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In fact, for many parents, there is an ironic duality to their family life: on the one hand, a desire that children have the "best," and on the other hand a willingness to turn to others in order to make sure that such an objective is realized. Those others are doctors, teachers, camp counselors, "experts" of various kinds; they are the men and women who, it is hoped, will year by year work on a child, make him or her stronger, sounder, more ambitious, more effective, more competent—better able to get ahead and, very important, able to "cut the mustard," meaning deal with the difficulties and obstacles that present themselves to people in a highly advanced and still quite competitive society. In the background lurks fear: Will my child lose, will he or she slip back, will the result be failure, real or imaginary? No admission to schools like A or B, no acceptance at colleges like X or Y and, long before that, a lack of success at the hurdles of tennis and baseball, camp activities or a first dance? For many children, the problem is not how to survive, as it was 200 years ago, or even how to enjoy an already comfortable life, but how to make sense of an avalanche of possessions, opportunities, possibilities—all of which, in turn, generate demands such as no other children have ever had to face.
It is one matter when a child learns to fight his or her way out of poverty or insecurity and up, up, up. It is quite another matter when a child is taught to behave in a certain way, to go to certain schools or camps and get along at them in a certain way, because that is what a healthy, welladjusted, "successful" child or youth manages to do. One mother, the wife of a well-to-do lawyer, has spoken to me repeatedly of her concern for her children. She knows they will probably find reasonably worthwhile jobs or professions when they are older. But she wants more from them—high competence, excellence, repeated demonstrations of academic and social success, because, of all things, such achievements would "prove" that the children have been brought up wisely, and are, as a consequence, quite "happy." When one asks her what, indeed, happiness is, the circularity of her thinking comes across quickly: happiness for a child is the knowledge that various challenges have been met, hence a feeling of accomplishment and, very important, the respect of others.