Teaching Work Values to Children of Wealth
How do the parents of a financially well-off kid send their educated, over-scheduled, never-had-to-get-a-job offspring into the real world and expect them to survive without help? No can expect those young adults to have a graceful trajectory; they’ll smack the pavement a few times before they figure out the mechanisms of reality. I recommend the more harsh sink-or-swim approach. Based on my own experience, I would suggest handing out sage advice once the college degree has been earned, along with no more money. It’s the quickest way to teach The Real World Sucks 101.
While my higher education was paid for, not much else was. During my K-12 years, food and clothing were purchased after the monthly allotment of college money was set aside. I looked like a doof in my highwater pants and the worn out, stinky-by-Wednesday two pairs of red knee socks I owned. Two identical pairs were purchased for me every fall, and the day-glo red color never matched a single item of clothing in my dresser.
The refrigerators at both parents’ houses were sad to open, but I re-checked their contents several time a day nonetheless—nothing but bread, milk, generic cheese, and the flats of free eggs my mother got for free from the Avian Sciences Dept. at the University. Eggs that were the edible (we hope) byproduct of fertilization experiments and were either double- or triple-yolked. I would complain loudly right this minute and fall into a pile of twitching heebie-jeebies if I didn’t suspect those cholesterol-laden eggs of keeping me decently nourished during my childhood.
Although I had to learn to survive my financially (and physically) waiflike childhood, I was totally covered as soon as I hit college. I worked all through elementary, middle, and high school to earn money. In college, though, my parents strongly discouraged my desire to get a job. They wanted me to focus on the education we had all suffered to save up for. By the time I entered college, I was quite the self-sufficient little worker bee. By the time I was shaking a professor’s hand on stage and clutching my degree, I was as financially clueless as I’d been in the first grade. While I knew how to work for money, I had never learned how to work to survive on my own. Paying for food and shelter were not something I’d ever done.
I’m not whining, and I know full well that my parents did everything they did to give me the same chances they were given in life. Education is a huge deal in my family; fancy cars are not. Education comes before all else. I hit bottom in the real world pretty quickly once I was really on my own, which is why I fully support the idea of wealthy parents releasing their young into the wild like the helpless little bunnies that they are.
I’m sure it’s nearly as upsetting to watch their kids’ asses get chewed up by reality as it would be to watch a pet rabbit be set free and immediately get taloned up by a bird of prey, but that’s life. You know, the circle of it and all that. It sucks. At some point, kids have to learn to run and to protect themselves with cold hard cash or they’ll be living back at home with their parents (if you’ll have them). Seriously: Teach them now and teach them fast or you’ll all be sorry.
This article in the NY Times will give you a head start.
Posted by Alexa Harrington
