As might be expected from professional middle-class parents’ statements about extracurricular activities, the goals of a higher education, and delayed launching, they view the future toward which they are guiding their children quite differently than do less privileged parents. Three examples can illustrate the distinctive goals of the elite parents.
I begin with Carol Clark, a white mother of four children ranging in age from two to fifteen. The older two children are from an earlier marriage and live with Carol and her current husband only half the time. The younger two are full-time residents in the Clark household in Louisville, Kentucky, where Carol works full-time as a high-level program administrator in a hospital and her husband, Carl, is a high school biology teacher. During the interview, Carol talked about how firm she is with respect to her childrens homework: “Big rules, get it done, not necessarily right after school but before you’re too tired.” And when asked about how much education she wants for her daughters, she answered without hesitation, “In a perfect world they would all get a minimum of a college degree, preferably a master’s on top of that.” She then backed off and added, pro forma, “But it really depends on what they want to do.” When asked what she hopes her children will have accomplished by the time they finish their long educational trajectories, she hedged. Carol feigned casualness about substantial achievement even as she acknowledged an intense desire to see her children be successful. She outlined a future that has those children changing careers multiple times in order to find what fits them best. She wants them to do well; she also wants them to find not just happiness but outright passion:
I guess we don’t expect them to be CEOs of a company I don’t expect them to kill themselves to go to Yale. If they were prone to that, to have that natural ambition, I would encourage it. I want them to be the best of whatever they’re going to be, and if they change that five times in their twenties into their fifties, so be it. I want them to be happy. I want them to be passionate about what they do. I have, of course, very specific ideas on what I want them to be and see them being. I want them to tap into their natural abilities, their natural talents, and then take that somewhere wonderful.
Like Carol, Jeff Wright, the recently widowed father of one daughter, spoke about the intensity with which he monitors his child’s homework: “I used to be a tyrant, I used to be really, really concerned. Katie would probably say I still am a tyrant.” But in spite of his obvious concern about his daughter’s academic performance, when he compared his ambitions for his daughter with the ambitions he felt his parents had for him, he focused less on educational accomplishments and more on goals that extend the meaning of happiness.
Jeff wants his child to go beyond mere happiness to become a more perfect being who approaches the world with zest and self-awareness:
I think [my parents] valued educational accomplishment, and I think they valued jobs and those opportunities, and I think that’s how their measurement of success was. I think we both say we want our kids to be happy and content and self-fulfilled, but I think. . . how we measure that is different. I think [for me] it’s less on making a huge amount of money. . . .
My parents were poor working-class people. They looked at college as an opportunity to be much more successful financially. . . . For me, I think it would be great if Katie were to find a position where she would be financially secure, but I realize that’s not going to bring her security—it’s having a sense of self-worth and self-respect and self-confidence. So I would love it if she were to get married and have a family and have a successful career, but first and foremost what I would want is for her to achieve all that with a sense of self-satisfaction.
Jeff believes that what he wants for his daughter is substantially different from what his parents wanted for him. Security remains a concern, but he wants security to come from inside, from an awareness of her own capabilities and interests, rather than from external achievements alone.
Finally, on this set of issues, consider Beth O’Brien, a white mother of four. Beth is a PhD psychologist married to a lawyer who works as a vice president of a major camping-equipment business. Beth is proud of her success. Indeed, she defines herself and her husband as “overachievers” who rose from considerably less privileged backgrounds to have professional degrees, prestigious jobs, and proud ownership of a glorious home in a wealthy Boston suburb and a vacation house on the very elite Martha’s Vineyard.24 Beth was cavalier and perhaps even disingenuous about her children’s future. Of course, she wants success for them: it is no accident that she lives in a town with excellent schools. And she described her oldest three children (the youngest is considerably younger than these) in ways that show that she has interests in their day-to-day achievements as unique individuals:
Let me start with Mark: he is very, very outgoing, charming, and intelligent. . . . He’s also athletic. . . . Melissa is a very goal-oriented, athletic
child. She decided she wanted to go to private school… to pursue her dream in hockey. . . . I’m very proud of her because she has worked very, very hard the past couple of years to make this boys’ team, and she’s [the only girl] on this elite boys team. . . . And what I love about Heather is that she’s so well rounded—she loves drama, she love sports, she loves school.
Beth almost sounded as if she was filling out college applications for her children as she boasted of how accomplished they are. When asked about the future, she acknowledged that she wants her children to achieve at a very high level. But she also insisted that she does not want “achievement” to be the only focus of their lives:
I guess because [my husband, Rick,] and I have both been overachievers in a lot of ways. . . we know that that’s not where happiness really resides.
It’s good to have achievements, but you need to have balance. . . . Rick is a superstar. . . . He feels like, “Oh my god, I need more fun.” And we turn around at forty-five saying we missed out, and I have that orientation too.
I got my doctorate, I run marathons. We’re trying to have our children be not so focused on achievement. Our parents didn’t go to college, so it was important that we achieved, so they were giving us their dreams. And our dream for our kids is that they achieve, but they achieve in the context of being able to have a really happy, fun life. (Emphasis added)
When Beth talked about her ongoing concerns as a parent, her attention shifted to learning how to have fun. When asked about what she wants her children to have accomplished by the time they complete their formal education, she reiterated this point. She’s not “worried about them being a success” because she believes she knows how to ensure that; she’s less certain, however, whether she knows how to ensure “fun”: [1]
Passion, a sense of satisfaction, a capacity for having fun—these are significant elements of the goals that professional middle-class parents hold out for their children. And in their minds these goals differ dramatically from the “basic things” they believe their parents held out as goals for them. They are also quite different from the goals that middle — and working-class parents hold out for their children. Let me be clear: I am not saying that the less privileged parents do not care about whether their children find careers that give them satisfaction or that they be happy in their lives. I am saying that these parents are considerably less likely than their more privileged peers to state this satisfaction and happiness as goals that supersede economic independence, self-sufficiency, and the acquisition of useful skills.25
From the perspective of a child, the latter set of ambitions might seem like sufficient pressure. Understanding that parents also want them to be having fun and to be not merely happy but passionate about what they are doing— these might feel like significant new burdens and responsibilities. They might also be perceived as more controlling desires because they leave no room for superficial interest but require evidence of deep engagement. And they add to the pressure of performance the pressure of effortlessness, so that the achievements themselves appear to be fun.