Liz CA Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 Do you think it matters if parents were highly successful - academically, financially, in any other way - in regards to their children's choices of profession? Do children of highly successful people feel the pressure to accomplish something equally amazing or even supersede their parents' achievements? Do children of highly successful people have less freedom to choose their own path? For example if your father is a physicist, would he be happy if his child was working in a blue collar job? Please share all your observations, experiences and / or opinions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
regentrude Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 First, please define "highly successful". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liz CA Posted October 22, 2014 Author Share Posted October 22, 2014 Well, if you have a PhD, you would be considered academically (as well as perhaps financially - depending on field) highly successful. If you own a multi-billion dollar company, you would probably be considered highly successful; if you were a respected, prolific author, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justamouse Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 Warren Buffet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liber Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 My inlaws didn't really allow my husband to choose. Inlaws have PhDs in physics, chemistry and one of them became a medical doctor after they did a PhD. They more or less chose what he would study and where. He has also felt that he could never measure up. Feels he has to be "successful" as they define it. They were not happy when my oldest decided not to go to university and decided instead to be an electrician until he decided what he would like to do in university. His dad and pushed him towards the trades as university degrees are a dime a dozen. My inlaws feel like my oldest is not living up to his potential by doing a trade. My second oldest wants to do commercial diving and then join the forces. They are not upset with him as much because 1. He is not their favourite and 2. Because of his learning disabilities I don't think they saw him as bright enough to do university. They fully expect my third son to go to university and probably my daughter. The other children are too young at this point for them to have an opinion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bootsie Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 This is an interesting question I have been thinking about recently--especially with regards to females. I thought DD's (she is 18) generation would feel empowered to choose many different vocations as they saw their mothers break through many career barriers. However, it seems that a number of her female friends have had significant emotional struggles going into young adulthood, particular the females with highly successful mothers. The males who have successful fathers for the most part seem emotionally to be "part of the club" their fathers are in. With the young women I have seen, it does not seem to be that mom was off doing her own thing and too busy to build a relationship with her daughter. I don't know if it is a "how can I top that?" issue (Mom was one of the first women to ...) or if there is something else at play. It may also be the small circle of people I have run into contact with recently. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TechWife Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 Do you think it matters if parents were highly successful - academically, financially, in any other way - in regards to their children's choices of profession? Do children of highly successful people feel the pressure to accomplish something equally amazing or even supersede their parents' achievements? Do children of highly successful people have less freedom to choose their own path? For example if your father is a physicist, would he be happy if his child was working in a blue collar job? Please share all your observations, experiences and / or opinions. 1) Matters in what way? Kids of all have different opportunities and are therefore exposed to different things, experiences and ideas than are kids who have parents in law enforcement, or as an electrician, a lawyer, teacher, sales clerk, unemployed, etc.. These experiences all contribute to choices of profession, lifestyle, etc.. There are many other variables that determine a career course. I do think it is more likely that kids who have a base knowledge of personal finance to be financially successful - you can make better financial decisions if you know how the system works. 2) Some feel the pressure, some don't. Some don't even realize their parents are successful by other's standards. 3) No, they have as much freedom. If their relationship with their parents seems not to allow that freedom, it is a relationship issue, not a freedom issue. My father would be happy whatever I decided to do. Likewise my husband sees value in jobs of all kinds and wouldn't restrict my son's choices. We do try to guide him to jobs that will help him make a decent living. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
