Yes, part of this definitely reminded me of my cousin in NYC. Her husband is some big shot at Goldman Sachs, and their toddlers are raised by a nanny and being pushed into elite schools (yes, as toddlers). Their attitude towards restaurants is basically the same, and her husband has a similar lack of time (he works all his waking hours on the weekdays... and then crashes on the weekend).
Oh, and the kicker: they shop for clothes for their kids exclusively on Amazon. How do they know the clothes will fit? They don't; they order the clothes in every single size Amazon has available. I don't know what they do with the stuff that's the wrong size.
In urban areas, where you can have a decent social network with a minimum amount of effort and everybody's trying to get rid of their kids' old baby stuff because they have no space in their home?
My toddler is set until he's 3, and we didn't pay a cent for clothes; he's in 100% hand-me-downs. Had so much that my wife started a "clothing library" to lend out the stuff he wouldn't need for another 1-2 years. We just gave a bunch of his newborn stuff to another couple that's having their second shortly; they gave him a bunch of their first's when she outgrew them.
AKA "Eating at restaurants every day and spending hundreds of dollars on new clothes every month while employing someone else full time to watch your kids gets expensive."
Spending $70/day on food is not normal middle class living. Go to the grocery store once in a while.
> The parents’ ultimate plan is to send both children to private grade school
With young kids though, a lot of the time it's down to the parents. I know most of my son's clothes are a result of his mum wanting to buy him things. Only a tiny proportion are things he wanted.
In Brooklyn there are plenty of kids who inherited money and working jobs that do not match their wealth/housing/lifestyle. So they are spending down whatever wealth they inherited for sure.
The typical picture I've seen is that the parents/trust buy them a condo all-cash, and then the underemployed then live a lifestyle that implies easily a $1M/year income except in a job that would imply a $0-$100k income. So unless they inherit like $25M+, they are spending it down quickly.
I've also seen the early stages of this from the other end with my colleagues, where parents in NYC who come from more modest backgrounds, end up making FAANG level salaries but then having kids that want to get a philosophy degree and work at an NGO (while enjoying having a place in Manhattan to live and traveling internationally 3x/year).
I guess theres a fine line between giving your kids space to grow & pushing too hard / trying to choose their path for them.. But being raised in comfort does seem to remove the striving mindset and understanding that this lifestyle doesn't come for free or from a fun job.
Reading this article both made me cringe and gave me hope. The cringe comes from the fact that the parents described here just don't seem to give their kids a break of unscheduled time, I understand the pressures to give your children a platform to successed, but I believe downtime is really critical to humans in multiple ways, I wonder how the children themselves feel about their relentless schedule.
Secondly, it gives me regarding the true cost of parenting, I don't have kids but the financial responsibility of children has really had a chilling effect in how I view Parenthood. I understand kids are expensive but it seems to me that these parents are willing putting their kids in expensive programs that ultimately may not be necessary. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of keeping up with the Joneses when it comes what programs upper class American children participate in.
Or they are exhausted from working all hours because the banks create credit from thin air to maximize rent extraction and lack the willpower to argue with their children every shopping trip.
I have kids, it's a constant battle even though we have no TV and I'm fortunate enough to have enough time to educate them. I'm constantly fighting with a whole room of people who are disgusting scumbags with access to millions of advertising spend.
>falling wages is a difficulty if you want to be a parent.
I would agree with that! I would also make the point that parents nowadays feel like they "need" to spend very lavishly on their children. Companies have gotten very good at convincing parents they "need" all this extra stuff for their kids and more space to store more stuff. I grew up in a family of 5 in 1,200 sq/ft apartment. Nowadays my friend (who also has a family of 5) is moving out of her 2,500 sq/ft house because her family "needs more space." Somehow my generation and my parent's generation grew up with a lot less and still made it to adulthood. You can't discount cultural influences.
(I also think the need to live in a "good" school district is very overrated and I was in a very, very bad school district my whole childhood.)
The mom and pop shop only works when you have family members putting in all their time to keep it afloat for no pay.
That's why the kids aren't interested in taking it over. It's not a route to generational wealth for anyone who has regular middle-class opportunities, as much as it's a route to being busy all the time, and having nothing to show for it at the end of the day.
