Clearly I'm in the minority here..

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	• The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of ... Madeline Levine HarperCollins, 2006 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 38 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

a practical and insightful book

One reason I was pleased with this book is that the author, psychologist Madeline Levine, doesn't blame money itself for the rising problems among privileged teens. She mentions wealthy families where the kids are raised to be decent, hard-working, responsible and mature. Rather than rail against the evil of money (which would've been annoyingly hypocritical, given that she, her husband and sons live in an affluent community), Dr. Levine makes an important distinction between money and the values that often go hand-in-hand with money (but don't have to).

One example is the attitude of materialism one sees in many privileged communities. Materialism isn't constrained to any one socioeconomic class; a person from a poor or middle class home may also value his possessions excessively, and place more importance on acquiring more "stuff" at the expense of spending quality time with family, forming friendships, and cultivating meaningful interests and positive character traits. The reason why materialism is often associated only with wealth, is that wealthy people have the means to indulge it more often and in more conspicuous ways. The point is, it's this mindset that Levine criticizes, not money per se. She knows wealthy kids who are well-adjusted, in part because their parents had them do chores around the house, encouraged them to volunteer and engage in community activities, did not cave in and buy them everything they wanted, and basically set firm boundaries and placed emphasis on the important values in life. In less healthy families, material goods are sadly seen as fulfilling all needs and solving all problems.

It's painful to read about parents who hold out bribes of expensive cars and clothes in the hopes that their kids will get the best grades, make the best sports teams, and get into the best colleges. As Levine points out, it's not only materialism that hurts these kids. It's also the intense pressure to be the best at everything and pull it off without any apparent effort. The emphasis on outward appearance, on superficial measures of success stifles many of the kids in these communities.

One example she gives is a boy who's unremarkable academically but very gifted at car repair and mechanics. For his parents it's a nightmare; they're ambitious, college-educated professionals and can't accept their son's enthusiasm and preference for what they see as lower class work. They criticize him relentlessly, and as one coping mechanism for feeling so under-valued and out of place in his family and community, he turns to drugs and starts acting out. Levine doesn't excuse the boy's behavior, but she can understand it; in addition to drug abuse treatment, part of her therapy involves the parents and getting them to see that their son is his own person and shouldn't be forced into the prototypical mold for a "successful" child.

Which brings me to another good point about the book. Levine really encourages parents to rethink their parenting styles and review their values and motives. For example, after reading this book a father might wonder why he's pushing his son so hard to play a sport - is it because he wants the boy to learn something and grow as a person? Or is it because he wants to live vicariously through his son and be the envy of the other competitive fathers in the community?

Levine is sympathetic to parents. She acknowledges that most parents want the best for their kids. She has particular compassion for the mothers in these affluent communities, who often lead lonely lives and, because of the need to appear perfectly happy and perfectly together, often don't have a close friend to confide in (in fact, one of the pitfalls is a socially isolated mother turning to her kids for the kind of emotional intimacy she isn't getting from her spouse and friends). She urges parents, particularly mothers, to address the troubled and painful issues in their own lives; essentially, a content and well-adjusted parent makes for a much better influence on a kid than one who is cold and remote, or clingy and needy, or just downright depressed.

Dr. Levine's book is thoughtful, straightforward and worth reading. Though all parents can benefit from her advice, the book is especially important for affluent parents who inspite of their good intentions might readily adopt the dominant values of their communities - the materialism, the pressure to look good and (at least outwardly) succeed, the emotional isolation, and the conformity to a certain kind of lifestyle. As Levine demonstrates again and again in her book, these values stunt and skew development.

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Clearly I'm in the minority here..

This is a very good book with many valuable insights and clinical observations. The problem I have with this book is the same problem I have with the psychological and psychiatric communities in general. Psychotherapists like Dr. Levine have effectively removed religion from their professional discourse and thus their diagnoses, both personal and scoial, are inevitably incomplete. In my opinion, there is a clear link between affluence and secularism/atheism and between secularism/atheism and depression. Statistically, impoverished, less affluent peoples are far more likely to attend religious services on a weekly basis and to hold the religious life in higher esteem. Perhaps it is this lack of a religious orientation that causes or helps to cause those issues which Dr. Levine does consider at length; depression, materialism, perfectionism, stress etc. Unfortuantely, in today's psychiatric climate the question of religion is off the table.

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Great Read!

This is a great mix of practical advice and myth-busting about what it means to raise "successful" children. I found the sections on "intrusive" parenting especially on the mark, as I see so many parents micro-managing their kids and rescuing them at every misstep along the way. And the book gives parents permission--and in fact encourages them--to buck the tide of "more" for their kids and recognize that less is, in fact, more.

afflictions of affluence

Madeline Levine knows the afflictions of affluence. Although she was raised in a blue collar setting and her family even lived on state assistance for a while, for thirty years she's lived in Marin County, California, just across the Golden Gate Bridge, where she's raised a family of five and practiced as a clinical psychologist. In addition to her personal experiences as a mother and a clinician, her book includes the findings of social-scientific studies, cultural analyses, and the insights of her colleagues to explore the "paradox of privilege." Why are there so many kids "whose problems seem out of proportion to their life circumstances?" Why do her adolescent patients have some of the highest rates of dysfunctional behaviors, including addictions, eating disorders, cutting, burning, depression, insomnia, boredom and anxiety? Why have adolescent suicides quadrupled since 1950?

Levine encourages us to take an "unflinching look at our parenting skills." There she finds two contributing factors: achievement pressure and maladaptive perfectionism that make kids feel like parental love depends upon performance. Kids also feel isolated from their parents, even those overweening parents who, out of their own neediness, are not simply involved in the lives of their kids but downright intrusive. Levine teases out the distinctions between support and micro-management, wholesome encouragement and overbearing pressure. She also spends considerable time deconstructing the more toxic elements of affluent cultures, encouraging parents to resist the status quo of overwrought competition, perfectionism, and materialism.

All parents have limited abilities, skills, and opportunities, not to mention their own family of origin baggage. Children are all different and unpredictable, so there is no one-size-fits-all set of techniques that guarantees success. Levine is empathetic and realistic; she never makes you feel like parenting requires sainthood. I especially appreciated the several times she shared her own family failures and successes. She repeatedly returns to the special influence of mothers on their children, along with the their unique challenges (including her entire last chapter). I'm sure that many of the problems she describes exist not merely in affluent communities but most everywhere. The wisdom she offers in this book will help any parent, no matter where they live.

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