regentrude Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 Well, if you have a PhD, you would be considered academically (as well as perhaps financially - depending on field) highly successful. If you own a multi-billion dollar company, you would probably be considered highly successful; if you were a respected, prolific author, etc. I can't speak to high financial success, but PhDs... well, we got those. I do not think that puts any pressure on the kids to surpass our "achievement". They will follow their own path and develop in their own area. I have actually observed that people who are the first generation to achieve something make a much bigger deal out of it than those where this achievement is the norm in the family. Just to illustrate, for example, a friend who want to be addressed as "doctor" by her kids' friends and is miffed when they don't is the first in her family to earn a doctorate and it's a huge deal to her. OTOH, DH and I cringe when our kids' friends address us as Dr. (some do, because they know us from school, and it is terribly hard for them not to) - because it really is not such a big deal when 95% of your circle of friends have achieved the same and your parents are professors. You see it as a quite attainable and simply a step in the educational progression. (Plus, you've seen enough morons earn PhDs to know that it's not that special.) I think families with higher achievement take more for granted - for our kids and our colleague's kids, for example, going to college is just a default. It's not even a question that this is what they will do, period. But that does not mean any pressure to surpass parental achievement. It would be very hard to define anyway, because achievements do not compare. What would topping our "achievment" even mean? Becoming a professor at a better university? Publishing more papers in more prestigious journals? This makes no sense, and is not somehting I have ever observed. FWIW, my DS wants to be a professional martial artist and run his own studio :-) As long as he gets a degree first that he can use to fall back on when the studio flops, that's totally fine. Not becasue I need him to get a particular degree to satisfy my ego, but because it will make his life a lot easier in the long run if he has a degree that can pay the bills. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bootsie Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 because it really is not such a big deal when 95% of your circle of friends have achieved the same and your parents are professors. You see it as a quite attainable and simply a step in the educational progression. (Plus, you've seen enough morons earn PhDs to know that it's not that special.) DH and I are both professors. For years, DD complained that she had such "ordinary" parents--why couldn't we be skydivers or tightrope walkers--after all "everyone" is a professor. She thought being a professor was BORING, despite the fact that it has allowed her to travel internationally with us (and other professors) and have a lot of other interesting experiences. She said that she would NEVER be a professor. Now, first year in college--guess what, she says she wants to become a professor. She did go talk to one of her favorite professors this semester and found out that her parents were also PhD/profesors. But, this woman got to grow up on a boat in the Carribean while her parents did research--now our family is back to being boring professors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jar7709 Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Agreeing with Regentrude. I come from a long line of doctors and diplomats and entrepreneurs and such, a great uncle back there won a Novel prize... but I also come from farmers and orphans. A very close relative is on her way to becoming a tv star in a foreign country. I am positively pedestrian and boring by some of their standards. And that's ok. My family is fully aware of whims of fate and pretty much just has an expectation that you will do *something* and if you don't lead a flashy life, there's plenty of value in that. I have degrees and skills and can support my family comfortably but not lavishly, and I have earned enough means to choose my own life for myself. That's both a gift and luck and we don't lose sight of that, and it's enough. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DawnM Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 1. Sure. If you had highly academically successful parents, that typically would indicate that education is highly valued and will be expected of the children. My father is a surgeon. My mother had a college degree. My grandfather was a graduate school professor. My grandmother was a nurse. It was absolutely expected that I go to college. It was NOT expected that I had to become a doctor or get a PhD however. 2. No, not necessarily. I know for a fact I would not have gone beyond my father's level of education. I was NOT medically inclined at all, my 10th grade Chemistry class squelched any hope of entering any field of medicine! :lol: 3. I don't know about others, but I was encouraged to find my own path, but it was strongly suggested that I finish college before finding it! :laugh: I have two MAs, my husband has one. We want our kids to go to college, but we do NOT care what field they ultimately go in to. I have one who may go in to ministry. That is absolutely fine. It won't be lucrative, but money to us is a means to an end, not the end itself. We would be far happier knowing they have pursued their own dreams. Do you think it matters if parents were highly successful - academically, financially, in any other way - in regards to their children's choices of profession? Do children of highly successful people feel the pressure to accomplish something equally amazing or even supersede their parents' achievements? Do children of highly successful people have less freedom to choose their own path? For example if your father is a physicist, would he be happy if his child was working in a blue collar job? Please share all your observations, experiences and / or