Well I can tell you this much. I am a college student, and while my career plans post graduation involve raising heritage chickens for both meat and eggs, I chose to start raising chickens this summer just a month before classes started. To be honest, I couldn't have picked a better time. While yes you can't just forget about your chickens once the summer is over, and they do teach responsibility, they do one of the best things I can think of. They ground us. They let us escape from the hectic world that is our daily lives and just take a few minutes, maybe a few hours a day to just, breathe. Breathe and relax and de-stress. But they teach you many other important things as well. They teach you about the cycle of life and death, they teach you about yourself, how to raise and grow your old food. And even more importantly, they help to teach you a better, healthier way of living where you control what goes into your food on a daily basis compared to forcefully being fed growth hormones, steroids, and antibiotics. All in all I think its important for more and more young people to raise chickens and learn about all of these important things in life, and it may even open your parents eyes to some of these things as well. If you need any help with useful readings or information that might help your parents and their decision feel free to message me and I will give you all the information that I can to help you.
Ciao ^^