My prescription: More love, less boarding school for children of the wealthy

[KurtNYC]

While many talk and offer advice (and laws) about how low income families raise their children, almost no one talks about the way wealthy people raise their kids. These same wealthy kids grow up to become congress critters and they debate whether food stamps should exclude soda and other condescending minutia. We may sing the cliche' that "children are the future" but looking at the Bushes, Romneys, Clintons, Cuomos, Kennedys and Browns it is safe to say that THEIR children are our future (leaders) so perhaps we should be equally concerned with the quality of formative experiences they have and the values that they learn.

What if wealthy families didn't use nannies from birth and send their kids off to boarding and prep schools at 9 years of age? What if they sat around the same table in the evening and shared dinner? What if the kids weren't groomed, dressed to the teeth and then paraded around like show ponies? What if they weren't camera-fodder for press events and campaign publicity photos?

Well maybe, just maybe the kids wouldn't grow up inclined to treat women as employees in all matters, including sex and motherhood. Maybe they would have a better idea how other families live. Maybe they would feel more loved and valued for who they are and not just what they look like and how many digits are in their bank balance. Maybe they would more inclined toward sharing and less inclined to selfishness and kleptomania as they try in vain to fill an emotional hole that can't be filled by money and power.

[get the red out]

1. Brilliant!

Nail strikes head! They are raised in a way that can limit empathy. Their family life is not natural or common. They are like those poor little monkeys raised by the wire monkey with a bottle I recall from a college psych class, no soft parent to bond with.

[KurtNYC]

3. gee, thanks. I know people who were raised this way and

I have seen the effects. The open secret is that wealthy people can be just as miserable as anyone else. Money does not solve every issue and does not guarantee happiness, far from it. I think it is possible that the Koch brothers are still trying to win the approval of their father; still fighting the 'communists.'

[get the red out]

10. How scared must the poor kids be?

When they're shipped off to school as little kids, money or not, that's abandonment. I'm sure they have all kinds of issues, I just never thought about it before.

No wonder they seem to think poor people need to lose their kids so often? That's what happened to them!

[Enrique]

2. prep schools

I wonder, the conservative homeschooling folks, talking about the importance of family values, what do they think of prep schools, where the kids don't even go home after school. George Bush for example, and now Mitt Romney.

[KurtNYC]

5. yes. It was the recent Ann Romney 'stay at 6 mansions mom' stuff that

got me thinking more about this.

Also I don't really want my future leaders to be playing video games like Age of Empires where you just click on the barracks and more soldiers appear 10 seconds later. You are rewarded for cutting down all the trees, getting all the gold, killing all the whales, killing civilians and burning down churches. I'd rather their kids not learn that kind of stuff because THEY will be in a position to do it some day. There is no motherhood (and few women) in Age of Empires or most other multiplayer strategy games.

[vanlassie]

4. Yep. This is, in my opinion, the biggest problem the world has.

Lack of bonding equals sociopathic (meaning lack of empathy) behavior as adults. They're thick in our boardrooms and legislatures. And if you know about Barbara Bush, and George's upbringing, it's glaringly obvious. Especially when the little sister died- no mom for George....

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. I did graduate work at a major Ivy League school, and I was appalled

at what some of the undergraduates I knew said about their lives growing up.

Neglect, abuse, it was all there. Not all of them turned into sociopaths; those who didn't were wounded and sad on some profound level.

My family of origin had its problems, but my parents were always there when we needed them.

[KurtNYC]

7. I saw kids literally killed by getting credit cards and no discipline/love

Drugs, car crashes, alcoholism, suicides.

At the time John Lennon wrote "All you need is Love" he had recently become one of the wealthiest individuals in the UK.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. When I took training to volunteer with street kids in Portland, we were told

that it was a myth that all street kids came from poor families. "Some of them have last names that you would recognize as belonging to prominent families," the trainer said.

If kids started acting out, the wealthy parents' response was often to find some program, any program, to put them into and keep them out of the way. Some of these programs were notorious for abusing the kids, so they would run away and end up on the streets.

Here in Minneapolis, where i volunteer in my church's meal program for street and other low-income youth, there's a young woman who comes from a wealthy family. She has more visible piercings than I've ever seen on anyone and wears her hair in sort-of dreadlocks, and her parents have told her that they will meet up with her as long as she does not come into their neighborhood and "shame" them.

I can imagine the vicious circle that led to this sad state of affairs.

[KurtNYC]

11. someone I met was sent to boarding school at 8 years old

saw their parents only on holidays, and at formal dinners where children were not allowed to talk. Later it was military schools and summer camps. One of the sons of Dionne Warwick was at the military school too.

When these kids wind up in AA or on the street, there is even less mercy for them because the stereotype among their peers is that 'they were rich therefore they should have been happy', or that they are snobs or spoiled.

[Dawson Leery]

9. K/R