Week 8 - The Search for Identity, Meaning and Self

      Though this week had a bit of a confusing schedule and our materials got a little mixed up, it was intriguing to think about the price of affluence. The consequences of having everything seldom crosses my mind because I am more often surrounded by the difficulties and issues brought on by poverty. I am still skeptical of the equal comparison between the issues placed on children coming out of both situations, especially when it is suggested that the wealthy one's may have more, because they are not exposed to the crime, violence, racial stigmas, health problems and loss that many children coming out of poverty have had to live with their entire lives.
      Despite this clarification, I can sympathize and understand the difficulties that wealthy children may face in adulthood when they realize that their lack of resiliency and self-awareness may come back to bite them. In my group discussion today we answered the questions from our reading "The Price of Privilege", which inquired why offspring of wealthy parents were coming in with such intense feelings of confusion and emptiness. We came up with two reasons, the first was that their lives were always so micromanaged as children that they were not given confidence in their own abilities to independently lead a fulfilling life. The second and possibly more contributing factor is that their lives were softened and made so easy that they were not given sufficient experience in feeling pain, sorrow, disappointment, and desperation. Though uncomfortable, these are important emotions to experience during adolescence when you have financial and emotional support from family. If parents never allow their children to make 'safe' mistakes, maybe even some dangerous one's, or fail at something that doesn't have life consequences, as adults they are bound to flounder at the first difficulty they face.
      Naturally I thought of my own experiences in adolescence while conversing on the subject and have come to understand why my mother encouraged advised but independent decision making and 'safe' mistakes. I have come to understand a lot of the actions I once questioned of my parents, a sort of redefinition of our relationships that we also discussed in class today. Coming to terms with the fact that your parents are individuals living lives separate than the one they've built with their children, having lived it before we were born and after and further understanding why they did certain things you couldn't believe is an important part of becoming an adult before becoming a parent yourself.
     What I find interesting when comparing impoverished and wealthy populations is the behavior and ways in which the youth choose to act out and why. Youth coming from poverty tend to be more outwardly rebellious and aggressive while wealthy patients hold their suffering internally and arguably more destructively. One population is controlled and is held with high expectations while the other has the expectation to act out. And the more self-destructive is more socially acceptable. It's all very backward.