Businesses that actually have real prospects frequently get taken over by the kids. The family shop/bakery/restaurant is rarely one that has them. You don't want to be doing all the work in a line of business where the prevailing pay is minimum wage.
I'm actually sympathetic to the argument being made -- that a given income may seem "rich" in one place, but actually not buy so much elsewhere. Living in NJ, I can see this every day.
But when you look into the details of the article, it's hard to buy it. The article says, for example, that it's "impossible" for the parents to clean and dress themselves. Bunk. If the rest of society can do it, why can't this family? Why do they spend so much money eating out, and spending $10/lunch every day at work?
So: ignore the article, but please still consider the fact that what might seem rich in one circumstance may not go as far elsewhere.
> I'd be more inclined to think that richer people spend more time and money on their kids
This article [0] says your generalisation is correct:
> Middle-class and higher-income parents see their children as projects in need of careful cultivation [...] Working-class parents, meanwhile, believe their children will naturally thrive, and give them far greater independence and time for free play.
> Clothes, food stuff, toys, childcare services, carseats, strollers, etc.
The real killers are health care (should your kid need more than the norm in the first couple months—and many do) and childcare. Plus the less-obvious, very high cost of having to live in a decent school district or else pay for private school. Those areas are pretty much always more expensive. No more cheap rent/mortgage for you :-(
Toys/clothes/accessories/food barely even register compared with those things. Thrift stores, craigslist. You can recover a lot of that money when you're done with the things by selling them, at a small time cost.
Non-poor American and European kids certainly have influence over how their parents spend money on them - almost all of them have discretion over which clothes and accessories are bought for them, if not how much money will be spent.
Saturday morning cartoons were invented to sell things to American kids (by way of them begging their parents).
> time tends to be one of the only things poor kids have as much of as rich kids
In a poor family, the kids are likely working a part-time job before going to school and then another part-time job (or two) after school. There's not much free time. They might also be the caretaker for younger siblings since their parents are also working three full time jobs so they never see them.
This reads very closely to just blaming parents for not being good enough, and not raising good enough children.
While I’m sure family culture is incredibly important, we shouldn’t forget that growing up in such a culture is an incredible privilege. One enabled by having moderately wealthy parents.
Being moderately wealthy doesn’t mean having large saving or a fancy house. It means being able to provide 3 meals a day and clothes for your children. It means having enough time after work to pick up your kids, and read them a bedtime story.
There are many people living in the western world who aren’t that wealthy. Who have children and work 3 jobs just to keep them fed. You may even be tempted to say that the parents are irresponsible for raising children without proper financial stability, but that doesn’t help the children they have. It just provides an excuse to ignore a real social problem.
Your experience mirrors mine to a large degree. I think most intelligent kids know their family's financial situation, and adjust accordingly. I didn't even ask for name brand clothing or toys because 1) I knew we couldn't afford them, and it would put stress on them, and 2) years of life in this environment made me not care about such frivolities. Kids aren't stupid, they learn proper spending behavior by what they see. I saw my parents buy bare necessities and working hard jobs. Naturally, I learned a hard work ethic and proper spending habits (barring a few years of excess in college when I started making actual money and felt it should be spent).
Right now we make good money (gotta love computing), and because of my habits the money fight is nonexistent in our family. If anything, I find myself constantly fighting to buy our kids less crap. I saw both kinds of kids growing up, and it's a really interesting thing to see how they are now as thirty-somethings. Many of the kids like me are in my boat now - even those who don't have education and professional jobs. Kids who got everything are now suffering in the current economy. It's a stark and obvious difference, at least where I'm originally from.
It's a nice life this way. I like getting a bunch of money for Christmas, and splurging on a tea mug and a set of digital calipers. Everything else is invested in the hope of early retirement. I hope my kids can see what I'm doing and do the same.
What you're describing is basically the top 1% of US households, which starts around $500k/yr income. Even in NY or SF, very very few people are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on childcare and private schooling.
I'd agree there is a status/social signalling element to it - I suspect if these households didn't have children, many of them would just spend their wealth on expensive cars, clothes, vacations, or other similar luxuries.
Oh, and the kicker: they shop for clothes for their kids exclusively on Amazon. How do they know the clothes will fit? They don't; they order the clothes in every single size Amazon has available. I don't know what they do with the stuff that's the wrong size.
reply