Posted on 02/19/2024 11:32:25 AM PST by grundle
Social critic Rob Henderson went to Yale for undergrad and earned a PhD at Cambridge, but he says we place too much emphasis on degrees and diplomas.
“We give education more importance than we should,” he writes in his new book, “Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class” (Gallery Books, February 20). “I had to … reach the summit of education to understand its limitations … I’ve come to understand that a warm and loving family is worth infinitely more than the money or accomplishments I hoped might compensate for them.”
Henderson, who has written for the Wall Street Journal and has a popular Substack newsletter, is best known for coining the term “luxury beliefs” — ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class while inflicting costs on the lower classes.
One example is residents of an apartment building with a 24-hour doorman on the Upper East Side advocating for abolishing the police, another is the idea that education is all that people need to succeed, and that home life is secondary.
The 33-year-old uses his personal story to make broader points about class differences, the importance of family and how government social services utterly failed him.
Born in Los Angeles to a drug-addicted mother, Henderson was put in foster care at age 3.
By the time he was 17, he’d lived in ten different homes.
His upbringing was filled with poverty and violence.
He recalls his birth mother being handcuffed as he was yanked from her, packing his belongings in shoeboxes and garbage bags as he was shuffled from one foster home to the next and even his adoptive mother’s partner getting shot.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
"...a warm and loving family is worth infinitely more than the money or accomplishments I hoped might compensate for them."
Families stayed together, the kids thrive. Families that held a grudge, could not forgive, and could not place others before self, just failed miserably.
Most important, grow up with a strong, attentive, wise father.
*** The people who caused suffering or caused difficulties in your life are not going to fix it. Only you can fix the trajectory of your life. Once I fully accepted that, things started to turn around for me.***
Great article. Yes, two parent families are super important. Married couples with children should strive to work out their differences. The above quote though, at the end of the article, also hit home for me. He learned about personal responsibility even though few in his childhood understood that concept. Good for him!
Men need to pay attention to this. Women need to choose well, too. Kids rarely have any choice in who their parents are.
“My adoptive mother entered a relationship with a woman and they raised me for a few years together.
The bright spot of my childhood was those years.
My grades were the highest they had ever been.”
“I had to … reach the summit of education to understand its limitations … I’ve come to understand that a warm and loving family is worth infinitely more than the money or accomplishments I hoped might compensate for them.”
What an incredibly wise statement.
Whoops.
“How can you tell if a man went to Yale?
...You don’t have to! He’ll tell you.”
-Kenny Bunk.
“Kids rarely have any choice in who their parents are.”
Did you really mean to post that ?!
I may have missed the *tongue in cheek* aspect to the comment that I was responding to.
*** Most important, grow up with a strong, attentive, wise father.***
It sounded to me like kids should make sure the fathers who raise them should be strong, attentive, and wise, as though the kids get do to the choosing, and not the parents.
I mentioned rarely, because once in a while, courts let the child say who they have a better relationship with to be their “primary” parent.
My real point is that parents have a great responsibility, and that kids DON’T get to choose who they are raised by.
Is that clear now, or muddled even more?
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