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."
