"Moms away from home" look after college students (creative destruction and how the economy just keeps creating new types of occupations & professions)

See A Mother’s Love—a Bargain at $450 a Year, Plus Applicable Fees: Parents are hiring concierge services for their college students, leaving to professionals some duties usually done by mom, including hugs by Tara Weiss of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Like any good mother, Mindy Horwitz helped Emma Feirstein move into her college dorm room, got her an internship and took her to lunch when she had a bad day.

Horwitz, though, is no relation. She raised three boys of her own and was a social worker before launching a concierge service for college students living away from home. At $450 a year, plus delivery fees, Horwitz, 53 years old, performs some of the same duties students would expect from their own mother.

A young client phoned Horwitz on a recent night in a panic. He needed a sport coat for early the next morning. Target was the only store open but nothing there fit his 6-foot-3 frame. With Horwitz’s help, the student walked into his presentation wearing a coat borrowed from one of her sons.

Similar services have sprung up near college campuses around the U.S. The businesses grew more popular after the pandemic made it difficult for many parents to reach their children at far-flung campuses. Among the tasks offered are medicine pickup and delivery, furniture assembly, rides to and from the airport and accompanying college-age children to doctor’s appointments."

"Seeing the demand for having a mom away from mom, Horwitz expanded her business this fall from Washington University in St. Louis to Northwestern University, Skidmore College and University of Hartford, hiring locals with a measure of maternal instinct.

"Concierge Services for Students, based in Boston, charges $10,000 for the academic year and accepts no more than 30 clients. Tammy Kumin started the business with her partner 30 years ago, largely to serve foreign students at boarding schools in the Boston area. This year, about 75% of her clients are college students, including at Northeastern, Harvard and Suffolk universities.

Before the school year starts, the company shops for items to outfit a student’s dorm room, all in their preferred color scheme. The company washes and irons the sheets before making the bed. Each student has access to as many as five women, collectively referred to as their second mom. They accompany students through registration, and Kumin assists with professor recommendations. She said she has been around long enough to know, for instance, which instructors give an easy A, as well as how to balance a class schedule between tough and not-so-tough courses. She also has an army of tutors on call."

Related posts: 

Who wrote your potential love's online dating profile? (maybe they outsourced it to a professional who specializes in that) (2016)

New Profession Of "Wedding Hashtag Helper" Might Be An Example Of Creative Destruction At Work (2022)

Are dating coaches who help you with texting modern Cyrano de Bergeracs? (2023)

Do You Need a Fixer for Your Disney Vacation? Third-party companies tout advanced knowledge for private tours of complex amusement parks that can cost $1,000 and up (2023)

Parents Hire $4,000 Sorority Consultants to Help Daughters Dress and Impress During Rush (creative destruction and how the economy just keeps creating new types of occupations & professions) (2023)

 

Creative Destruction

See Creative Destruction by Richard Alm and W. Michael Cox. Excerpt:

"Joseph Schumpeter
(1883–1950) coined the seemingly paradoxical term “creative destruction,” and generations of economists have adopted it as a shorthand description of the free market’s messy way of delivering progress. In Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942), the Austrian economist wrote:

The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation—if I may use that biological term—that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. (p. 83)

Although Schumpeter devoted a mere six-page chapter to “The Process of Creative Destruction,” in which he described capitalism as “the perennial gale of creative destruction,” it has become the centerpiece for modern thinking on how economies evolve."

But also see this link which suggests that the idea goes back even before Schumpeter to other scholars: Creative Destruction in Economics: Nietzsche, Sombart, Schumpeter by Hugo Reinert and Erik S. Reinert.

"Abstract

This paper argues that the idea of ‘creative destruction’ enters the social sciences by way of Friedrich Nietzsche. The term itself is first used by German economist Werner Sombart, who openly acknowledges the influence of Nietzsche on his own economic theory. The roots of creative destruction are traced back to Indian philosophy, from where the idea entered the German literary and philosophical tradition. Understanding the origins and evolution of this key concept in evolutionary economics helps clarifying the contrasts between today’s standard mainstream economics and the Schumpeterian and evolutionary alternative."