A sluggish traffic light at a Brooklyn street corner brought together three acquaintances who had plenty of time to catch up with each other. "My daughter is still in the public school system," said one woman (this is, after all, New York, and one can't take such things for granted, even in the outer boroughs). "My son is too, and it's going really well," said the one dad. And after an expectant pause, "We go to [insert name of highly selective, outrageously expensive private school here]," announced the other mother.
How's that again? This wasn't the plural we; the woman had arrived solo. Nor was it the royal we; no footmen were in sight. No, Ladies and Gents, say hello to the fused-identity we, in which fully grown adults openly appropriate the accomplishments of their wee ones, flash them like an Olympic medal for parenting and take much of their own measure from them.
Of course, parents have always been proud of their children's accomplishments, perhaps none more so than immigrant parents eager to see their kids thriving in their new land. But now children's achievements have become a marker of how their mothers and fathers are doing in the increasingly prominent job of parenting—and by extension how the whole family is doing. In a novel twist on the age-old status dynamic, parents now rely on their offspring's competitive performance in athletics and, especially, academics for their own inner sense of security and social approval.
As the engines of status shift into reverse—with kids fuel-injecting parental egos with every A they get—adults are creating a new kind of child labor that may be at least as unhealthy and onerous as the old. Kids no longer have to till fields from dawn to dusk or toil in sooty factories, but more and more they are handed the burden of power-lifting their parents' sense of self.
Consider that prospective parents no longer just buy a stroller or other basic baby gear. They invest emotionally in it. A spokesperson for a baby-products manufacturers association explained why some people buy and dispose of dozens of different strollers before settling on a wardrobe of, say, three models. "A stroller is part of the parents' image and a reflection of themselves—personal style, parenting style, their lifestyle."
In the same way, the schools that parents send their kids to have come to symbolize much more than education. "College entrance has become your final exam as a parent," says child psychologist David Anderegg of Lenox, Massachusetts.
No one knows this better than students at an ultra-selective Ivy League university, admission to which is sometimes considered prima facie evidence of successful child-raising. They call it "the H-bomb effect:" Dropping the bomb that one's kid goes to Harvard can deaden conversation among hypercompetitive parents. Anderegg sees proof of the accessorization of children in the way decals of prestigious colleges are placed on car windows—even before the kids go off to school. "It's a competitive display, and it's not about the kids. It's about the parents."
Childhood is being radically transformed right before our very eyes, contends Steven Mintz, professor of history at the University of Houston and author of Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood. As he sees it, children are now extensions of their parents' sense of self in a way that is new and unprecedented. "More than in the past, children are viewed as a project by perfectionist parents. Today's parents are imposing on their kids a violence of raised expectations. They are using their children for their own needs. We've decreased the threat of physical violence but increased the psychological violence."
The '70s Shift
It all started in the 1970s, when postwar optimism came to a crashing halt against stagflation and the oil crisis. The American economy shifted dramatically. "Parents translated that into a fear of not passing on their class status to their kids," says Mintz. Their solution: Give the kids whatever advantages possible and introduce into childhood the alien idea of specialization. "Nervousness about globalization made parents so concerned about competitiveness that they began believing they had to do everything in their power to not let their kids lose."
The economy of the 1970s also attuned people to social class—a radical shift from the '60s. "Even the food that people consumed became class-connected," says Mintz. "The type of lettuce you ate said something about your social status." Increasingly, class concerns devolved on the kids, and suddenly "the nice suburban school just wasn't good enough any more." Today 13 percent of white children attend private schools. Many more live in exclusive suburbs where public schools function like private ones.
Kids are driving the status engines for families to such an extent that just having them is becoming a status symbol, the human equivalent of a limited edition Hermes satchel. In a consumer culture where raising a child is a very costly enterprise, kids are the ultimate acquisition. One new mini-trend identifies the wealthy (with incomes of about $250,000) as having more children (2.3) than the middle class (1.8)—slightly more, even, than lower-class families. And the very wealthiest have the most children by far, averaging 2.9 kids.
Rapid technological change has also done its share to elevate the status of children. Technology has turned expertise upside down, so kids serve as the household gurus on new gadgetry. They're born into it, don't have to unlearn anything and are unafraid to explore technology. This shift alone accords children cachet in a technologically advanced culture.
