Fighting entitlement in the Little Girl
I fight entitlement in my daughter as much as I can. I don’t want her to grow up into a middle-class snob.
Fighting entitlement in the Little Girl
Alfred Lubrano, Inquirer Columnist
I fight entitlement in my daughter as much as I can. I don’t want her to grow up into a middle-class snob.
Don’t get me wrong: I'd like her to live well. But I also need her to know that she’s lucky. I talk to her about the poor, about children I've met through work who eat cereal without milk for dinner. It's important that she hears how well-off she is.
“A lot of middle-class people who were born working-class regret that their children will assume privilege and not know anxiety,” social commentator Richard Rodriguez told me. “Children of the middle class assume it’s all given to them.”
Some middle-class people from blue-collar families say they worry they won’t even like their kids, because their core values are so different.
A guy I know grew up poor and now lives in the Boston suburbs, where they burn supermarket logs in fancy fireplaces – sweet bourgeois air freshener.
Fighting creeping entitlement, he sits his sons down and says stuff like, “Isn’t this a nice fire?” “Isn’t this a big living room?”
Still, the father thinks these talks are not enough, and so he has decided not to pay for their college educations, believing it will help mold better men.
I’m not saying I won’t be writing a check to some university some day. But I think it’s reasonable to make a kid work for everything she gets.
Good article. Problem is during the past 20 yrs. the "middle class" lived like they were "upper class" due in part to loose credit and cheap money. This created a false sense of entitlement in a generation of people who really have a warped preception of reality. That generation had their own children and they now share that same warped perception only to be greatly disappointed in this new REAL economy.— Citizenc92
Really. Saddling your kids with $100-200K in debt makes them better people? Then be prepared when they say, "eff this, dad, I'm not going to college."
Why not just make them pay for food, clothes, the TV, the paint on your house, and your next kitchen remodel NOW? Make them borrow from you to pay for it all, and then set an unreasonable interest rate and a 20 year repayment schedule. It will all cost less than (a decent) college education and, boy oh boy, will they ever learn a lesson.
Having grown up relatively poor, I can tell you, not having money or having onerous debt doesn't make one a better person IN THE SLIGHTEST. What it does do is give you life-long financial anxiety.
As a parent, I want my kids to be happy and compassionate and grateful for what I have been able to provide for them. Punishing them with debt and stress is not how that will ever happen. Showing them the less fortunate -- making it an assignment that they will HELP those who have less -- will make it something they can understand. Kids need tangible experiences to compare and contrast that show them the differences and similarities between people and circumstances. Asking them if the room is nice and big and warm, or setting them up for a decade of financial stress is not the way to do it.
I feel bad for that guy's kids.- Warren Buffet said it best, "I will give my children enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing."I use canadian geese to teach my daughter about gratitude and appreciation. If we give one a cracker, he wants another. He never says thank you for the cracker you gave him but he'll try to bite you for the one you didn't give him. That's why we give him NOTHING. So I have to tell my 5 year old from time to time, "quit it, you're acting like a mean goose." (HTML deleted)— jrobin2007
