Do you expect life to be "fair?"

Parent Cafe
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<p>I can understand a sense of entitlement from teens. After all they see their friends with the latest electronic toys, who live in bigger houses and shop at A&F ( are they still in?), and drive new cars, not to mention what they see on tv and movies, where everyone has new clothes, straight & shiny teeth & money falls from the sky.</p>

<p>But- really- people- why this moaning about “life isn’t fair”, only when it applies to our progeny, who have “worked really hard and deserves to go to the very best” college, when you realize that writing that tuition check will mean that you have to take a 2nd job, or he will have to find merit awards,
but * life isn’t fair* only briefly crosses your mind, when you hear about the number of children under 18 killed in the US by guns in one year, is more than the number of Americans killed in Iraq in * three* years.</p>

<p>Why is one child born to a mother with AIDS and one to a mother with a trust fund? ( although of course they could be the same mother)</p>

<p>The playing field to entering college has never been level- although there have been some attempts to even it out- but when something is being leveled out- it not only means holes are being filled- but higher spots are lowered.</p>

<p>While the argument isn’t quite as strong now as when I was growing up in the 1960s- but those born in the US. particulary those born to, two employed Caucasian parents, could be seen as having won the lottery compared to those born in many other parts of the world- so don’t worry- be happy! :D</p>

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<p>It is like asking glass half empty or full. Over all my life has been fair to me.</p>

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<p>I think that it’s difficult for people to break away from the view that things are guaranteed to work out well for those who deserve it. It’s not true. We know that there is tremendous poverty, disease, and violence in third would countries; we know that there are people in prison for crimes they didn’t commit; we know that small children are orphaned and then abused by their foster parents. Despite all of this, we are still shocked and overcome by feelings of injustice when we hear that a friend’s newborn is dying or that a kind young woman was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor or even when faced with the reality that there are good, smart people who are lonely. We say that “life isn’t fair,” but we are still shocked when faced with the reality. I wonder why that is.</p>

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<p>“We say that “life isn’t fair,” but we are still shocked when faced with the reality. I wonder why that is.”</p>

<p>Social psychologists have done research on this question. The tendency to see the world as fair is related to a number of attributional biases. An attribution is a way of defining responsibility. People tend to attribute good things that happen to them to their own actions, as in “I did well on that test because I studied” or “I got into that good college because I did all the right things and am smart.” However, they tend to attribute bad things to factors out of their individual control, as in “I did poorly on that test because the teacher graded it unfairly” or “I didn’t get into the college I wanted because the process unfairly favored others.” <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error&lt;/a&gt; Since Americans focus on the individual and see the individual as largely in control of his or her fate, we tend to be unhappy and feel out of control when negative things happen and our attribution focuses on contextual and external factors.</p>

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<p>Thanks for the post, Momfromme. That’s interesting information.</p>

<p>It seems, though, that people recognize intellectually that many things are out of their control and not fair. People know that not everything in within their power. Despite this knowledge, people respond emotionally in these situations as if they are surprised that such unfair events would take place. The disagreement between cognitive knowledge and emotional reaction is interesting.</p>

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<p>I think it’s cultural and environmental. Kids who say life isn’t fair hear it at home. Many have parents with jobs and lives they are not happy with. People who blame the boss, the man, for everything that goes wrong.</p>

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<p>Yes, theories about attributional biases note that there are cultural forces which can modify major attributional tendencies.</p>

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<p>it is really interesting- we want an explanation for everything- so we can weigh and measure it.
Very different than in some other cultures- the Amish for instance- know that what happens is God’s will.</p>

<p>In some ways that may feel more difficult, but I imagine they have less guilt and self blame over what another community might have felt could have been prevented.</p>

<p>I have one friend, who has a child who has struggled with drug addiction amongst other things, and have seen her be , quizzed pretty hard about what led up to that, by someone who thought that if she did everything right, ( i.e. not do what the other mom did), then * her child* wouldn’t have to go through that.</p>

<p>I understand wanting to line all the ducks up in a row, especially when it concerns our kids- we don’t want them to struggle- but struggle is also part of “life”, much more than “fairness” anyway.
( remember that Bambi meets Godzilla short?- pretty much sums up the animal world)</p>

