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Madeline Levine, PhD Interview Madeline Levine, a practicing psychologist for over 25 years, is the author of The Price of Privilege, which looks behind the mask of this generation’s achievements and charm, to the children on the inside. Her book is a “must read” for anyone raising children today. Ms. Levine lives in California and lectures nationally. How are you defining “privilege” for your book? Are these rich kids? No, the book was never supposed to be about rich kids, but middle-income kids. The kids are from families with incomes of $120K to $160K, not rich by Bay State standards, but kids from homes that provide more than those in poverty. These are the kids that disproportionately go on to positions of authority in our society. They will be the policy makers, the doctors and the lawyers of tomorrow. Important because you want your doctor to have a sense of efficacy not entitlement and you want your policy makers to have a sense of consciousness and connectedness. The bigger issue with these kids is that the things in our culture related to character have become less valued and what has become more valued is performance and this incredible emphasis on material goods -- how well one looks and the grades you get not whether you are a good person, the school you go to not whether it is a good match. But, kids have always cared about what they look like and to some extent material goods, what’s different? The constant parade of stuff, that’s what’s different. I was talking to a girl yesterday when I was shooting a documentary and she told me that whenever she feels down, she goes shopping. We have a President who when this country was attacked told us to go shopping. The problem is when shopping helps us deal with unhappy feelings. Grades are an extension of this materialism. When kids care about grades, they are less altruistic. So is the root problem here the money? No, what I am really talking about in the book is not about money. Money isn’t the issue. It’s the culture of affluence that values materialism more than relationships and individualism more than community. We all know narcissistic people. The costs of narcissism don’t accrue to the narcissist, but to the people around them. This is the concern. What will these children be like as adults? It’s hard to believe that money doesn’t play some role. Keeping up is expensive. More than you think. I have talked to parents who have said, “Yes, you can buy your way into an ivy school.” Parents in New York told me that instead of attaching a check for $175 with your child’s application, parents attach a check for $1,000,175. I am not that naïve, but I was appalled. Tutors at some of these schools cost $700-$800-$1000/ hour for kids who are not failing, but who are doing it to make sure that they maintain their position. How a parent has come to think this is a good idea for a child, I don’t know. The easy answer is that it is the baby boomer generation of instant gratification - do your own thing - but also these are parents who are also incredibly worried. They are worried that their kids are not going to be able to make it in this world. Partly because they know that there has been so much intervention in their growing up that their children don’t have the self-management skills they will need. Why are parents doing this? When I ask parents what they want for their child, they say they just want them to be happy. When I say, I know that, but what else? They say, “well I know that when you go to a Harvard, Princeton or Yale you are going to be more financially comfortable, life is going to be easier.” Unfortunately, or I should say “fortunately,” when researchers study groups at 30, 40 and 50 years of age there is absolutely no correlation between the school you go to and life happiness. The University of Michigan did a longitudinal study on future earnings. It found that the school you went to and life-time earnings are also zero. So, who has sold us this bill of goods? Well of course there is this huge industry that profits from the myth and then you have US News & World Report that lists the “best schools.” Don’t buy it. As if schools exist in a vacuum -- The best schools for whom? Interested in what? For what kind of learner? Schools should be a match. Parents are terribly anxious about the future – environmentally, financially and politically – but the level of anxiety is crazy. Is it true that there are higher rates of depression with this generation? Yes. Suniya Luther, a researcher at Columbia, actually found this out by accident. She had done a lot of research on the lower end of the spectrum and as many researchers do, she wanted to make her results look good so she studied the upper end thinking it would make the lower end look even more impaired and pop her findings. To her shock on every level, the kids on the higher end were worse. What do you make of that? I don’t have a full answer, but I’ve been practicing for twenty-five years. It used to be that when kids came in that were depressed they were disheveled, withdrawn, you could tell they were unhappy. Today, they come in and they look great; they have great social skills, but underneath they are far from together. Many of these kids are very successful at a persona, what we call in psychiatry a “false self.” A false self is highly correlated with depression. It’s trickier to identify these kids therefore, and trickier for parents to suspect it. They look