Anxiety about average kids
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Anonymous
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Does anyone else have anxiety about average kids? Especially if professional white collar jobs and elite educations were they way you and your partner launched into the upper middle class. My kids (14 and 16) are not particularly high achievers, and I know they’d never be able to get into our Ivy alma maters.
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/45/986709.page This thread really resonated with me. I’m anxious! Income inequality is at an all time high and I want my kid to be on the right side of the have/have-not divide. |
Anonymous
| Why are you posting I’m the elementary school forum? |
Anonymous
| I don't know, my kids are younger so it's more hypothetical still. But I totally am with you on the growing income inequality thing. I think what that means is that I'm anxious that my children will be emotionally stable, hard working people that will choose a career that will enable them to be on the "right side," even if that's a trade or physical labor based job. I have seen people in the right schools and neighborhoods get burnt out and crash and burn. We're a legacy at an elite private school that gets fawned over on DCUM and I would never in a million years send my kids there. None of our family that attended turned into happy adults, and it's a very mixed bag whether they even ended up successful on paper. I don't know if I have the right answers, but it is something I worry about. |
Anonymous
| I worry about rising inequality, but not so much about whether my kid will be on the right side of it. More about how much harder her life will be in a country with that problem. And I see how narrow and shallow our culture's definition of success is -- trying to chase that and play the game on those terms is setting yourself up for unhappiness, and the rules can change. Better to focus on developing skills like adaptability, resilience, perseverance, a solid sense of self, and good interpersonal skills. I want my kid to be able to support herself -- and frankly, a less "elite" job might be a better fit and a more stable career. I want her to be the kind of person who will work to make the world better, safer, and more fair, not just someone who will come out on top. |
Anonymous
| No. I am a high achiever and have been for my whole life. As a result, I know the downsides of being this way, and they are legion. The more ways my kid is perfectly typical, the happier I am for him. |
Anonymous
Your kids will have family wealth. They will always fall on the rich side. Even if you don't leave them millions in a trust, any padding you do give them and any schooling you pay for will substantially raise the quality of their lives. |
Anonymous
| There is a lot of wisdom in these responses. With the exception of corporate law and investment banking — professions that I’m definitely not encouraging my children toward anyway — going to the most elite schools is not a requirement for kids to “come out on top.” Your children will most likely finish a 4-year college, maybe even without debt, maybe even grad school, so they will not suffer in an increasingly unequal society. We like to tell ourselves stories that a particular path or school or profession is so crucial to our identity that our children have to follow it too, but children rarely want an identity given to them. |
Anonymous
| Agree with the others. My husband and I went to non-elite schools in another states and ended up in DC. Here we rub shoulder-to-shoulder with the elite: living in upper NW, important jobs, expensive house, kids in a Big3 school. Let me tell you this: we are no happier than the 30 or 50 friends we have from undergrad who are living far less stressful lives elsewhere. Our college roommates are engineers and pediatricians and pharmacists and IT people and all work about 40 hours a week and have lovely homes, fulfilled lives and comparatively little stress. I think people who have only lived within the overachiever NW DC or Ivy bubble think it's either 1)extreme overachievement or 2)poverty and it's just not that way. There is a TON of middle ground occupied by many happy, fulfilled people. Those of else from elsewhere have seen it play out countless times with our friends and family and often wonder what the heck we're doing in this DC rat race to nowhere. |
Anonymous
| OP you sound like a real treat to be around. Im sorry your kids will suffer so much.. |
Anonymous
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Your kids will have all the advantages of being raised upper middle class. It is a lot easier for an average upper middle class kid to stay there than it is for an above-average lower middle class or poor kid to climb the ladder.
And OP, this is why, as an upper-middle class person, I advocate for policies and vote for politicians that are against my current economic interests. I want higher taxes and a stronger social safety net - because I think other people's kids deserve it ,and because I want my kids to have it if they need it. |
Anonymous
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No. I have two kids, one who is basically DCUM-average and one with learning and developmental disabilities. I'm not at all worried about my average kid's ability to get into and graduate from college, get and maintain a job, and live an independent adult life.
You can be a happy and successful adult without going to an ivy league college. |
Anonymous
| Nope. All my friends with genius kids struggle… to find support for them, to get them into the right programs, to keep them motivated, to keep them engaged socially. I’ve always been average and I lead a happy life and I think my average kids will too. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
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OP ridiculous.
Your kids will only be held back by their dumb mother. |
Anonymous
| Just chiming in to echo the comments of others. I am in senior management at a tech company, and my fancy Ivy League undergrad is actually an outlier among my colleagues. many went to foreign schools, but many others when to nothing-fancy schools here in the US. They all have a lot of drive, though, and other skills that helped push them to the top. |