<p>While I do remember being very angry at “unfairness” when I was 6, re: how my family, and how my world ( including my classroom), regarded girls as opposed to boys, I also quickly learned that , that was the way * it * was, and I didn’t know how to spell * subvert the dominant paradigm* let alone act on it. ;)</p>

<p>So many things- overwhelming things have happened to me, that at times I feel grateful just to be able to stand up, let alone walk and climb, so I may have a different perspective than someone who thought they were winning the race, but who then found out that they were two laps behind.</p>

<p>Not that I recommend planning adversity in order to “toughen up”, the world does enough of that on its own, but it does help to step back and get a broader view of things-</p>

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<p>I think kirkum is perhaps correct.</p>

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<p>EK-- you were seriously advanced if at 6 you realized how the world regarded girls as opposed to boys–I just wanted to share my graham crackers with Harold. :)</p>

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<p>Well I think that was because it was in my face.</p>

<p>I think I might even have been 5- as I started K when I was 4 and this was in 1st grade.
I was the oldest- but I had a younger brother who was by far the favorite & that was insulting to me since I was obviously smarter :wink:
( An opinion I still hold)
My 1st gd teacher, was asking everyone what they wanted to be when they grew up, the girls were responding in the approved fashion: * teacher* or mommy, the boys had much more interesting responses:* truck driver* or * fire fighter*.</p>

<p>I said that I wanted to be a doctor, I was even then argumentative, not because I wanted to be a doctor, but because I knew that someone would “correct” me, and I could hopefully get a discussion going, and maybe some questions answered as to * WHY?* that men were favored over women.</p>

<p>But while the teacher, * did* respond that " no, I couldn’t be a Dr, but I could be a * nurse* :p- that was the end of that and we went back to Dick & Jane.</p>

<p>I may however, been influenced by my mothers copy of The Feminine Mystique- ( although going by her behavior it went right over her head)</p>

<p>I wasnt a boy hater though- I have very fond memories of one boy teaching me how to hold a baseball bat-</p>

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<p>I don’t think the point of considering life being ‘fair’ or not is worth dwelling on since it will only provide people with an excuse as to why they don’t need to succeed or do as well as they perceive the other person is doing. We’re all individuals and all have unique environmentals around us. Even those who it appear have the same environmentals will really have different experiences helping to shape them. There certainly are people born into more opportunity than others but dwelling on that isn’t helpful. Working on improvement to the extent one can is really all they can productively do. </p>

<p>The perception of the ‘fair life’ can be warped as well. When I hear of kids born to certain actresses or into certain very wealthy families I see them as somewhat doomed to a hard life due to the excesses available to them just as I see some other kids as doomed to a hard life when they’re born to an unwed mother with no job, no provider, a drug addiction, and many other kids.</p>

<p>No matter how much one thinks they’ve been the victim of the ‘unfair life’, there’s almost always someone who has more hurdles than them. The kid born into a middle class family who doesn’t get to go to Harvard and settles for the state school or community college has it far better off than the kid who has little chance of college due to their environmentals. And that kid may have it far better off than the kid of a friend of mine who was born ■■■■■■■■ and blind, and yet he may have it better off than others since he has loving and supportive parents.</p>

<p>I think we all need to come to grips that we have a certain hand dealt to us that we had no control over and play that hand as best we can. Realizing this can actually empower the person to achieve more than they ever thought they could.</p>

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<p>Sexual differences are seen immediately upon birth in difference in muscle grips, but is mostly minor. Gender differences, however, are foisted upon the child from the second he or she is born, and will lead to the child very quickly gaining a deep understanding of what gender he or she is and what that entails.</p>

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<p>“If you want peace, work for justice.”–Pope Paul VI.</p>

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<p>I don’t think the point of considering life being ‘fair’ or not is worth dwelling on since it will only provide people with an excuse as to why they don’t need to succeed or do as well as they perceive the other person is doing.</p>