opinions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StephanieZ Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Do you think it matters if parents were highly successful - academically, financially, in any other way - in regards to their children's choices of profession? Absolutely. Do children of highly successful people feel the pressure to accomplish something equally amazing or even supersede their parents' achievements? To a large extent, some do, some don't. Depends greatly on the other elements of the child's life and the child's own personality. I generally think that our upbringing establishes our "baseline" expectations for our own achievements, so being raised in a high achieving home raises the bar for the kids. Whether the individual kid ends up just under, at, or above that bar depends on the kid and the way they were raised and fate/etc. But, the level of the bar is largely set by their parents, so yes, high achieving parents raise kids for whom the bar is set higher. Do children of highly successful people have less freedom to choose their own path? For example if your father is a physicist, would he be happy if his child was working in a blue collar job? Of course, they have freedom. Whether the parent is happy with their child's chosen path is very variable. I think most parents want and expect their kids to achieve to their "potential." High achieving parents are likely high IQ, able to provide lots of opportunities and support for their kids to achieve, and thus would likely generally expect their kids to take good advantage of these opportunities. Please share all your observations, experiences and / or opinions. I think all good parents want their kids to be happy and do good in the world and have a good life. Most parents want their kids to do BETTER than they have themselves, and most of us work to make it feasible for our kids to do just that. If parents themselves are "high achievers", then they likely value education, achievement, money, whatever measure of achievement you are using. Since the parents value these things, and since the parents presumably offer good support to their kids to reach these same (or higher), then it is reasonable to think that we'd be disappointed if our kids didn't achieve in the areas we value. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liz CA Posted October 23, 2014 Author Share Posted October 23, 2014 I can't speak to high financial success, but PhDs... well, we got those. I do not think that puts any pressure on the kids to surpass our "achievement". They will follow their own path and develop in their own area. I have actually observed that people who are the first generation to achieve something make a much bigger deal out of it than those where this achievement is the norm in the family. Just to illustrate, for example, a friend who want to be addressed as "doctor" by her kids' friends and is miffed when they don't is the first in her family to earn a doctorate and it's a huge deal to her. OTOH, DH and I cringe when our kids' friends address us as Dr. (some do, because they know us from school, and it is terribly hard for them not to) - because it really is not such a big deal when 95% of your circle of friends have achieved the same and your parents are professors. You see it as a quite attainable and simply a step in the educational progression. (Plus, you've seen enough morons earn PhDs to know that it's not that special.) I think families with higher achievement take more for granted - for our kids and our colleague's kids, for example, going to college is just a default. It's not even a question that this is what they will do, period. But that does not mean any pressure to surpass parental achievement. It would be very hard to define anyway, because achievements do not compare. What would topping our "achievment" even mean? Becoming a professor at a better university? Publishing more papers in more prestigious journals? This makes no sense, and is not somehting I have ever observed. FWIW, my DS wants to be a professional martial artist and run his own studio :-) As long as he gets a degree first that he can use to fall back on when the studio flops, that's totally fine. Not becasue I need him to get a particular degree to satisfy my ego, but because it will make his life a lot easier in the long run if he has a degree that can pay the bills. This is exactly what I was thinking (bolded). A degree is something to fall back on; at least a place to re-start if something else is not working out. And the part about the PhD made me laugh - some people in our area say it stands for "Piled higher and deeper." :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justamouse Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 I am so enthralled with who my kids are,and who they are becoming, what their talents are and what they are choosing to pursue, I really don't even think about it. What I WOULD be upset with? If they had a work ethic that was below our standard. If they were slovenly. If they were whiners and entitled. I say it all the time, "You're a _(insert familial name here)_, and we work hard." What they work hard at? is up to them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liz CA Posted October 23, 2014 Author Share Posted October 23, 2014 DH and I are both professors. For years, DD complained that she had such "ordinary" parents--why couldn't we be skydivers or tightrope walkers--after all "everyone" is a professor. She thought being a professor was BORING, despite the fact that it has allowed her to travel internationally with us (and other professors) and have a lot of other interesting experiences. She said that she would NEVER be a professor. Now, first year in college--guess what, she says she wants to become a professor. She did go talk to one of her favorite professors this semester and found out that her parents were also PhD/profesors. But, this woman got to grow up on a boat in the Carribean while her parents did research--now our family is back to being boring professors. Well, I think your dd has a point..can't you go to the outback, the deepest jungle or sail across the Atlantic or Pacific and do some research as well? There has to be something in your field that is in need of discovering. :lol: This lifestyle (on or near water) sounds a- okay to me! