Hard Work Is Not Good

We live in a culture where success is increasingly defined by a paycheck and is seemingly as important to the parent as the child. Raising children to be “successful” is increasingly becoming an obsession for upper-middle-class-parents, who encourage certain activities and scores to provide their child with the best chances of attending elite schools. The article focuses on the inherent advantage upper-middle-class parents provide but fails to mention those who the parent’s action affects: their children.

The article “Are We Raising a Generation of Helpless Kids” by Mickey Goodman appears on the Huffington Post, an online news aggregator and blog. The author focuses on explaining that children who are allowed to make choices and decisions on their own should be a thing of the past. He also touches on the idea that children learning valuable life lessons in our generation are not getting things done. The article tells the reader that the parents of the children today should prepare their kids for failure in life, and show them how to actually succeed in life without handouts.

Another area many people tend to aim to be successful in is the concept of the American Dream. It is thought that if you live in America you need to fulfill the goal of achieving the American Dream and if it is not achieved or not meant to be achieved then the life lived has been a failure. Older generations and even present generations want the younger generations to get good grades, have a ‘successful’ college life, get a professional job, get married, have kids, and buy a big, just because that is normal to everyone but some may choose to live their life not as vanilla. William Zinsser talks about how everyone just follows the social norm in order to be seen as successful, “Our advertisements and TV commercials are a hymn to material success, our magazines articles a toast to people who made it to the top... He is our national idol, and everybody else is our national fink” (Zinsser 601). Becoming a specific type of successful is being pushed onto teenagers who are still struggling to find out who they are and what they want to do. They may want to figure out a different way to become successful in their own independent way.

Julie Lythcott-Haims explains to us all what a perfect child is; straight A student, fabulous test scores, gets homework done without parents asking them to do it… She has the right idea, the right mindset of a parent, every parent wants their child to succeed in life. The way that parents are parenting their children is messing them up. They don’t have a chance to become themselves, they are too focused on whether they did good on that test that they were stressing about for a week, they are too worried about getting the best grade to be able to get accepted into the biggest name colleges around. The parents become too consumed with hovering over their children making sure that they are doing flawlessly in school, the parents are directing their every single move they make. The children then began to think that their parents love comes from the good grades. Then they start making this checklist; Good grades, what they want to be when they grow up, get accepted into good colleges, great SAT scores, the right GPA, the jock of the sports team.

What makes the perfect parent? Countless magazines and websites strive to answer the question but often possess differing opinions on what techniques and parenting styles will foster the ideal child. In Chaim Potok’s novel, The Chosen, Reuven Malter and Danny Saunders grow up in polar opposite households. While both practice Judaism, their separate sects often highlight differences in their respective upbringings. Literature mimics real life and while reading, I found myself comparing the boys’ friendship to that of my closest friend and I. Despite the drastic divergence between time periods and settings, post-World War II New York and modern day Suburbia, Reuven and Danny mirror my best friend, Abby, and I. Though disputes can arise, contrasting

Parents have a significant amount of influence on how their children will act, behave and do certain things in today's world which base off of their skills. Not all parents will acquire impressive parenting skills and be able to raise their children properly in society. In a memoir called The Glass Castle, by author Jeannette Walls shares her life story and how it may be perceived as normal. In Jeannette’s life, she along with her siblings are raised by a father and a mother who raises their family in a way that society would view as unusual or problematic. Parents are the adults who have certain ways and skills on how their children are raised in which could be considered a problem, society, on the other hand, has certain views but isn’t necessarily the problem.

As a toddler develops into a child, he/she becomes aware of what is right and wrong. A child desires to find out what morals are and why their parents make the decisions that they do. Coles articulates that “… any parent who has listened closely to his/her child knows that the girls and boys are capable of wandering about matters of morality…” (2003, p.439). Coles suggests that if a parent is willing to pay close attention to what his/her child asks, a parent will realize that children are indeed able to and need to ask those challenging moral

These two styles of parenting are both ineffective in fostering the talent and passions of their children at early ages. One unable to maintain a stable, healthy relationship during early childhood years and the other being too overbearing over the child's decisions in life caused the children to both undergo an avoidable difficult childhood. The result of each mother’s parenting is the opposite of what the mother’s had hoped their parental

There are many different types of parents with diverse parenting styles in the world. Some are efficient in their ways, while others struggle to wonder why their child did not turn out to be everything they hoped. The controversial topic of whether the parent knows what is best for their child hangs over the reader’s head in Amy Chua’s article.

Bruni quotes the President of the National Center on Education, Marc Tucker, “ Our students have an inflated sense of their academic prowess.They don’t expect to spend much time studying, but they confidently expect good grades and marketable degrees”(par.25). From a young age we need to teach these children you succeed from hard work. Many parents have been exempting their children from test and are expecting them to learn? In order for kids to be able to learn what they need to, parents need to allow them to deal with the difficult times.

When most people (here in the US or anywhere else in the world) hear or talk about the United States, a common theme is living the “America Dream”. The “American Dream” is the idea that children will have a higher standard of living than their parents and in 1940, 92 percent of them did. But by 1980 that number decreased to 50 percent, in terms of absolute mobility. The term “successful” is a universal term and applies different for every single individual because everyone has different levels of success, some are higher then others and there can be some barriers in the way. There are many stories and evidence that have proven this theme but in the fine details there are many other things that come into play when it comes to becoming “successful”.

In the chapter “Dreaming Heroes” from Friday Night Light by H.G. Bissinger, and the chapter “Two Kinds” from The Joy luck Club by Amy Tan there are high parental expectations placed on children. Both Jon Billingsley from “Dreaming of Heroes” and Jing Mei from “Two Kinds” are affected by the high expectations their parents place on them. Sometimes when parents have high expectation, it causes children to either struggle and give up or use it to motivate them. In both novels the parents have high expectations for their children.

Money cannot buy happiness, but it can buy education. In this great country of ours, education is not a privilege it is a right. All children are given the opportunity to a free education. An education that should allow them to become high school graduates, 21st Century scholars, and prepare them as leaders to sustain this nation. What happens though when this is not the future for all children? The problem at hand is not all children are receiving the same educational opportunities. Not all children graduate from high school and not all lead successful careers as adults. Why is this the outcome for some and not others?

The over involvement of parents can make the child develop psychological issues. They are shown to have a higher risk of depression, anxiety, lack self-confidence, and have low self-esteem (“Helicopter Parents” Stir Up Anxiety, Depression). It is shown that no matter what parenting technique is being used, every parents goal is to build their child’s self-esteem (Rutherford). Sadly, helicopter parenting does the exact opposite. Equally important, the persons lack of self- confidence comes from the over involvement of their parents in his/her childhood activities and academics. They never experienced failure or loss because the parents were always there to step in, so they never achieved anything to build their confidence (“Helicopter Parents” Stir Up Anxiety, Depression). It is common for a child with helicopter parents to develop depression when moving from their home to

Is there a contradiction between our demand that our children be honest and moral persons and our demand that they be successful? Present the argument that there is a contradiction, and see if you can answer it.