishwasher detergent to buy.

But I do have some trepidation about the values that are being conveyed, as a mom who sent her two (very much loved) kids to school with off-the-Target-rack backpacks.

Ordinarily, I am rather agnostic on the subject of how much stuff people buy. If they can afford it and they want it, why not? (As long as they recycle...)

But when you buy your kids tons of stuff, and tell them that all of the stuff is absolutely needed, and you bought it for them because you love them, and want to show that you love them, then how do they feel about people with less stuff?

Or, no stuff?

Do they believe that other children don't have – as the commenter on Petersen's article wrote – "people who love them?" Do they believe it is somehow less bad if those children are hurt?

The ones without such visible hallmarks of parental care?

My kids learned a long time ago that there were families out there that were wealthier than we were, and there were families that were poorer than we were. And we all loved our kids just the same.

We told them that we could not afford many of the things that some of their friends' parents could, and that we could afford many things that other friends could not.

And we told them that some of the things they wanted--and we could afford to get--they couldn't have because we thought they should earn it. And it was up to each family to make these decisions for themselves.

I feel lucky that we always knew people who lived in big houses and people who lived in tiny apartments. Because I have definitely had the experience of being around kids who acted like they were afraid of catching something when they learned our zip code.

And I have been around parents who acted like kids sharing a room or, even, not having their own bathroom, was a parenting fail.

I have no problem with someone's designer-quality dorm room, unless they decide that their roommate with the Wal-Mart bedspread is somehow sinister or less valuable a human because they don't have the right stuff.

What else I'm reading ...

Just like everyone else in the world, we keep hearing about AI - it's going to replace us. It's going to take over society as we know it. But it's looking like, maybe not?

Check out the articles below from Joe Wilkins at Futurism and The Atlantic's Rogé Karma. And let me know what you think in the comments.

Plus, can ICE hack your mobile phone?