The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids

by Madeline, PhD Levine PhD

Overview

In recent years, numerous studies have shown that bright, charming, seemingly confident and socially skilled teenagers from affluent, loving families are experiencing epidemic rates of depression, substance abuse, and anxiety disorders—rates higher than in any other socioeconomic group of American adolescents. Materialism, pressure to achieve, perfectionism, and disconnection are combining to create a perfect storm that is devastating children of privilege and their parents alike.

In this eye-opening, provocative, and essential book, clinical psychologist Madeline Levine explodes one child-rearing myth after another. With empathy and candor, she identifies toxic cultural influences and well-intentioned, but misguided, parenting practices that are detrimental to a child's healthy self-development. Her thoughtful, practical advice provides solutions that will enable parents to help their emotionally troubled "star" child cultivate an authentic sense of self.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060595852
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	07/29/2008
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	73,731
Product dimensions:	5.26(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.61(d)

About the Author

Madeline Levine, PhD, is a clinician, consultant, and educator; the author of the New York Times bestseller The Price of Privilege; and a cofounder of Challenge Success, a project of the Stanford School of Education that addresses education reform, student well-being,and parent education. She lives outside San Francisco with her husband and is the proud mother of three newly minted adult sons.

Read an Excerpt

The Price of Privilege

How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids

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By Madeline Levine

HarperCollins Publishers

Copyright © 2007 Madeline Levine
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780060595852

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Chapter One

The Paradox of Privilege

It was 6:15 P.M. Friday when I closed the door behind my last unhappy teenage patient of the week. I slumped into my well-worn chair feeling depleted and surprisingly close to tears. The fifteen-year-old girl who had just left my office was bright, personable, highly pressured by her adoring, but frequently preoccupied, affluent parents, and very angry. She had used a razor to incise the word empty on her left forearm, showing it to me when I commented on her typical cutter disguise -- a long-sleeve T-shirt pulled halfway over her hand, with an opening torn in the cuff for her thumb. Such T-shirts are almost always worn to camouflage an array of self-mutilating behaviors: cutting with sharp instruments, piercing with safety pins, or burning with matches. I tried to imagine how intensely unhappy my young patient must have felt to cut her distress into her flesh.

As a psychologist who has been treating unhappy teens for over twenty-five years, I wondered why this particular child left me feeling so ragged. I live and work in an upper-middle-classsuburban community with concerned, educated, and involved parents who have exceedingly high expectations for their children. In spite of parental concern and economic advantage, many of my adolescent patients suffer from readily apparent emotional disorders: addictions, anxiety disorders, depression, eating disorders, and assorted self-destructive behaviors. Others are perplexingly and persistently unhappy in ways that are more difficult to quantify easily. The fact that many of these teens are highly proficient in some areas of their lives helps mask significant impairments in others -- the straight-A student who feels too socially awkward to attend a single school dance, the captain of the basketball team who is abusive toward his mother, the svelte homecoming queen who consistently sees a "fat ugly duckling" in the mirror. While I love my work, it is also quite demanding and I usually greet the end of the day on Friday with a mixture of relief and anticipation, not sadness. Sinking further into my chair, I flipped through my appointment book, searching for clues to my emotional weariness.

I was not surprised by the seriousness of many of my cases. After two decades of treating unhappy kids, and the publication of a couple of books on how the media influence child development, I had become a "senior" psychologist and am often referred difficult cases. I enjoy working with troubled adolescents and seem to have a knack for developing an easy rapport with them. The eating-disordered girls who are enraged by their mother's submissiveness and yet mimic it in their own self-defeating behavior. The junior high school girls with pitiable self-esteem who regularly give oral sex to boys behind the school gymnasium, while insisting that they are not sexually active -- an astonishing redefinition of sexual activity shared by most of their generation. The substance-abusing boys who attempt to ward off depression with drug use but ultimately end up in out-of-the-way places for a year or two of rehab. Many of these teenagers suffer from obvious emotional illnesses: depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and substance abuse. Often there is a family history of depression or bipolar illness or alcoholism. These teens "look" troubled. Their grades are usually poor, their relationships volatile, and their behavior floridly risky. Their parents are terrified when they haul them in for treatment.

But I was puzzled by the fact that an increasingly large number of my hours were filled with cases that initially seem to be rather garden-variety adolescent problems. When parents make calls to my office for these kids, there is often little sense of urgency. Some parents may have a vague sense that all is not well and ask me to "take a look" at their child. A few have discovered drug paraphernalia or perhaps an unsettling diary entry and call, hoping I will allay their fears since these same teens are doing well in school and are compliant at home. They may note that their child appears "less sunny," or seems somewhat withdrawn, but these parents don't see their children as troubled -- unhappy maybe, but not troubled. More than a few parents call not out of their own concern, but at the insistence of their teenager.

In fact, many of these teens have a notable ability to put up a good front. Absent the usual list of suspects -- bad divorces, substance abuse, immobilizing depression, school failure, or delinquent behavior -- their parents are frequently surprised by their request to see a therapist. It would be a stretch to diagnose these kids as emotionally ill. They don't have the frazzled, disheveled look of kids who know they are in serious trouble.

Nevertheless, they complain bitterly of being too pressured, misunderstood, anxious, angry, sad, and empty. While at first they may not appear to meet strict criteria for a clinical diagnosis, they are certainly unhappy. Most of these adolescents have great difficulty articulating the cause of their distress. There is a vagueness, both to their complaints and to the way they present themselves. They describe "being at loose ends" or "missing something inside" or "feeling unhappy for no reason." While they are aware that they lead lives of privilege, they take little pleasure from their fortunate circumstances. They lack the enthusiasm typically seen in young people.