<p>Thats fine- I think it is worth discussing obviously. :wink: I like to hear about how people came to their perspectives.
“injustice” in educational opportunities, particulary re financial aid, is mentioned much on CC-</p>

<p>Parents who live in communities where some spend their money very freely, ( which may even just be plastic), share stories about how this other family has an 8,000 sq ft house, new cars and gets aid, while they who are driving their 12 year old valiant, get nothing.</p>

<p>Thats very real- I don’t know what the bookeeping looks like, but I can imagine that when you are surrounded by people spending lots of money & you either don’t have it to spend, or you choose not to, it can be very wearing after awhile.
That contributes I think to parents who have saved up enough money they figured to have $7,000- $9,000 to live on for 20 years when they are retired, but they feel poor.</p>

<p>Some people are able to take it in stride, others who may even have been born with a chip on their shoulder, can’t let go and are very cognizant that “Guy has a bigger office, and Helen is an idiot but she owns the company”.</p>

<p>Fairness also comes up a lot this time of year with school that have only one valedictorian Imagine!
( :wink: here because Ds school has had 44- they can’t stop with just one)
angst galore-
so how do we not only get over keeping tabs on who has what, how do we keep from passing that on to our kids?</p>

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<p>ek:
I think I wasn’t clear - I think the subject’s worth discussing. By ‘dwelling’ I meant for the individual feeling slighted to dwell on it to the point of negativity.</p>

<p>I actually don’t spend much time thinking about how much others have versus me or how they decide to spend their money versus how I spend mine. Someone else’s good fortune, deserved or not, rarely has any impact on me so why dwell on it? One could drive themselves crazy if they get too caught up in it. Is it ‘fair’ that the bumbling idiot actor or the athlete that spends most of their time warming a bench gets paid millions? Is it fair that a CEO who was with a company for 6 months gets paid millions? Is it fair that someone down the street won the lottery? I don’t really care about them - they don’t affect me. </p>

<p>I agree that it can be frustrating at times and I feel it too but realistically, it rarely really has a direct affect on me and there’s generally nothing I can do about it anyway so it’s best to just look forward and not dwell on it.</p>

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<p>44 vals? That seems like a bit much. Out of how many kids?</p>

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<p>I have tried but cannot get my head around the question. It doesn’t compute with me at all - I am absolutely certain each one of us is personally responsible for making sure we achieve whatever goals we have - and for some people that might be getting the corner office or making a certain amount of money, for others perhaps its fleeing an oppressive situation or surviving a terrible disease etc. </p>

<p>Life isn’t something that “happens” to us; life is a gift that we can custom design and make of it whatever we decide to create for ourselves, and we each get to decide exactly how much effort to apply to achieve the goals we have. This is true even though different people have different starting places - some people are born to affluence, most not; some have very bad things happen to them that are not their fault, but even so, even in the most dire of situations and circumstances, there are always options and choices, and even the most challenged person can find a way to improve their situation, if they chose to do so. </p>

<p>One of my favorite passages in Mind Over Water is something like “there are two ways to be happy - you can get what you want, or, you can decide to like what you have”. The author goes on to explain that both strategies are necessary today - in other words, being content with what one has, while simultaneously working towards improving the situation.</p>

<p>To that end, I guess life is very “fair” because it is my choice to make it so.</p>

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<p>the 44 vals was because the classes aren’t weighted and everyone who has straight As ( which even my daughter had as a freshman) is a val.
This was a few years ago, generally I think it is far fewer.
It caused a controversy, not so much in the school community, but in other states where it made headlines- I think to the school- it made sense.</p>

<p>Perhaps that word is in my head quite a bit, because in my immediate family, my mother likes to reference it. She has always spoken about her attempts to be “fair” and equates that with treating all her children or her grandchildren “equally”- in her own mind anyway.</p>

<p>also I was thinking of the speaker at Ds highschool graduation in 2000, and liked what she had to say about it.

she said a lot more, but this is what I have been trying to say.</p>

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<p>I remember my father telling me when I was about 13 that the concept of “fairness” was childish. He said the sooner I realised that life wasn’t fair the better off I’d be. Cynical, but true, I think.</p>