Money and Parenting

It is known that the parenting style of a caregiver impacts a child for the rest of their lives. Whether the
parent is authoritative, neglectful, permissive or authoritarian. However, the reason for a parent
implementing a certain parenting style is ignored. Of course, the parent’s own personal experience and
trauma impact their relationship with their children; But a more social issue might be at play. Higher
economic inequality cause parents to become authoritative and authoritarian. This in turn results in
children working hard to please their parents and get stuck in the vicious cycle of economic inequality.
“The parent trap” by Matthais Doepke and Fabrizio Zilibotti, both economics professors, use information
from the World Values Survey to show the correlation between parents valuing hardwork and higher
income inequality. The World Values Survey asks parent across 100 different countries about their
attitudes on many issues; One of them asks parents to select five values that they think every child
should have. Interestingly, almost 90% parents in China felt that being hard working is a necessity
(Doepke & Zilibotti, 2019). Coincidentally, China is the country which is known for its strict educational
treatment. The inequality rate was 9.5 times more between the bottom and top 5% of the population
(Doepke & Zilibotti, 2019). Similarly, the ⅔ of the parents in United States felt that instilling hard work in
a child is a must; and the economic inequality between top and bottom 20% of household is a ratio of
9:1 (Doepke & Zilibotti, 2019). Many other countries are part of the survey such as the scandinavian
countries and even Japan having less economic inequality and therefore parents who value hard work
less than other values (Doepke & Zilibotti, 2019). The simple reason behind this is that countries which
have economic equality focus on higher goals such as general happiness. So the parents promote
character traits such as being imaginative more than being hardworking; as the income discrepancy is
not a lot between different occupations in such countries. In countries like the US with high economic
inequality, the phrase “rich get richer and poor get poorer” is very true: “Inequality leads to the rise of
competitive parenting, which further exacerbates inequality for the next generation” (Doepke &
Zilibotti, 2019). As the quote shows, parents work hard and children work harder as a result because
they are stuck in trying to rise from their economic status. Parents end up paying less attention to their
children who might need some support and as a result the cycle never ends. So, how could we
overcome this? Somehow the government or the educational system needs to offer more opportunities
to students regardless of their grade. With better publicly funding training which teaches to work
smarter not harder, the economic inequality can eventually decrease. The cycle will come to a close and
the era of “helicopter parents” will end.
Bibliography

Doepke, M., & Zilibotti, F. (2019, February 22). The parent trap. The Washington Post.
Retrieved March 4, 2019, from
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2019/02/22/feature/how

-economic-inequality-gives-rise-to-hyper-parenting/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.d

8cf21a6fd3b