I was just listening to a Talk of the Nation podcast about “Talking to Kids about Money” as I walked to work. And I got to work SO ANGRY! The whole thing consisted of self-righteous posturing that positioned the parents calling in and the experts on the panel as saintly priests of self-denial and their children as greedy, impulse-crazed, demanding wastes of space.
I felt so sorry for all of the adult children that the callers were describing. No one phoned in who had a child under 12, and most of them were complaining about children who were 24, 28, even 31! The first caller, in particular, made it abundantly clear that he simply doesn’t like his oldest daughter. His business collapsed about eight years ago, and he went from affluent to more financially strapped. His two younger daughters, in his opinion, adapted well are “responsible” because they have jobs, but not the older daughter. Oh no. Even though, as he later revealed, she is now married and thus presumably has her own household, his way of describing her was “the 28-year-old seems to think that we'll be going back to Europe any day now for vacation.” That bitch.
I’m pretty sure if his eldest daughter is managing her own finances that it’s her business whether she goes to Europe or not. How horrible of her to look back fondly on family vacations! Why, it’s as if she thinks he might have valued that time or enjoyed it! When clearly the whole time he was just viewing her as a demanding waste of space.
That was the theme of the whole show – children exist to ask for too much, take too much, take up too much space. One of the experts, a psychotherapist and a rabbi, advised that you make your children worry that you don’t have enough money to pay for things because “they understand that we're doing this to be responsible so that something horrible or horrific isn't happening.”
What a great parenting tip! Teach kids that their desires are the key to “something horrible or horrific…happening!” Only pointless denial can stop it happening! Why, one father had taken that idea to its logical end – apocalyptic fear! He has taught his kids, he says, that
I’m pretty sure, as an aside, that “find out what your passion is” doesn’t actually fit in with his philosophy, though he thinks it does. That’s another of the things parents are supposed to be teaching, isn’t it? You’re worthless if you pursue something you don’t have passion for for the sake of security…but then you’re worthless if your passion leads to the (almost unavoidable for most students) logical end of college debt.
What a bunch of hypocrites these people all are. They puff themselves up about scaring their children, about making them feel like they’re weights, drains, and wasters, but then they continue to hold on to them as tight as they can and try to control their every decision even after they’re adults.
There’s no doubt that giving children everything they demand and failing to educate them about money isn’t wise. How many parents, though, would think of that as their strategy? A few, but not many. It’s other, judgy parents who assume that’s the strategy of parents whose children they deem ill-behaved or unwise.
I think a far more common problem is teaching your children – especially girls – to think of themselves as worthless wastes, as encumbrances who take up too much space, but who are then pressed to accept sudden and unpredictable “rewards” at a parent’s whim. Focusing on the power of the parent to deny, rather than the power of the child to understand, to manage, and to learn how to make decisions is a shortcut to a host of problems as adults in this world. If it’s not clear, I think it’s a worldview that ties right in with the way eating disorders work.
I don’t have children, but I’m fairly sure the best way to teach them about money is to be honest and forthcoming with them without frightening them or freighting them with responsibilities they cannot understand, and to devise activities and answers that help them understand how money works in the world – pretty much how you teach them about everything else. Teaching them that denial is arbitrary and freighted with vague fears about “something horrific” or “the enemy” only gives them a worldview in which they have little control over their own worth or the shape of their lives. The much feared “entitlement complex” isn’t simply a result of children who have been given too much, but of children who have been taught that what they receive has no correlation with how they operate in the world; that having things is a function of who you are, rather than what you do.
Simply instilling fear or shame in a child who asks for things, then, does nothing to alleviate entitled behaviour. It merely makes the whole idea of having and being so much more entangled and fraught. One of the experts did touch on what I think is the right path when he said parents should teach children “where the root of things come. You know, when you take them to a supermarket, you know, where does that apple come from? Who has worked for that?”
There, finally, I think he gets it right. Combatting alienation and commodification is, in fact, the duty of a good Marxist parent, and even a non-Marxist can benefit from the idea that things – and people – have backstories, that they are part of an enmeshed and entangled world and not merely worthless or worthy according to what price they’re currently selling for. Children shouldn’t be made to feel they are commodities whose price fluctuates with how good they are. Instead they should be partners in the work of living.
I’m sure I found all this more offensive than others might because I have struggled for most of my life with the feeling that I take up too much space. My parents never guilted me about finances, but then I also very rarely asked for anything. I got the idea pretty early on that the worst thing a woman can be in this world is greedy, and so I have struggled all my life with tamping down my own greed – for food, for affection, for acclaim. We live in a society that has no idea how to mediate between ambition and greed, desire and disgust. And our children bear the brunt of that confusion, even though it has been passed on by parents who simultaneously fear and crave their own desires, their own bodies, their own lives.
I don’t actually, when I am looking at things rationally, think that I am a wasteful or a profligate person. Although I have not had to pay my own way through life from a tender age, I try to take responsibility for my actions and my decisions. I am hugely grateful for the privilege and the work that eased my passage through childhood, and I recognize that it came to me not because I am a good person, but because I am a lucky one. I don’t spend what I don’t have, and Nick and I have relatively little debt for people at our life stage. I do, however, occasionally take vacations in Europe, so I’m sure that first caller would be pretty disgusted to have me as a daughter.