good, they have good grades, which many times is because they party all night and then use cocaine to get their homework done. It’s also an example of our superficiality, because we let these kids pass by us at school and at home and don’t stop to see it beyond the good grades or place they play on the soccer team. Does the velocity of our lives have anything to do with this? Is it that the parents don’t care or that they aren’t there? Yes, there is a big difference between being physically present and emotionally available to give. One of my patients said it so well. She said, “It’s amazing that my mother is everywhere and nowhere at the same time.” We run around and pick up our kids so they don’t have to walk four blocks to get home, then we zoom them to the tutor, to practice, and then to the SAT coach. When I talk to younger kids parents, I say, “You should ritualize a place in your day when you can be available to talk to your kids. Kids need what I call “an inviting, listening, presence.” In the book you talk about authoritative and authoritarian parenting. Which do you want to be? Years ago, there was a body of research that talked about authoritarian parents as the parents who say, “I make the rules, do it my way.” These are the houses where the young kids are well controlled and where the parents are not particularly interested in letting their kids have a voice. They are pretty rigid and use power as a means of compliance. The problem is that these kids tend to grow up to be bullied just as they were bullied in their homes and although reasonably conforming and obedient, can have low self-esteem and can have high rates of depression. They also can lack curiosity, which makes sense when you consider how “thinking out of the box” is not encouraged in their homes. Permissive parents are symbolic of my generation. We talk to our kids a lot. It’s the endless discussion. I have a friend that said all she wanted was for her son to come home before midnight. Fifteen minutes later – she was still having the conversation talking about accidents after midnight and on and on, instead of just saying, “nothing good happens after midnight, be home!” Kids of these parents tend to be very personable, very creative but they also tend to be incredibly immature because so much has been able to pass and so little is asked of them. They don’t have very good skills at managing. The ideal position is an equal position between warmth and discipline. This is authoritative parenting. We have very few silver bullets in psychiatry, but warmth is one of them. This is the easy one. Discipline is the harder one. That’s when your kids are shutting the door on you and if you don’t have a good sense of connection inside yourself, and you don’t have a sense of community, it will be harder. Parents that are themselves less anchored are too fragile to tolerate their kid’s unhappiness, which is mandatory for good parenting. You need to know how to deal with your own unhappiness. Life has challenges; there are times when you are frustrated, times when you are unhappy. You need to teach your child to deal with these emotions, and you need to deal with them yourself. The more fragile a parent is, the more difficult it is for them to deal with their own feelings. It seems that parents today are taking their role pretty seriously, much more than our parents did. How much does it really matter? Nobody knows how much parenting contributes to the outcome of our children. What we do know is that 50% is hardwired, from your genetic code. Do not make the assumption that you are the other 50%. That’s a whole bunch of things – yes, how you parent, but also a culture seeped in materialism and the randomness of life like whether your kid sits next to a merit scholar or a drug dealer. But, parenting is the only thing we do have control over. Who are the role models for kids today? It’s celebrities. Really that is who are visible to them. It’s not good. You need to be a role model for them. You need to communicate that you are more interested in their integrity than their grades and you need to make other people visible to them. It is the parent’s job to expose their child to the world. You can expose them to the Ritz Carlton or to another side of the world where there are people laboring. What kind of people are you putting your children in touch with? What kinds of adults are sitting around the table with them? Will doing community service help this? There is an explosion of community service in schools today. Kids have to do a certain number of hours. I am not a huge fan of this because it is one more thing the kids see as needing to get through and they have no internal integration of what it really means to be an active participant in someone else’s life. It’s critical that kids work. This is what makes them feel like they are a part of a community. Kids who are only asked to be these shining stars have no sense that they are part of a community. A child’s first community is their home. When you ask kids to clear the table and they say they can’t because they have a math test; you are sending a message that community rests on reciprocity. Kids need a role in the family. Kids today are incredibly bored. Parents need to teach them how to be a part of a community. So, what’s the bottom line on all this? At the end of the day, I think it is really about redefining what success is.
Book Website: www.thepriceofprivilege.com
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