The Children of Elites Are in Trouble

The shocking murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson a few weeks ago by what appears to be the son of an affluent family and a product of elite educational institutions, Luigi Mangione, manifests deep festering problems for the children of elites. There is no simple way to describe what is going on because it is multi-faceted. Ironically, children from the most “privileged” backgrounds tend to have a high rate of psychological pathologies due to: over-active parenting; high stress, performance-oriented educational structures; woke teachers, professors, and administrators; and insulated sheltered social circles.

The children of elites face extreme and increasing pressure to perform. Amy Chua’s famous Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother documents, and lauds, this hyper-focus on performance. Or consider the recent debate about immigration policy, where Musk and Ramaswamy suggest that lack of desire or ability to work 60+ hour weeks represents a deep flaw in many Americans. Increasing emphasis on where children go to grade school, kindergarten, and even preschool reveals just how deep this performance anxiety extends. I often heard stories from my students who nannied in New York City about how much parents worried about getting their 3- or 4-year-old into the right preschool.

And it never lets up. Even after being admitted to a prestigious college or university, students continue to feel immense anxiety and pressure to perform — which simply continues into their choice of career. William Deresiewicz documents this phenomenon among students at Princeton in his book Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of American Elite.

Even worse, though, is how the bureaucrats and educators at elite academic institutions (from higher education down to grade school) prey upon the insecurities and anxieties of the children of elites. Children at these institutions are taught that they should feel immense guilt in addition to their anxiety. There are racial dimensions (white guilt), environmental dimensions (climate guilt), and class warfare dimensions (wealth guilt). The prominence of woke ideology around race and gender, epitomized in intersectionality, builds and reinforces complex forms of guilt, prejudice, and anger.

At root, the woke ideas promoted in most elite universities and colleges create deep self-loathing — which tends to manifest in criticism of capitalism, of American heritage, and of Western civilization more broadly. It can also be seen in sympathy with violence for the “right” causes. Dividing the world into oppressor and oppressed skews kids’ moral judgments as they are taught that the oppressed can do no wrong while oppressors deserve whatever bad thing happens to them — even being shot in the back.

Alongside this immense pressure to perform is the trend of helicopter parenting where parents intervene whenever their child faces obstacles or potential failure. This can be seen in how often parents call schools or colleges on behalf of their children or insist on attending student-oriented activities with their children. Parents hovering in the background reduces children’s resilience and initiative. It also fosters an unhealthy sense of a safety net and entitlement. Nothing can get too out of hand because mom or dad are always there to fix things.

Increasingly, wealthy elites live in narrow enclaves of their peers. This creates a “sheltered” experience for their children who grow up without interaction with or empathy for people from humbler socio-economic circumstances. This manifests in how elites are increasingly “out of touch” with ordinary Americans. Charles Murray’s excellent book, Coming Apart, explains this phenomenon in great detail. Growing up in enclaves of the wealthy, educated, and high-performing skews the priorities of children of the elite away from most Americans.

From before they can read into adulthood, they face exorbitant pressure to perform, even while mom or dad hovers in the background to “fix” all of their problems. Even as they are pushed to achieve, they are also taught how privileged and undeserving they and their families are if they do not fit narrow categories of “oppressed” people or groups. (RELATED: Luigi Mangione’s Cognitive Dissonance)

Add into this mix deep insularity and coddling, and the result is unhappy activists who are deeply anxious yet feel entitled to their status while simultaneously feeling guilty about it. Virtue-signaling serves as a form of penance or atonement to assuage this guilt without requiring real sacrifice. At the same time, many of these kids are implicitly taught that their parents can and will shield them from the more severe consequences of their choices. (RELATED: Weimar America: The Threat Is on the Left)

I don’t think Sam Bankman-Fried seriously thought he would face jail time for his fraud at FTX, let alone 25 years. This may seem ironic given that both his parents are lawyers at Stanford — but it makes a lot of sense if you think about the kind of environment he and his peers grew up in. Although Mangione’s story involves complicating factors of pain and perhaps a touch of mental illness, he too is a product of this elite upbringing and the severe twisting of moral and social sensibilities it entails.

There is no silver bullet for what ails the children of elites today. Moving towards “free-range parenting” rather than helicopter parenting may help. Reducing access to, and use of, social media and smartphones — or screen time in general — certainly won’t hurt. But at the end of the day, elites need to decide what their priorities for their children really are and act accordingly. Perhaps that means downplaying the academic and career success playbook they have for their children. Perhaps it means living outside of elite enclaves and finding ways for their kids to rub shoulders with more “ordinary” kids.

There is a kind of spiritual bankruptcy at work that elites must come to grips with. Declines in religious belief and religious communities have created a vacuum that people try to fill with elite sports, high-powered careers, academic prowess, and other activities. Yet these substitutes don’t seem to have the same staying power as organic religious communities. And they tend to have all the side effects discussed above.

The children of elites are in trouble, and no government policy or program can fix their problems. Ultimately, elites themselves must decide to change their priorities and parenting practices if they really want to change the environment their kids grow up in. And if you think it’s a matter of putting them in a “better” school, you’ve missed the point.

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