NE elite parents

Parent Cafe
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<p>“The only exception is the focus on getting the kids into Andover or Exeter.”</p>

<p>:o …S went to one of the above. However, we never really thought about it until he applied when he was in the 8th grade. Our public school option was very disappointing at the time. He was bored when he was in the public middle school and wanted something more challenging. (He was able to attend the “elite” school as a day student.)</p>

<p>“Elite? Education is the only thing we are willing to pay full sticker price for, given the right fit and opportunity. If that makes us elites, so be it.”</p>

<p>^ Same with our family.</p>

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<p>kfc…you watch too much television. </p>

<p>I am not sure about the ‘NE’ but if you live in Manhattan, you will meet plenty of high flyers. They write for the New Yorker and the New York Times and The Nation. Sometimes they own one of those newspapers. They start up TV channels like HBO and MTV. They start up film studios like Tri-Star Pictures. They head up record companies like Polygram. They run investment banks. They run large cosmetic companies. They might be the children or grandchildren of high flyers. They might be among the most recognized actors, artists or architects of their generation. They might own art galleries. They might run museums or Broadway theatres. They might own five star restuarants.</p>

<p>They live in magnificent, sprawling apartments and they own magnificent weekend homes–in the Hamptons, in Westchester–on Martha’s Vineyard. Some fly their own helicopters back and forth. Some fly their own jets. Some drive their Volvos or Mercs themselves.</p>

<p>They send their children to the best Manhattan private schools primarily–and the best boarding schools, secondarily. They send them to summer camp all over the world. They help their children get amazing internships with their friends.</p>

<p>They donate large sums to all of those private schools.</p>

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<p>Well, here in lower Fairfield County, CT for the very wealthy, it is hedge funds, hedge funds, hedge funds. The summer homes are on Nantucket, the weekend ski houses are in Stratton. An apartment in Manhattan is usually on the list. Schools are private day till 9th grade then it’s off to boarding school. Think Choate, Kent. The Alps for skiing over Christmas. It’s off to the BVI for midwinter break (and that base tan.) A couple of weeks in Tuscany in early August. Usually, the small LAC for college.
I always wonder if these people don’t get sick of seeing each other all the time.</p>

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<p>LOL, woody! Funny last line.</p>

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<p>Not just funny … true. </p>

<p>During school breaks no one is in town – but you are likely to run into acquaintances in Florida or Stratton, or on the airport limo.</p>

<p>(Another Fairfield County resident!)</p>

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<p>Another non-elite NE parent here, but I will give the OP a view into one of the famil</p>

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<p>jmmom, my experience has been that those who have inherited family wealth behave as you describe. The whole conspicuous consumption thing is just not cool among those people.</p>

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<p>Essentially, the really elites are just like all the rest of us … except that every once in a while they do something that makes you understand that there’s a lot of money behind them. </p>

<p>It might be the 1920s restored summer cottage in Rhode Island, or the collection of classic cars in the garage. Something like donating a new wing to the local library … or a large chunk of bucks to the high school’s turf field … or even just getting fed up with the local public school, despite that infamous turf field and sending all the kids to either an independent day school or boarding school.</p>

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<p>Really? I didn’t think the best publics in NYC (Stuyvesant and that ilk) were all that attractive to wealthy families. Times must have changed since I lived in the NYC area.</p>

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<p>Beg to differ. I’ve had the NE inheritors as clients. They are often as madly consumptive as the nouveau riche–though they might display bits of reverse snobbery by driving an old car. </p>

<p>None of the super elite Manhattan families that I know sent/send their kids to public schools unless the kid was super headstrong or a ‘problem’ in private schools.</p>

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<p>I rub shoulders with all sorts of elites, though I am economically very ordinary; college prof, H a struggling photography studio owner. Sometimes times have been good, not so much since 9/11.</p>

<p>Here are the elite people I know: Very famous architect’s family, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Designed buildings you would have heard of. Other attachments to family tree – Astors. How do they live? Well, their families are rather large because someone somewhere converted to Catholicism, or something like that. Some are divorced. Some are not.<br>
The houses are elegant but delapidated; no one has the money to really keep up the family manses. The kids are all artists, architects, doctors, clergy. It’s vulgar to mention money. Private day school until 9th grade; I don’t really know where most of the cousins went to hs. Excellent colleges. Great connections to get any job. However, the great-grandchild I know has some neurological and psychological problems. He has been abandoned to welfare. I paid for some of his Stony Brook courses when we were young.</p>

<p>Oh, they go sailing a lot.</p>

<p>Another elite: Fabulous, mostly immigrant, world class physicists at Brookhaven Lab. Their kids go to Stony Brook and become physicists.</p>

<p>Really wealthy doctors – anesthesiologists and the like. Two doctor families. Gorgeous houses on the water. Kids went to public school with mine, but graduating class was 90. Kids go to whichever Ivy they get into or NYU, Stern + others if they don’t get into Stern. Some go to LAC’s. Others go off to WashU, Georgetown and down from there.</p>

<p>Family: Uncle partner in top NYC law firm. He’s not much older than I am, so his kids are close to my kids’ generation. Went to tippy top NYC private school; summer house in Remsenberg, LAC’s.</p>

<p>Several families sent kids to Exeter/St. Mark’s that we know from around. Kids are at Georgetown/Barnard. These families are mostly elite Asian and African-American families.</p>

