Upper-middle-class parents these days feel that the stakes are really high. They hear about the collapse of the middle class and the bifurcation of the economy, and they imagine that there is a narrow path their children can follow to avoid the worst outcomes.
That is, you need not be greedy or have absurdly high ambitions for your children to worry ceaselessly about their academic success. Plenty of parents worry that if their child doesn’t get into Princeton or Stanford, they will end up unmarried, unemployed, and trained only in a job that will soon be done by robots.
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For about 20 years, researchers have found that among teenagers, anxiety and drug abuse are more likely among the children of wealthy parents. “Affluenza” was the cute term invented to describe (or mock) the stresses of growing up rich.
But it wasn’t the wealth that caused the stress, of course. Researchers Suniya Luthar and Nina Kumar figured out that rich children didn’t fall victim to “affluenza” unless they went to striver high schools. That is, it’s the upper-middle-class ambition that drives children to anxiety and drugs. As writer Leonard Sax summarized the findings recently, some schools “intentionally or not, typically foster a competitive environment in which kids are constantly comparing themselves with one another. Who won the award? Who was accepted at which university? …. When a child or teen’s sense of self-worth depends on the magnificence of their accomplishments, that kid becomes fragile.”
Striverism is also surely driving down birth rates. If you feel you owe it to your child to provide special tutoring, elite travel sports, French horn lessons, and either elite private school tuition or a home in the best public school districts, you are far more likely to stop after one or two children.
So, if you are worried about the hyper-strung-out millennials and Gen Zers who are losing their minds on social media, it could be that a “safety” school is also the “healthiest” school for your child.
