If you are highly educated, with a BA and a graduate degree from elite schools, how do you feel if your children don’t accomplish the same educational results? For example, of a few people I know:
One guy has a JD from Vanderbilt and has had a good career as a lawyer. Of his two children, one went to an undergraduate school ranked below 100 in US News and didn't finish. The other went to a college ranked about 75 and a law school ranked about 100. The lawyer child had bar problems and currently cannot practice.
One guy has a JD from Yale. His two children currently go to undergraduate schools ranked below 100 in US News.
One guy has a JD from Cornell. His wife has an MBA from Columbia. Of his two children, one attended college for a year and dropped out. The other went to a school ranked about 100 for college.
If you’re like the guys with JDs from Vanderbilt and Yale or the couple with degrees from Cornell and Columbia, are you happy that your children are doing their best? Or disappointed that they didn’t do as well as you did? Or do you not care?
@PizzaMom, you will respond, “People who don’t go to college, or don’t go somewhere elite, can be successful, and you don’t have to work on Wall Street to be successful.” Those points have nothing to do with my question.
Is there something wrong with a top 100 school? Out of thousands of colleges ? And how many kids go to law school, even if its “only” in the top 100? Maybe a lesson in “regression to the mean” is in order.
These parents could be too rich, and their kids know it. Or, whatever the kids are doing, it is unlikely they will be more “successful” in this endeavor, so why bother?
A friend of mine told me that Bill Gate hesitated to give his wealth to his own kids because he has some concerns of robing their kids’ joy of achieving something by themselves. (I do not know whether what he said is true though.)
The father of DS’s suitemates is a law professor at his school (and his family has been very rich for several generations.) This suitemate said he had a lof of “pressure” because of this (It does not help that his own sister who is several years older than him also attended the same law school.) It seems he is willing to put in the efforts, but the pressure serms to be too much for him to tolerate. (last time I heard of him, he was working for some good company in NYC. But it seems he still does not think he has been “successful” as compared to his father and his sister.)
OK, one other perspective. What if , like Bart Tichelman, you were COO and CEO of several companies, and your daughter was a prostitute, drug addict and murdered 2 people?
Really, I don’t see the point of this thread. I have friends who both attended an ivy for undergrad and are physicians (attended a top med school). One of their kids completed college but works in a factory in an hourly job. The other didnt make it in school works in a video store. Of course they would have wanted them to have had a different journey but the mom said, in retrospect, perhaps they should have encouraged the child that attended a 4 yr college to have attended a trade school instead, and learned more useful life skills. Their kids aren’t little “mini- me’s”. Yes, mom has occasionally verbalized sadness that they will always be supporting their kids at some level, but she love her kids , and will do what she can to help them. She doesn’t verbalize disappointment of a sense of personal failure. She is playing the cards she is dealt. I applaud her.
My measure of my own success is that I will not become my child’s burden (at least when I can still “move freely.”)
Of course, I wish I do not have to support him when he is in his, say, 30s. (just like GMTplus7.) I also wish someday he will establish his own family – we do not want him to be alone in this world when we are gone.
The issue is whether the children are endowed with the similar level of talent (natural ability) as the parent, and also whether they have the same level of ambition (as expressed through a work ethic).
The answer to those questions should guide a parent’s posture towards his child’s choices.
What if they had a disability? Would a parent still offer support? No guarantee anyone’s offspring has a similar level of talent or natural ability, or even if they do, that there aren’t other issues to deal with.
@jym626, my post #2 was to help avoid this turning into another thread hijacked by diatribes against people who have earned various markers of success.
Understood, but trying to direct your own thread may backfire. And IMO, the very premise smacks of , well sort of entitlement and looking down at ones kids. Maybe these parents should look in the mirror.
I’ll bite. I’m very happy with my child’s choice (I just looked. According to USNWR, it’s around #100). It is about loving the kid on the couch and not making her into something she’s not.
Don’t get me wrong. This was a process. A multi-year process. But this unfolded over four years of high school, not in one college application season. When she was in ninth grade, I was expecting a “mini-me”. By sophomore year, it was obvious she wasn’t heading for the top ten schools.
I found CC and discovered many unknown (to me), non-prestigious but well-respected colleges. Then, D and I went to the Colleges That Change Lives road show. It was a nice eye opener - for me.
So, D happily dropped the pursuit for prestige in the name of fit. D has had a very smooth senior year with a stress free college application season. She learned a lot about herself and has made a great choice. Having a happy, unstressed senior knowing she iis going to college by Thanksgiving is way better than an anxious, insecure, overworked senior awaiting October test scores hoping they are “good enough”.
Most of my colleagues have advanced degrees When we socialize and discuss our children, we don’t keep score on whose kid went to what school and attained which degree.
My husband has two sons from his first marriage, both now well into their 30s. While they finished college and hold jobs, I do know that both parents (their mom and my husband have law degrees from a Latin American country as well as SJDs from top US universities) are somewhat disappointed in them. Both sons still need financial support - they are teachers - and while theirs is a noble profession, I think it hurts the parents that the sons haven’t really tried “their best.”
I am not sure if it has to do with being immigrants and giving the children a better place to grow up or that neither has used their abilities to get into careers that pay at least the bills. The sons are typical late Gen X/early Gen Yers who put happiness and comfort over financial stability and externalize the cost to the parents.
Of course, I can only speak for my husband who avoids the topic but this puts a lot of stress on our now 16-year-old daughter who is expected to get into a top 50 college and have a “career.” It’s not really openly laid out but there is a passive-aggressive expectation out there that she has to accomplish what her half-brothers have not. Hopefully, she goes her own way and makes it somehow.
And while I resent sending monthly checks to adults who are only 12, 15 younger than I am, I can see that they choose happiness and comfort over finances. But then, again, I only went to college in my 30s and don’t think anything is wrong with community colleges or large state universities.
It’s not an easy topic and probably has different connotations for immigrants than for long-established American families. I don’t think it has to do with “elite” but definitely with wanting a good outcome for one’s offspring.