<p>Me: My house is my summer house. It is an ordinary middle class house; I bought it because it was in such bad shape it was cheap. Have been working on it ever since. If I squint can see LI Sound from DS’s little bedroom window, but nowhere else. Kids went to private school until 5th grade because they were watched while we both worked and I couldn’t be sure of being back by dismissal time. No nanny. Then public school.</p>

<p>Summers: day camp; each had two summers away for 2-3 weeks, academic + music stuff. One trip to Paris we couldn’t afford because I had to speak French with them and see Paris with them. No vacations in four years since I started spending money only for tuition unless you count college trips.</p>

<p>Funny thing: DS ended up at same LAC as NYC elite cousin; DD ended up at Barnard.</p>

<p>Only the first old money group are snobs, anti-semites, anything you might imagine. Everyone else are ordinary people and definitely treat everyone else as peers.</p>

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<p>You know that Stuyvesant now sits on across the street from Battery Park City (residential and family friendly which help fund the elementary and middle school that is across the street because it was originally suppose to be part of BPC) and is in Tribeca where there are many people are not exactly hurting for $$ (I guess they would be the working wealty walking everyday to the IBs and some restaurant owners, artists, etc) . </p>

<p>I know may wealthy people in the neighborhood who went from K-12 in the NYC public school system with my kid (very active members of the PTA which help raise a couple of hundred thousand $ per year to subsidize programs in public school).</p>

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<p>I think there’s a big difference between New England elites (where it’s better to pretend one doesn’t care about money or such) and NYC, where consumption may be more obvious. Around here, the best indicator is having a family charitable foundation.</p>

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<p>I’m only half elite - if that. My Dad’s father came through Ellis Island, left school at 13, but managed to send three sons to Harvard. My mother comes from an old Boston family that had a habit of founding prep schools. My brothers went to one of them. I went to a different prep school in the DC area. If you’ve lived in DC you know why we didn’t go to public schools in the city and since my parents served in Africa during some of my high school years boarding made sense for those years. </p>

<p>We have some leftovers from the good old days. A cabin in Vermont and a tiny shack on Cape Cod both shared by multiple families. A ridiculously humongous dining room table with four or five leaves that belonged to my great-grandmother. An inheritance that will be just about enough to send two kids to college. My parents periodically ask are we sure if the local public school really is okay - they’d have been willing to help pay for prep school - I occasionally wonder, but then I go to Meet the Teacher Night and am bowled over by half my kids’ teachers -they seem so much better than the ones I had. A bit overworked because class sizes are larger, but smart and engaging.</p>

<p>My car would be older if the previous one hadn’t been totaled last year - it’s a 2002 Toyota Siena. Husband drives an older Corolla. I go to alumnae get-togethers in NYC and have classmates who live in gorgeous apartments on 5th Avenue. It’s a different world.</p>

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<p>I think they want to have this “circle” so their kids will marry from within.</p>

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<p>A friend once invited my family to spend part of our vacation at some private clubby summer family camp in Vermont–it’s rather difficult to define.</p>

<p>Well, there were tons of families there and everybody had been “summering” there for years and it was all very incestuous. I began my observations - people watching being one of my favorite activities. I noticed in a few youngsters wearing black tee shirts, dads sporting tattoos, mom with really tight pants and bad dye jobs. All this amidst the pink and green of preppiedom.</p>

<p>My host then explained his Third Generation Theory of Family Wealth: First generation works hard and hits it big. Second generation more than happy to reap the benefits. But along comes the third generation and some sibling will kindof fall by the wayside…</p>

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<p>haha actually i dont watch ANY television! i get my impressions all from this website… mainly the middle schoolers who talk about applying to the best boarding schools, or parents talking about the best summer programs, etc., so i take it there’s a different ‘breed’ of families out there, cuz those topics wouldn’t come up in a convo from where i live (middle-class suburb of LA). </p>

<p>very interesting read though, thanks for all your posts!</p>

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<p>The Third-Generation theory is pretty common, and I see examples over and over again in my life and practice. Not that there aren’t exceptions: Donald Graham (Washington Post Co., grandson of founder) seems to be doing OK. And there are second-generation busts, too. But one often sees the air go out of the balloon in the third generation.</p>

<p>Black t-shirts and tattoos, however, aren’t evidence of anything. There are lots of both around, even among the elites.</p>

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<p>I should have said black t-shirts with Metallica logos on them.</p>

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<p>I had a boyfriend who was the grandson of incredible Old Money – Vanderbilt, Whitney caliber. His father had been handed the presidency of the company that his grandfather founded, but he messed it up badly. His mother had gone to the appropriate boarding schools followed by a junior college. They had a big apartment on Sutton Place in NYC. They owned race horses, for Pete’s sake.</p>

<p>My boyfriend had two sisters – one had gone to Miss Porters for boarding school and then Radcliffe; she was the admissions director at a NYC private school. Married a psychoanalyst and was in the Social Register. (Yes, it really does exist.)</p>

<p>Summer house in Quebec, with a full staff. Manhattan apartment. We would go there for dinner and be served – I swear to God – caviar. Their three children wound up at Brown, Harvard, and Yale.</p>

<p>I don’t remember where the other sister went to school after Miss Porters but she was a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art – very la-di-da. She married a Harvard Law School grad and they lived very Upper East Side.</p>

<p>My boyfriend was one of the most messed up people I’ve ever known. Never graduated from his very liberal LAC. Smoked like a chimney. Drank to excess. Worked as a clerk in a bookstore, on the night shift. Our relationship ended after he hit me one night.</p>

<p>My mother always thought his parents would bribe me with millions to stay with him. Never happened!</p>

<p>It was absolutely fascinating, though.</p>