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katy Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 I've had probably a couple dozen friends or ex boyfriends who were the kids of highly successful people by your definition - trust fund sorts of kids. IME they were all less interested in being highly successful than a child of a more typical family. They didn't feel like they had anything to prove. Probably a third of them were extremely jaded before college. They had more access to educational resources and travel than was typical, all seemed very intelligent. Those whose parents were also highly involved and loving seemed to be very well balanced individuals who are more or less very happy adults, but who are VERY FAR from what you'd consider as successful as their parents. Happy, but just realize that achievements might come at a life opportunity cost that they're not motivated to pay. A couple of them now work in retail. Another spent a long stint after college as a nanny. Several others are stay at home moms. They do things they feel are meaningful and they're happy. Most still have trust funds and don't need to work at all. Those whose parents treated them like burdens and gave them high allowances to leave them alone I'd say the kids are split about 50/50 between either non functioning (due to drug addictions or mental illness), or very high functioning but possibly sociopaths with little compassion or regard for others, and extremely cynical and jaded worldviews. Basically, everyone is horrible so I might as well make as much money as I can and experience as much pleasure as possible, even if others regard me as highly unethical. One of the latter had some sort of spiritual epiphany while on drugs at a meditation retreat in India, left investment banking, and now works part time as an instructor at a top-5 MBA program and part time on this sort of quasi new age business venture. He'll never make as much money as he will inherit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
umsami Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 Among the wealthy kids I grew up with, it seems almost standard that one of the kids will not do well. S/he will have trouble with drugs, alcohol, etc…and will never quite make it. Usually, the other kids do well. (Note, I'm talking upper middle class, parents can afford to send kids to college with no debt. Among the million dollar trust fund kids I went to school with, three were dead by 25 of O.D.s) I don't think you can put entirely the blame on the parents, because the same parenting turns out other successful kids. I've also noticed different things culturally. For some of my Arab and Desi friends, it's completely normal and expected that the parents will support them 100% until they are married. College, cars, spending money, etc. You name it. They rarely have jobs during school unless it's career-related (working in the ER to put on one's med school application, for example.) Careers are often dictated/approved by parents. I don't know if it's parental pressure/cultural pressure or what, but among those friends, I rarely see the one sibling who ends up in addiction phenomenon. That tends to be with my caucasian friends. As for expectations, yes, usually college and graduate degrees are expected if the parents have them. I have seen exceptions for the arts, but it's rare. Although in today's economy, perhaps more parents would be accepting of a plumber offspring, as I think the reason for college is financial stability for many. If one's child can achieve that without the college expense, why not? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shage Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 It takes me back that earning a PhD is one definition of "highly successful." Believe it or not, a PhD for some people is not what defines who they are, nor shapes their relationship with their children. It is and was an academic achievement from a certain time in their life that may or may not get used professionally. Fame, OTOH, I think is trickier to navigate. I have some friends from high school who are now well known and are doing a fabulous job parenting. It requires a huge effort and constant boundary setting on their part to keep it real. I don't envy them and am happy to report I don't think they envy me either. LOL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flyingiguana Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 Parents who have been successful academically understand the system. They're able to pass this knowledge on to their kids, if the kids are interested. I do see that there are now a number of programs taking kids from families with no college graduates and teaching them this stuff that college graduate families just know. So someone must have figured out that's one of the keys to getting first generation kids through college. As far as non-academic areas go -- politics and acting and such -- the parents have contacts. So the children will generally have an easier time breaking in to things. It's no longer luck by the time the second generation comes around. It