Don’t become success robots

Peggy Noonan:

Here is some­thing I think is part of the story. In the past decade or so I’ve ob­served a par­tic­u­lar par­ent­ing style grow­ing preva­lent among the up­per mid­dle class and wealthy. It is in­tense. They love their kids and want the best for them, they want to be re­spon­si­ble, but there’s a de­gree to which one won­ders if they don’t also see them as nar­cis­sis­tic ex­ten­sions of them­selves. They are hy­per-at­ten­tive, pro­vid­ing metic­u­lous aca­d­e­mic groom­ing—pri­vate schools, pri­vate tu­tors and coaches, pri­vate classes in Chi­nese lan­guage and cello. They don’t want their chil­dren fat—that isn’t healthy, by which they mean at­trac­tive. They com­mu­ni­cate the civ­i­lized opin­ions of the best peo­ple and sig­nal it would be best to hew to them.

They are sta­tus mon­keys cre­at­ing suc­cess robots.