After a few sessions, sometimes more, the extent of distress among these teenagers becomes apparent. Scratch the surface, and many of them are, in fact, depressed, anxious, and angry. Quite a few have been able to hide self-injurious behaviors like cutting, illegal drug use, or bulimia from both their parents and their peers. While many of these teens are verbal and psychologically aware, they don't seem to know themselves very well. They lack practical skills for navigating out in the world; they can be easily frustrated or impulsive; and they have trouble anticipating the consequences of their actions. They are overly dependent on the opinions of parents, teachers, coaches, and peers and . . .

Continues...

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Excerpted from The Price of Privilege by Madeline Levine Copyright © 2007 by Madeline Levine. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

America's New "At-Risk" Child
The Paradox of Privilege     3
Why Kids Who Have So Much Can Feel Empty     8
Why We Can't Afford to Trivialize the Problems of Privileged Kids     12
The Not-So-Hidden Mental Health Epidemic Among Privileged Youth     16
The Magnitude of the Problem     18
Don't Kids "Grow Out Of" Adolescent Angst?     24
Don't Kids from Affluent Families Get All the Help They Need?     26
The Toxic Brew of Pressure and Isolation     28
Achievement Pressure     28
Isolation from Parents     30
Why Parents' Good Intentions Are Not Enough     33
Why Money Doesn't Buy Mental Health     37
Money Doesn't Make Us Happier     38
Allison: How Affluence Can Get in the Way of Emotional Development     41
Materialism: The Dark Side of Affluence     45
The False Promises of Materialism     49
Why "Retail Therapy" Is an Oxymoron     50
Materialism and Unhealthy Competition     52
Happiness Is an Inside Job     53
How the Culture of Affluence Works Against the Development of the Self
What Is a Healthy "Self"?     63
Kids With Healthy Selves Are Ready and Able to "Own" Their Lives     70
Kids With HealthySelves Can Control Their Impulses: "I'm the Boss of Me"     75
Kids With Healthy Selves Can Be Generous and Loving     81
Kids With Healthy Selves Are Good Architects of Their Internal "Homes"     86
Tyler's Story: Whose Life Is It Anyway?     88
Knowing What Really Matters and What Doesn't     93
Different Ages, Different Parenting Strategies     95
The Magic Years-Ages 2 to 4     99
Masters of the Universe-Ages 5 to 7     104
How Am I Doing?-Ages 8 to 11     108
What Happened to My Kid?-Ages 12 to 14     113
Working on the "Real Me"-Ages 15 to 17     120
Parenting for Autonomy
How We Connect Makes All the Difference     127
Know Your Parenting Style     129
Do As You're Told: The Authoritarian Parent     129
Do Your Own Thing: The Permissive Parent     130
We Can Work It Out: The Authoritative Parent     131
Cultivate Warmth to Protect Emotional Development     132
Good Warmth: Acceptance, Understanding, and Investment     133
Bad Warmth: Overinvolvement, Intrusion, and Parental Neediness     136
Understanding Why Praise Is Often "Bad" Warmth     141
Avoid the Damage Inflicted by Criticism and Rejection      146
Discipline and Control: The Tough Job of Being the "Bad Cop"     153
Firmness: Being Clear About Your Authority     154
Monitoring: "Do You Know Where Your Children Are?"     156
Containment: Letting Your Kids Know When You Mean Business     158
Flexibility: Knowing When to Skip the Showdown     159
It's Easier When We Start Early (But It's Never Too Late!)     161
The Difference Between Being "In Control" and Being "Controlling"     162
Why You Have to Stand on Your Own Two Feet Before Your Children Can Stand on Theirs
Challenges to Effective Parenting in the Culture of Affluence     169
Bucking the Tide: If Everyone Is Doing It, That Doesn't Make It Right     172
Holding Ourselves Accountable     174
The Poison of Perfectionism     178
Overcoming Myopia About the "Good Life"     182
Handling the Isolation That Makes Us Vulnerable to Being Bullied     186
The Threat of Divorce and the Potential Loss of "Wifestyle"     191
Samantha's Story: Dancing in the Dark     194
Having Everything Except What We Need Most: The Isolation of Affluent Moms     200
Acknowledging How Very Hard Our Job Is     202
Taking Our Problems Seriously     205
The Fear of Vulnerability      207
The Risks of Staying Unhappy     210
Tend and Befriend: The Critical Importance of Friendships     212
The Distraction of the Work Debate     215
Choosing What We Can Live With     218
Acknowledgments     225
Notes     228
Index     237

What People are Saying About This

Mary Pipher

“Fresh and important ideas about parenting in the age of affluence…”

Editorial Reviews

She treats her subjects as well as her subject with compassion and understanding.

Chicago Tribune

This book has resonated in affluent communities all over the country. [Levine is] clearly on to something.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Her writing is warm and carefully thoughtful.

Toronto Star

In this insightful book, Levine eschews the temptation to dismiss problems of privileged teens as overindulgence.

Book List

Levine’s book explores some troubling and intriguing issues that certainly are worth pondering and discussing.

Marin Independent Journal

...[an] impassioned wake-up call to parents...

The Gazette (Montreal)

Levine offers chapter after chapter of practical advice for dealing with family problems.

Connecticut Post Online

[Madeline Levine’s] ideas may be uncomfortable for parents to read, but they’re a wonderful wake-up call.

Bay Area Insider

Fresh and important ideas about parenting in the age of affluence…

Mary Pipher