may be that the kids still have to have talent (maybe). Although in acting, I sometimes wonder how much is talent and how much is just redoing the take enough times that it eventually kind of works. My dad wanted to get into animation when he was in his 20's. So he moved to LA to be near the action, but there was no way he could get a job in the field. There were too many people filling the jobs who had "contacts". Now my cousin is trying to break in to acting. I suspect she'll never get anything more than 3rd soccer player who gets to say "yeah" in the background. (Hopefully she's having fun, at least) I kind of joke that one had to go to my high school to make anything of themselves in the acting world in LA. But when I investigate all those people who went off and became famous from my high school, I discover that most of them already had a parent in the field somewhere. They had contacts. The parent may not have been really famous, but they'd already gotten in the door. The reason there was such a concentration of these people at my high school was because we lived in an area where a lot of show biz people lived -- not really super RICH show biz people, but people who were kind of in the business. So their kids went to my high school. And a few of those kids made it big, after getting in the door through parental contacts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flyingiguana Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 BTW -- I know a number of PhDs who would not be considered successes in their fields. There are a lot more PhDs trained than there are available jobs. This has to do with universities teaching most of their classes with pre-PhD labor: cheap TAs. They aren't necessarily training for the jobs that are out there that require PhDs, but only hiring in the here and now the cheap teachers they need. And, since there are a glut of PhDs because of this practice, even colleges without grad programs are now benefiting from this labor pool by hiring cheap adjuncts. Meanwhile, administrator pay packages keep going up -- while the same administrators continue to whine that the colleges aren't making money. (Something has gone seriously wrong with higher education in our country...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redsquirrel Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 Lol, I am just reading this thread for the first time. I grew up with an MD parent and all the adults we associated with were medical doctors, PhDs, or lawyers etc. I don't think of that as 'highly successful'. I think of that as normal. It is the same now. We live in a big college town and all our friends are PhDs or high achieving scientists etc. Their lives seem pretty typical middle class to me. Well, sometimes someone goes on a fantabulous trip for sabbatical.... And I know PLENTY of barely scraping by PhDs and lawyers. In this town, the joke is that PhD stands for "Pass Hot Dishes" because your barrista might have a PhD in particle physics. My best friend in town is ABD in comparative French lit from a major university. She is a nursery school teacher. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liz CA Posted October 25, 2014 Author Share Posted October 25, 2014 It takes me back that earning a PhD is one definition of "highly successful." Believe it or not, a PhD for some people is not what defines who they are, nor shapes their relationship with their children. It is and was an academic achievement from a certain time in their life that may or may not get used professionally. Fame, OTOH, I think is trickier to navigate. I have some friends from high school who are now well known and are doing a fabulous job parenting. It requires a huge effort and constant boundary setting on their part to keep it real. I don't envy them and am happy to report I don't think they envy me either. LOL. This was a issue brought up among counselors and several shared observations. Having one or two parents who have achieved the highest, formal academic degree was just one example. Neither I nor my colleagues were trying to indicate that the definition of success is inherent in academic achievements. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liz CA Posted October 25, 2014 Author Share Posted October 25, 2014 Lol, I am just reading this thread for the first time. I grew up with an MD parent and all the adults we associated with were medical doctors, PhDs, or lawyers etc. I don't think of that as 'highly successful'. I think of that as normal. It is the same now. We live in a big college town and all our friends are PhDs or high achieving scientists etc. Their lives seem pretty typical middle class to me. Well, sometimes someone goes on a fantabulous trip for sabbatical.... And I know PLENTY of barely scraping by PhDs and lawyers. In this town, the joke is that PhD stands for "Pass Hot Dishes" because your barrista might have a PhD in particle physics. My best friend in town is ABD in comparative French lit from a major university. She is a nursery school teacher. This is pretty much what Regentrude pointed out. I explained in a previous post from where these questions originated. I cannot say much more because of confidentiality issues. One of my coworkers had observed that children of "highly successful" parents sometimes have a harder time because they either seem to feel they have to live up to their parents' standard of living (in terms of financial wealth) or they will be viewed as having squandered their gifts and opportunities if they choose a profession of lesser prestige / financial compensation / public respect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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