Rocking the Cradle of Class
Kyle Crow
November 13, 2014
Intro to Psychology
Rocking the Cradle of Class
Q: Are parents putting too much pressure on their children for their own adult pride?
A: Yes, parents are putting too much pressure on their children for their own adult pride. Even from birth, you will see babies sitting in their $500 strollers, wearing baby Ugg boots. Because the child is too young to make decisions on its own, the parent makes decisions for them, opting for expensive things to make their child look better than the rest. Before the baby can even talk, the parents are putting pressure on them to look the best, have the most expensive stroller, start crawling, speaking, and walking first, and practically doing anything that would even somewhat put their child ahead of the rest. This pressure only continues as the child ages, with parents coaching their little four year olds on how to act so that they can be accepted into a prestigious preschool, forcing them to practice a sport for hours on end, until the child no longer finds joy in it, just so that they can make the elite travel team, and even sometimes doing their child’s homework for them so that they can be awarded straight A grades and be admitted into an expensive private school. It is not until the child is a junior or senior in high school that the pressure reaches an all-time high, when parents enroll their children in countless SAT courses, force them to join every club and extracurricular offered, and stay up all night studying so that they can be admitted into the best collages, the ultimate bragging right for a parent. It is almost as if the college their child attends decides their ranking among other parents, with parents of Ivy League students at the top and parents of community college students at the bottom. I have experienced this type of pressure first hand, not from my parents, but from my grandparents. They are somewhat rather important people in the community, living in an enormous mansion in
November 13, 2014
Intro to Psychology
Rocking the Cradle of Class
Q: Are parents putting too much pressure on their children for their own adult pride?
A: Yes, parents are putting too much pressure on their children for their own adult pride. Even from birth, you will see babies sitting in their $500 strollers, wearing baby Ugg boots. Because the child is too young to make decisions on its own, the parent makes decisions for them, opting for expensive things to make their child look better than the rest. Before the baby can even talk, the parents are putting pressure on them to look the best, have the most expensive stroller, start crawling, speaking, and walking first, and practically doing anything that would even somewhat put their child ahead of the rest. This pressure only continues as the child ages, with parents coaching their little four year olds on how to act so that they can be accepted into a prestigious preschool, forcing them to practice a sport for hours on end, until the child no longer finds joy in it, just so that they can make the elite travel team, and even sometimes doing their child’s homework for them so that they can be awarded straight A grades and be admitted into an expensive private school. It is not until the child is a junior or senior in high school that the pressure reaches an all-time high, when parents enroll their children in countless SAT courses, force them to join every club and extracurricular offered, and stay up all night studying so that they can be admitted into the best collages, the ultimate bragging right for a parent. It is almost as if the college their child attends decides their ranking among other parents, with parents of Ivy League students at the top and parents of community college students at the bottom. I have experienced this type of pressure first hand, not from my parents, but from my grandparents. They are somewhat rather important people in the community, living in an enormous mansion in