Fascinating article in New York Magazine by Lisa Miller: Ethical Parenting Is there such a thing? Just ask your children.
Miller writes:
Parenthood, like war, is a state in which it’s impossible to be moral. Worse, the moral weakness of parents is always on display, for children bear witness to their incessant ethical hairsplitting…But such Schadenfreude elides a more difficult existential truth, which is that ever since Noah installed his own three sons upon the ark and left the rest of the world to drown, protecting and privileging one’s own kids at the expense of other people has been the name of the game. It’s what parents do.
I think about this question often in my own work, which involves preparing families to succeed in NYC private school admissions. Inevitably, when my clients get in, other children elsewhere don’t.
I also think about how children as young as four are now prepping for admission to NYC private and public schools. The message kids are learning is that attending desirable schools involves gamesmanship and parental intervention.
Schools, from colleges to preschools, would help kids most by setting more realistic entry standards that kids could meet on their own.