The following is a rebuttal to an outrageous claim made by a close friend of mine. He refused to accept that the word ‘spoiled’ applied to his daughter solely based on the fact that he lacked the wealth associated with that designation. I hereby assert, to the contrary, that children raised in blue collar households can exhibit spoiled behavior due to a number of factors including, but not limited to those outlined below.
To do this, let us examine the attributes commonly associated with spoiled children and the causes thereof.
1. The Royal Syndrome: The child believes that everyone else in the world has a duty to: a. cater to their needs or b. admire them for the truly exceptional being that they are.
Parents hold sole responsibility for (a) behaviors. But this behavior, most on display by the children of bored homebound mothers with the world at their fingertips, can also evolve easily in the households of hard-working parents. Teaching a child to cater to their own needs often takes far more time and patience than working parents have. Rather than slowly instruct a child on the process of performing an action for themselves, by correcting their errors, cleaning up their mistakes, repeat, reinforce, repeat, some busy working parents find it easier to perform simple tasks for their children well beyond the age when they should have honed this ability on their own. My friend exemplifies this tendency.
He quickly completes his morning routine before waking his daughter and shuttling her off to the shower. While she bathes away he sets out her clothes for the day. He then makes her breakfast table stopping just short of pouring the milk on her cereal. She eats her cereal while he packs her lunch. Sometimes she is still eating while he brushes and styles her hair. He then finds her shoes and schoolbag while she brushes her teeth. When I tried to argue that a ten-year old certainly has the ability to perform most of these actions by herself, he argued that the alternative takes too much time, and she makes a mess in the process.
(b) is often the symptom of a larger social problem. Some women, unfulfilled in their own pursuits, have a tendency to believe that, though they have no career path or personal goals of their own, having a child somehow validates their existence. The child embodies an achievement. My friend’s ex-wife exhibits this behavior. Such mothers treat their children like trophies. They parade around their prize, encourage the child to draw attention to themselves and teach them cutesy catch phrases to draw chuckles. The child thinks everything they say is smart, every drawing a work of art and every action admirable.
2. The Genie Factor: The child is accustomed to having whatever they ask for fall in their lap.
Any parent raised in a lower class household from which they have now ascended can exhibit tendencies towards reactionary parenting. Their whole parenting style centers around both defending their child against the painful experiences they once suffered and providing for their children what they had always coveted in their youth. I work with a woman who takes out loans every Christmas, just to stuff as many gifts as she can under the tree. She asks for nothing in return. She grew up poor and ignored, worked hard to support herself since her early teens and now spares her own teenagers from exerting any effort towards their own upkeep.
The types of goods the children receive also plays heavily into this. I grew up across the street from a family with two children. The father worked the night shift in a factory and the mother never worked as far as I knew. I cannot now recall if we actually liked the kids themselves, but we certainly begged to go over there to play with their abundance of toys, new deliveries of which came near daily. We knew we could play with their old stuff, since they fought each other biting and scratching for the new deliveries, and ignored anything more than a month old. These toys often came from K-Mart, or garage sales, or the supermarket, or the bulk bins of the toy stores. They received $5 worth of trash toys daily, which they prized for only as long as the other one desired it.
3. The Huckleberry Finn kids: Children who reject adult authority and do and say whatever they please.
Wealthy children retaliate against adult authority by using the power of their parents, as in the popular spoiled kid movie line, “do you know who my dad is?” Poor children buck adult authority using the ignorance of their parents. These children live not unlike their namesake Mark Twain character. While many people find themselves in poverty by bad luck or circumstance, certain factors, prevalent to the lower classes, may contribute to this behavior in their children. Their parents may have substance abuse problems, they may be immigrants from another country, or may work so often they pay little attention to anything other than making ends meet, or any combination of the above. Often in these cases the child grows up ignored, untaught, uncorrected, and thus with more freedom than other children who live under the thumb of attentive parents. They may have learned more in school than their immigrant parents know of this country, they may have eluded their drug-addled parents, they may have successfully lied so many times that they believe themselves far more intelligent than their overseers. After the child realizes they can outsmart the parent they may try it on the teacher, or the shopkeeper or anyone who tries to stand in their way. A child raised without rules refuses to accept the boundaries of others.
3. The Right to Happiness: the idea that childhood should be a period of carefree play
Lastly, and perhaps that which causes the most perpetual harm, involves what some perceive as a right to a happy childhood. Some focus so intently on the happiness principle they are willing to sacrifice other important lessons that would better serve the child throughout their lives. One wing of my family constantly totters on the tight wire between paychecks, yet their children know nothing of their struggle, in fact, their children rule as kings of the household. Though perfectly capable of helping their parents, these kids have been excused from chores or any responsibility for their own upkeep. They subsist on junk food, because they refuse all other, and nobody fought to force the issue. The only holidays recognized by this family celebrate the children. All family events take place at venues specifically geared towards children, and all activities center around children’s games.
Their parents work multiple jobs to make ends meet, and come home to cater to their kids who keep them in a state of servitude. Only when I suggested that an older child has the capacity to assist with the dishes did I learn the perspective behind this behavior. “Oh, they’ll work enough when they get older. This is the only time in their lives that they can truly enjoy themselves,” I was told.
This family’s first child was born to 19 year old parents, who, saddled with a young child, never pursued higher education and without special skills or training, drudge away the day and sometimes evenings at low-paying redundant jobs. Interesting enough, the grandparents of these children also had children when young, never pursued higher education and worked multiple low-paying jobs to support their family.
People in this cycle can’t afford vacations, or many of the pleasures of life, and live between the states of weary and worry. Since they started their family young, the only concept they have of such freedom from care only existed in their youth, thus, they encourage their children to ‘enjoy it while they can.’
However, this comes at a cost to the important lessons of responsibility and self-discipline. The indulged children turn into fun-loving teenagers whose grades suffer for a full social calendar. The twenties are flitted away on adult amusements until growing debt forces them into the drudgery of subsistence that their parents had lived within, and when they have their own children, they recall the happiness of their youth, and attempt to lavish such an experience upon their own as if the temporal nature of it could not be extended by more moderate allocation.
Conclusion
These circumstances may manifest among even the best intentioned parents. I pass no judgment, but let my argument rest on this assertion, that lower income parents can in fact raise children who exhibit the behaviors commonly recognized as ‘spoiled’ due to a number of factors exclusive to the lower classes.