<p>Bay: I think self help skills and taking responsibility for your actions IS a skill that is better learned young. I also think these kids didn’t earn the money so chances are they often don’t value the money or benefits that come with it. Paying the consequences of your actions (cleaning up the bathroom because you vomited after a party, calling a tow truck because you didn’t fill up the gas tank) are all LIFE LESSONS and part of being a responsible adult → Best learned as a young person.</p>
<p>You seem awfully intent on your argument. No one cares what you do, whether you are competent. Call it a middle class value or whatever, but I think many people are commenting that there IS value in doing for yourself, in hard work, in being competent at the basic skills at life. Having “salad days” does build character and appreciation and the “let them eat cake” attitude of some of the very rich is off-putting.</p>
<p>No one is questioning someone’s RIGHT to hire a concierge. This is a VALUES argument. As such you are entitled to your opinion but no need to try to convince me of your position, because we have a very basic difference in values.</p>
<p>If someone can raise a kid who has never had to lift a finger to clean up after themselves, do their own laundry, make their own bed, pick up their own stuff, cook a meal for themselves or for someone else, and still raise that kid without an attitude of entitlement, then good for them. In my 60+ years, however, I’m still waiting to see it.</p>
<p>My oldest went to college with the daughter of a very wealthy recent president. This young woman did all the chores and the same self-care that the other students did for themselves, and even provided a leadership role in outdoor education, where “chores” are the name of the game. This young woman could easily have had everything done for her, but she chose to pull her own weight, and then some. I never liked her family’s politics, but I admire their child rearing.</p>
<p>This describes me. I never did any of those chores before I left for college. It wasn’t hard to do them while in college, after college and in married life. I learned fast. I don’t think any of my friends think I am entitled. My H and I were very frugal, scrimped and saved so that we did not qualify for financial aid with both kids in private colleges at the same time.</p>
<p>I look upon my childhood with fond memories.</p>
<p>^^But you did them in college. You didn’t hire out your laundry and opt out of taking care of your own stuff, which is what this thread is about. College attitudes. I think a lot of kids get to college and have to learn things they never had to do. That’s the point! It’s a great time to learn how to be independent. College students are adults, after all.</p>
<p>I never did those things, either, cbreeze, until I went to college. I always thought I was raised in a middle-class family, too (but according to the numbers I’ve read here on CC, I guess we were technically upper-middle class). My mom and dad both came from poor backgrounds. My mom stayed home with us and did all of those chores for us. She never asked for our help; I think she liked to do them. I didn’t know how to cook, or clean, or do laundry or even make my bed. I never felt entitled about it. I learned those skills very easily. As soon as I got a full time job after college, I hired a cleaning service. I never used my apartment oven or stove (used the microwave) until I got married. I’ve raised three children without any domestic crises, and am in a cooking club now. I still use a cleaning service.</p>
<p>So Bay, who did your laundry for you in college? Who made your bed?<br>
The people in this article are adults in college, not kids living at home.</p>
<p>I know many rich people who have a very skewed perspective of what their “salad days” tell them about the lives of poor (or not-rich) people living on the same salary that the rich kid was living on during his/her salad days.</p>
<p>Here’s an example of what I mean: Although my family had ups and downs during my childhood, when I was in college my family was really living on the edge. There was no money whatsover to support me. But I got along with scholarships, loans and jobs, and I even got a merit scholarship to spend a semester in Rome, as did my roommate and best friend who came from a weathy family. While we were in Rome we both managed to get under- the-table jobs and we saved up enough money so that we could travel at the end of the semester on an absolute shoestring budget (both with no support from our parents). </p>
<p>About a week before we were scheduled to come home, we got ourselves into an extremely dangerous situation at the disreputable flophouse we were staying in and we had to flee in the middle of the night. I didnt know what we were going to do. We were on the streets if Paris with essentially no money and nowhere to go and scared half out of our wits. </p>
<p>I will never forget what happened next. My roommate pulled out an “emergency credit card” that I had no idea she’d had throughout all the months we had been living and traveling together. It was as if she had pulled out a magic wand, that could magically transport out out of desperation.</p>
<p>We managed to get to an expensive hotel and she checked us in. Her parents paid for us to stay at the hotel for the final week of our trip.</p>
<p>I thought about that a lot. We had been in what I had thought was essentially the same financial position throughout our trip but the whole time she had had this magical device in her pocket that could have gotten us outvof nearly any scrape we had found ourselves in. It’s a completely different psychological mindset to know you have a safety net.</p>
<p>I’m still close friends with this woman and we’ve both done fairly well financially. She likes to talk about the old days right out of college “when we were really poor.”. It irritates me because she really believes that when she was supporting herself after college on a low paying salary that she was really living the life of a “poor” person, i.e., a person making that salary with no safety net of a wealthy family who could and would step in to take care of a true crisis.</p>
<p>ETA: I know traveling around Europe on whatever budget doesn’t represent the life of a truly “poor” person. But that’s beside the point for purposes of my story.</p>
<p>I did my laundry in college, moonchild, but I did not feel anything enlightening or worthwhile about it. My bed was thrown together as a courtesy to my roommate.</p>
<p>I dated a guy who lived close to home and took his laundry home to his mom. After he graduated, he took it all to a local drycleaner who washed it by the pound. Actually, he didn’t even take it there; his cleaning lady dropped it off after cleaning his house.</p>
<p>Should I feel bad for him and myself over that?</p>
<p>^^^Interesting. I can understand your irritation, but I also think she is to be admired for her willingness to do without when she really didn’t have to, probably because she valued her independence and her ability to care for herself. The fact that she had to really be in serious danger before she took advantage of her safety net should be applauded, imo. It isn’t her fault she was born wealthy, and she wasn’t taking it for granted.
