Posted by pseudoname on July 18, 2006, at 17:55:02
And it's a book, too.
The 50-minute radio interview from this morning is available to hear online now (or order tapes) at http://www.wamu.org/programs/dr/06/07/18.php#10603
It was an interview with Madeline Levine, a Malibu therapist and the author of "The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids". In her practice, she sees a lot of children from upper middle-class homes (she says about $120k-160k in household income), and she has been seeing an increasing trend that's now backed up by hard research.
These kids, she says, are put under enormous pressure to be “perfect”, get destructively over-supervised, and end up feeling – far more often than most other kids – “empty”. She says research shows that kids in this social arena suffer three times as much depression as other teens but enter therapy or other treatment far LESS than kids who are less well-off. This is because therapy is seen to mean you're not up to par and these kids have to be up to par.
Kids, like lawns, have to meet the neighborhood's very high standards. And the kids *do* meet the standards: they do well in school, they have great manners & social skills, etc. They're actually NOT spoiled with possessions. Nor are the parents stereotypically “distant” – they're very involved and attentive. But the kids are allowed no freedom from the social class's many performance demands (placed by their parents) and their failures are not tolerated. The parents can depend almost exclusively for their own non-work identity on the “success” of their kids and end up placing unnatural pressure on the kids for carrying the entire household's self-image. And the kids come to see everything they achieve as a pastiche for others to look at without real meaning for themselves.
It was one of the best interviews I've ever heard. Even though I'm not a parent, I had some earlier experience as a child ;-) and I really had my perspective deepened by this.
Levine says she's actually not talking about *rich* kids, just the kids of professionals and the like. She says there's no research data on rich kids and mental health or therapy or upbringing at all.
I have to read the book.
poster:pseudoname
thread:668073
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/child/20050817/msgs/668073.html