How to Make a Moneymaker

What does it take to breed a child who is financially aggressive and values monetary success? For starters, it helps if you value financial success yourself. After all, kids identify with their parents. Child-rearing styles also play into it, finds psychologist Tim Kasser, Ph.D. The less warm, involved, and democratic parents are, the more they attune a child to financial success.

Socioeconomic circumstances count, too, Kasser and colleagues report in Developmental Psychology (Vol. 31, No. 6). People who live in disadvantaged communities marked by low income and high crime tend to have offspring who emphasize money in their value systems.

What all three factors have in common, says Kasser, a professor at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, is that they orient young people toward rewards extrinsic to themselves. "When mothers are cold and controlling, their children focus on attaining security and a sense of self-worth through external sources, such as financial success."

Kasser, who looked at 140 18-year-olds and their mothers, confirmed what many intuitively know--the more people are materialistic, the less they value self-direction, sociability, and relationships with others. It's not, he says, that earning money is bad. "It's wanting money more than wanting other things."

Tags: 18 year olds, child rearing, earning money, external sources, financial success, galesburg illinois, high crime, knox college, money, offspring, relationships with others, rewards, self direction, self worth, socioeconomic circumstances, starters, tim kasser

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