I have watched news magazine segments about nannies in New York City. Many are highly qualified tutors /teachers from very elite universities. Nothing intrinsically wrong with hiring a nanny. Many hire nannies for very admirable reasons.
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NYC is a completely different universe when it comes to raising a family, but I agree - nothing wrong with having a nanny.
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The people I know who fit your description have “mommy & daddy” money - that is, their parents give them money. It blows my mind. Not that I wouldn’t like to have been on the receiving end when the kids were young and the bank account was scary-low.
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I think there’s an unspoken expectation that when you give your kids the best, they turn out to be the best (barring learning disabilities). Just my POV.
Still shocked how so many commenters here are in denial about the situation Vox outlines. Look at mental health among teens in upper-middle class communities. Not very pretty.
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Look at mental health among teens in impoverished communities- not very pretty, and nobody is writing articles about THEIR anxiety and depression.
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I think the portrayal of meritocracy as effectively a necessary response to inequality is conflating two very different things.
There’s an elitism in establishing a meritocracy based largely on education (ie looking down on uneducated people) which is in some ways more pernicious and damaging than economic inequality. For example expressing the view that you are a “bad” person not just a poor person, because you are (just to take an obvious quote) “clinging to guns and religion”. And you can be a member of the cultural elite as say a journalist or academic, even if you aren’t wealthy. This is basically the thesis of Chris Arnade’s book, Dignity, where he criticizes educational elitism (“front row” vs “back row” kids) as a very separate issue to focus on from the (acknowledged) need to address poverty.
So perhaps the 9.9% are jealous of those who are economically better off than themselves, but many of them are using meritocracy as a way of disregarding those in the remaining 90% of the population.
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Well, suddenly the scales have fallen from my eyes. I now see boarding schools in a completely different light. They may offer superior educations, but an additional draw has to be one less person to shepherd to soccer practice, dance recitals, and school plays, especially if there are siblings close behind with their own schedules.
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What does that have anything to do with what I just wrote? I never said the two were mutually exclusive. If anything, the U-shaped nature of adolescent mental illness is another feature of our modern political economy.
And for the record, there are lots of places covering the poor mental health of impoverished communities. They just happen to be outlets further left than the sensibilities of the average CC user. Lauren Berlant’s Cruel Optimism is a good start.
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I don’t particularly like Vox and this article to me is just the newest version of the age old trope that money can’t buy happiness or contentment.
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Actually, the mental health of upper middle class students is far poorer than that of the poverty stricken cohort. Drug use is higher, too. All this was explored in that book from about a decade ago, The Price of Privilege.
We had a candidate for Congress here a couple years back whose campaign revolved around “I went to Harvard! The incumbent went to an icky state school! Can you believe it!”
She didn’t win. Some days I am surprised by this. Other days, not so much.
On meritocracy. MIT is a ruthless meritocracy. After seeing it in action for four years, I think it’s fair to say that most graduates do not see this as the way they think society should be structured.
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I mean for all engineers. Signing designs for the general public is just codified meritocracy. IMO, this provides little tangible benefit for public safety, but plenty of pretense. I wouldn’t doubt that some of these people sign their restaurant check “, PE”. LOL
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If I buy a USB mouse, I don’t care what certifications the engineer who designed it has. If I drive over a bridge, you better believe that I want the engineer who designed it to have met standards beyond being employed by the low bidder.
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Bridges, airplanes, tunnels,buildings, and toilet seats.
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Actually, this factored in heavily in our decision to have kiddo attend boarding school. It was about my mental health as well as his. First priority, it was a fit for him - he was ready to launch at 14 and all over the idea. But me working full time, having a disability, having an ill spouse, trying to keep all of the plates twirling for kiddo was not working. I ran myself into the ground.
Having all of the extracurriculars built into school and zero commute time was a huge selling point for me. I wasn’t being my best parenting self by trying to do it all. And he can pack a lot more into a day than he can at home. It has worked out really well (grateful to my family for pitching in to help pay for it), and my relationship with kiddo is better for having done it. And my sanity is mostly intact. And he is thriving.
Eta: I went back to read the underlying article, and I suspect I am part of the phenomenon the author describes (professional, kid late in life, investing heavily in him, etc), but I disagree that it is because of belief in a meritocracy. I don’t have any faith in there being a meritocracy. I have a very doom and gloom view of what the next generation is facing. I want kiddo to have as many options as possible so he can pivot when he needs to. I am not grooming him to be the best, I just want him to have a mixed bag of skills and experiences, and build a network of support while being self-sufficient. Hopefully, even though I can’t predict the future, he will have what it takes to weather the storms that are coming. That’s the whole point of his education, as far as I am concerned.
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And people have different levels of comfort with debt. I wouldn’t put a vacation on a credit card (that I couldn’t pay back immediately) but I have friends to regularly run a balance on their cards. They work, they don’t have jobs that paid more than mine, but they do have parents from whom they will inherit a lot. I have to worry about today and saving for tomorrow, and they really only need to worry about today. When their kids were little the grandparents paid for a couple of years of private school for one child who had a special need and did really need to go to that school, but also paid for 8 weeks of summer camp, bar mitzvahs, family vacations. I never tried to keep up with them or cared that they paid for private gymnastics while my kids were at the rec center. The kids didn’t care either.
I was the nanny for a first generation ‘rich’ family. The parents worked really hard (doctor and lawyer) but needed a nanny to get their kids to activities. They still bought their kids’ clothes at Target and most of their sports were through rec leagues. Education was the big ticket item. Their kids did have a car (very used) to drive to school but they had to work to earn gas money. They did have some ‘keeping up with the Rockefellers’ friends, but they really didn’t play that game. Their friends got the same $10 birthday gift out of the ‘gift closet’ whether the party was at McDonalds or the Ritz.
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Intriguing. What’s the alternative that they would prefer?
The Vox article concludes…
“I do think the issue is basically a class that has allowed itself to delude itself about the sources of its own privilege”.
“If you get rid of the false idea of meritocracy that everyone earns what they deserve and substitute…,”
The author of the article attended Columbia University and rowed crew.
The author of the 9.9% book describes himself….
“I graduated from Princeton University in 1985 with a concentration in political philosophy. I was awarded the Sachs Scholarship from Princeton for study at Oxford University, where I earned a D.Phil. in philosophy in 1988.”
I wonder if they are as introspective as they suggest others should be and conclude merit and hard work didn’t play a meaningful role in their personal achievements. Keeping in mind that the authors great grandfather was Chairman of Standard Oil so top .01%.
Here is the authors entire bio which to me reads as just a bit self indulgent…
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