I felt so sorry for all of the adult children that the callers were describing. No one phoned in who had a child under 12, and most of them were complaining about children who were 24, 28, even 31! The first caller, in particular, made it abundantly clear that he simply doesn’t like his oldest daughter. His business collapsed about eight years ago, and he went from affluent to more financially strapped. His two younger daughters, in his opinion, adapted well are “responsible” because they have jobs, but not the older daughter. Oh no. Even though, as he later revealed, she is now married and thus presumably has her own household, his way of describing her was “the 28-year-old seems to think that we'll be going back to Europe any day now for vacation.” That bitch.
I’m pretty sure if his eldest daughter is managing her own finances that it’s her business whether she goes to Europe or not. How horrible of her to look back fondly on family vacations! Why, it’s as if she thinks he might have valued that time or enjoyed it! When clearly the whole time he was just viewing her as a demanding waste of space.
That was the theme of the whole show – children exist to ask for too much, take too much, take up too much space. One of the experts, a psychotherapist and a rabbi, advised that you make your children worry that you don’t have enough money to pay for things because “they understand that we're doing this to be responsible so that something horrible or horrific isn't happening.”
What a great parenting tip! Teach kids that their desires are the key to “something horrible or horrific…happening!” Only pointless denial can stop it happening! Why, one father had taken that idea to its logical end – apocalyptic fear! He has taught his kids, he says, that
debt is the enemy to be fought and avoided at all costs. Find out what your passion is, educate yourself, develop it; learn to stand on your own two feet as far as career-wise; and no matter what happens with the economy, which is - it really doesn't look good. I mean, with all this debt, the only way out is to pay the debt, and, you know, it will take a miracle for that to happen.And it’s all your fault, kids, because you bought cars (something he seems to think is pretty close to a tragedy, even though his children are adults and have budgeted for these cars themselves).
I’m pretty sure, as an aside, that “find out what your passion is” doesn’t actually fit in with his philosophy, though he thinks it does. That’s another of the things parents are supposed to be teaching, isn’t it? You’re worthless if you pursue something you don’t have passion for for the sake of security…but then you’re worthless if your passion leads to the (almost unavoidable for most students) logical end of college debt.
What a bunch of hypocrites these people all are. They puff themselves up about scaring their children, about making them feel like they’re weights, drains, and wasters, but then they continue to hold on to them as tight as they can and try to control their every decision even after they’re adults.
There’s no doubt that giving children everything they demand and failing to educate them about money isn’t wise. How many parents, though, would think of that as their strategy? A few, but not many. It’s other, judgy parents who assume that’s the strategy of parents whose children they deem ill-behaved or unwise.
I think a far more common problem is teaching your children – especially girls – to think of themselves as worthless wastes, as encumbrances who take up too much space, but who are then pressed to accept sudden and unpredictable “rewards” at a parent’s whim. Focusing on the power of the parent to deny, rather than the power of the child to understand, to manage, and to learn how to make decisions is a shortcut to a host of problems as adults in this world. If it’s not clear, I think it’s a worldview that ties right in with the way eating disorders work.
I don’t have children, but I’m fairly sure the best way to teach them about money is to be honest and forthcoming with them without frightening them or freighting them with responsibilities they cannot understand, and to devise activities and answers that help them understand how money works in the world – pretty much how you teach them about everything else. Teaching them that denial is arbitrary and freighted with vague fears about “something horrific” or “the enemy” only gives them a worldview in which they have little control over their own worth or the shape of their lives. The much feared “entitlement complex” isn’t simply a result of children who have been given too much, but of children who have been taught that what they receive has no correlation with how they operate in the world; that having things is a function of who you are, rather than what you do.
Simply instilling fear or shame in a child who asks for things, then, does nothing to alleviate entitled behaviour. It merely makes the whole idea of having and being so much more entangled and fraught. One of the experts did touch on what I think is the right path when he said parents should teach children “where the root of things come. You know, when you take them to a supermarket, you know, where does that apple come from? Who has worked for that?”
There, finally, I think he gets it right. Combatting alienation and commodification is, in fact, the duty of a good Marxist parent, and even a non-Marxist can benefit from the idea that things – and people – have backstories, that they are part of an enmeshed and entangled world and not merely worthless or worthy according to what price they’re currently selling for. Children shouldn’t be made to feel they are commodities whose price fluctuates with how good they are. Instead they should be partners in the work of living.
I’m sure I found all this more offensive than others might because I have struggled for most of my life with the feeling that I take up too much space. My parents never guilted me about finances, but then I also very rarely asked for anything. I got the idea pretty early on that the worst thing a woman can be in this world is greedy, and so I have struggled all my life with tamping down my own greed – for food, for affection, for acclaim. We live in a society that has no idea how to mediate between ambition and greed, desire and disgust. And our children bear the brunt of that confusion, even though it has been passed on by parents who simultaneously fear and crave their own desires, their own bodies, their own lives.
I don’t actually, when I am looking at things rationally, think that I am a wasteful or a profligate person. Although I have not had to pay my own way through life from a tender age, I try to take responsibility for my actions and my decisions. I am hugely grateful for the privilege and the work that eased my passage through childhood, and I recognize that it came to me not because I am a good person, but because I am a lucky one. I don’t spend what I don’t have, and Nick and I have relatively little debt for people at our life stage. I do, however, occasionally take vacations in Europe, so I’m sure that first caller would be pretty disgusted to have me as a daughter.
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