A recent Wall Street Journal article entitled, The Trophy Kids Go to Work caught my attention. The article gives examples of how some of the current crop of college graduates are approaching the workplace. The author, Ron Alsop, writes:

"Although members of other generations were considered somewhat spoiled in their youth, millennials feel an unusually strong sense of entitlement. Older adults criticize the high-maintenance rookies for demanding too much too soon. ‘They want to be CEO tomorrow,’ is a common refrain from corporate recruiters.” (Alsop 2008)

The article was particularly interesting to me because of something I wrote twenty years ago when these graduates were in kindergarten. In my book, Miseducation: Preschoolers at Risk, I described a number of different parenting styles and their consequences. One of these styles was most characteristic of newly affluent parents whom I described as “Gourmet” parents:

"Many older wealthy families have learned to instill a sense of public service in their offspring. But many newly affluent parents have not acquired this talent. They are using their children as symbols of leisure class standing without building in the safeguards of an overweening sense of entitlement—a sense of entitlement that may incline some young people more toward the good life than toward the hard work, that for most of us, makes the good life possible.” (Elkind 1987)

That is to say, the outcome of gourmet parenting was predictable. Children were given the best of everything, without anything being required on their part. As a result they were less than appreciative of what they were given but got angry if they did not receive what they believed to be their due. They carried these attitudes with them into adulthood. The important point is that what we do as parents plays an important role in shaping the personalities of our children. In my book on Miseducation, I also describe “Milk and Cookie” parents who want their children to succeed and do well, but who also want, and try to give them, a happy childhood. They try to provide their children with the time and opportunity to be children and to engage in self initiated, age appropriate, play and games. In such play they learn mutual respect, for example, to follow the rules their peers make but also expect their peers to follow the rules they have devised. Mutual respect tempers any tendency towards entitlement and the sense of specialty. Many of my most well rounded, and grounded, college students were reared by milk and cookie parents.

As parents we all want are children to do well and to succeed in their personal and occupational lives. The problem with Gourmet parents is that they confuse what they need with what is best for their children. Such parents really believe their largess is benefiting their children. Yet such parenting fails to teach their children, the lesson they themselves have learned so well: namely, that we live in a real world where the rewards have to be worked for.

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Alsop (2008). The Trophy Kids Go to Work. The Wall Street Journal. New York.

Elkind, D. (1987). Miseducation: Preschoolers at Risk. New York, Knopf.