LATEST ENTRY

LINKS | Noah Brier

More Parents Thinking Kids are Spoiled

August 27, 2009 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 4 COMMENTS

Last month I wrote about an article outlining why old people think young people are spoiled. Well, the author has written a followup, this time outlining two more factors: Social mobility and increasing resource inequality. It's another great and simple explanation of some economics/sociology stuff.

The best part, though, might be in the footnotes where the author wonders aloud about something that has been bugging me lately:

Why is it that everyone is so dead-set on having their children exceed them? From a logical standpoint, doesn't it seem hard to understand how everyone's children are going to advance forward? Especially when there are an exponentially increasing number of children on the planet; and at the same time technology is exponentially decreasing the need for human intervention in the production of our goods and services? As we go each day into the future we have more people to do work, while at the same time we have less work to do. How are we all going to find our kids well-rewarded jobs, when we just don't need as many people working?

I hadn't thought of it in exactly these terms, but I've been wondering about why so many people think they're going to beat the odds. I mean I get why people think that way, but it's still sort of mysterious that everyone believes it. If everyone was beating the odds the odds would change.

Tags: economics, sociology


PREVIOUS ENTRY | NEXT ENTRY

LEAVE A COMMENT

First name, first and last, whatever you feel like.

Required, but not displayed (so don't worry about spam).

If you've got one, flaunt it.

You can use some HTML (a's, br's, p's, oh my!) if you'd like, if you don't know what that means, don't worry about it.
REMEMBER ME?

COMMENTS

1Shelby

Damn you economics and logic. I am going to go kill my kid now since there is no hope.

August 27, 2009

2Noah Brier

Ha, sorry Shelby. Seriously, though, it's the only way to be (believing your child and self will beat the odds). I imagine there's a good evolutionary explanation for this.

August 27, 2009

3barbara

Maybe wanting your kids to have a 'better life' does not mean they have to make more money than you ... :)

August 28, 2009

4Alan Wolk

Just read the piece you link to.
Someone's got serious issues with his parents:
"The problem is that our parents don’t seem to realize all that has changed since they first went out to find their first job."

While I usually find the stuff you find to be both fascinating and useful, this particular article was a prime example of pseudo scholarship (he cites no actual facts, just lots of easily punctured theories about how easy his Boomer parents had it.)

Mostly, it sounds like a tantrum expressed as a blog article because his parents don't seem to understand why he needs some expensive piece of equipment.

What's more, I don't find his thesis to be true, anecdotally: the past 25 years of brand and class consciousness-- from the "Yuppie" culture of the 1980s through to the "everyone can buy anything" 2000s, has left the working class acutely aware of what the upper middle classes own.

In fact, one of the greatest marketing innovations of this period is to create low-priced extensions of high-priced brand names. (e.g. the $25K BMW, the $79 Gucci keyfob) - so that no purchase seems overly extravagant anymore and consumers of all classes are aware of (and unshocked by) the purchases of the affluent.

Also, using French peasants as a example makes no sense: Europeans have been shackled by a class structure that prevents upward mobility while the US has been all about upward mobility and freedom from class shackled from day one.

Finally, the biggest division I see now is the way middle and upper middle class parents are prone to spoiling their kids versus working class parents. I call it the Straw Example: Go to Disney World (or similar) and you'll observe some variation on the following;

A child orders a drink and is presented with a green straw while the child at the next table has a red one. The child complains that he wants a red straw.

Upper middle class parents will likely summon the waiter and demand that a red straw be produced tout suite. Working class parents will tell the kid to shut up and deal with the green straw.

World of differences encapsulated in those responses.

Rant over.

August 28, 2009