But yeah, it’s not the same experience, but it’s not as though she wasn’t trying to grow up with a sense competence. (Like the kids in the posted article)</p>
<p>Well, Bay, if you really don’t see any value in your learning to do things for yourself regarding basic self-care while in college, I really don’t know what to say. Feel bad? I don’t expect you to feel bad, no. But I’d hope my daughter wouldn’t get too involved with a guy like the one you were dating–and I don’t even know him. Laundry home to his mom? Once in a while, I can see it. But as a regular thing, not very independent, no. I don’t know many 18-22 year old men who routinely bring their laundry home to their moms.</p>
<p>moonchild,
You asked me if I did my own laundry and made my bed. Are those the only thing one does that qualifies a person as engaging in “self-care?” If so, I guess my friend (who turned out to become a lawyer and law school professor) is a helpless loser?</p>
<p>No, it’s not just about laundry. Laundry is just something that most people do learn to do for themselves in college that they may not have learned at home. Just one of many things.
If you read the article, it’s not just about laundry. It seems these kids want to get out of anything that is practical or that a personal assistant could handle. I doubt very much that either you or your friend are really in this category. Did you read the article?</p>
<p>Yes, I did, and I was wondering whether anyone else on this thread did, because I didn’t see any mention of laundry done or beds being made by the services mentioned in the article.</p>
<p>As a gift to me after I had my first baby, my mother paid for cleaning services for a year. After the year ended, my H and I decided to free up the time used for house cleaning and gardening to instead do fun things with the family.We continue these services to this day.
My housekeeper has been with me for over 30 years and she depends on the wages I pay her. I am doing my part to help the economy.</p>
<p>I raised my kids to be hard working, honest, responsible and respectful adults. I spared them housework while growing up because I wanted them to concentrate on their studies and ECs. My D lived in dorms all 4 years, never had to cook. But she loves to cook now. My S works 12 hours a day and has to bring work home as well. He pays for his own laundry and cleaning services and hardly cooks.
Stress is hazardous to one’s health.</p>
<p>The point of the article is that these parents aren’t doing their kids any favors. How it relates to those of us not in such exalted financial situations differs in degree, but not in kind. We want our kids to become independent–although it’s not true in every case. I would argue that the mom who is still regularly doing laundry for her college aged son or daughter may not put as high a priority on independence as some of us would. There are moms who would love to keep their little boys their little boys forever(I can relate!),
and I think that some of that may be going on with the families in this article, as well.</p>
<p>I think Bay’s comments about laundry aren’t meant to respond to the original article but instead to my earlier point that I think it is weird that laundry has become such a litmus test as to whether someone is spoiled or not. My kid wears $15 jeans and carries a $10 purse from Target. Hypothetically, she could have a roommate who wears $150 jeans and carries a $200 purse from Anthroplogie. But if I paid for someone to do my kid’s laundry and her roommate did her own it would be my kid who would be perceived as spoiled. (She knows how to do laundry, by the way. i showed her how to throw one of those little detergent pods into the washer before she went to camp. And she had picked up the necessity to sort clothes by color thru cultural osmosis (it was probably covered on the Simpsons or SpongeBob)).</p>
<p>PS. I don’t see anything wrong with buying nice/expensive clothes.</p>
<p>(Frankly, the loads of vomit-soaked clothes going thru dorm washers kind of grosses me out. )</p>
<p>moonchild,
There are also intelligent, knowledgeable moms who think doing ones’ own laundry is a waste of time, and their kids have grown up to be responsible, independent citizens.</p>
<p>I do think the kids in the article are a bit over-the-top by average student standards. I doubt my kids would ever think of throwing a party with a band in college,but the concierge service serves similar purpose for some students as their parents don’t have the resources to help them because of time limits or geographical differences.</p>
<p>cbreeze- your family sounds lovely and wonderful. I don’t see how it relates to the article where these students in college are paying a concierge to get them out of doing whatever they don’t feel like doing, and really have no need to be hard working or respectful of the law or of others. I just don’t see that there are any similarities in your experience, or that of your family.</p>
<p>Like I said Bay, it’s not just about the laundry. And I don’t think it’s a litmus test.
But if every chore, everything that is the slightest bit menial (laundry, cleaning, cooking, whatever one thinks is a waste of their time) is farmed out to others one’s entire life, I truly think that person is very likely to miss something important in their character development. JMO</p>