Children of plenty: raising them without want and without emptiness

At nine in the evening a twelve-year-old comes home from tennis practice. The house is quiet. His parents are at dinner with business partners; his supper is waiting on the kitchen counter. There is a message from his mother on his phone: “How did it go? Did you win?” He replies with a thumbs-up, carries the plate to his room and closes the door. No one sees that he ate alone, that he lost, and that he was ashamed.

There is nothing dramatic in this scene. Nobody is a bad parent. The child has everything he needs for sport, school and his future — and more. But the scene also contains two things that research keeps linking to distress among children in wealthy families: the sense that results are what count, and a loneliness that is hard to spot from the outside. This piece is for parents who want their children to grow up without want — and who also wonder how to keep them from growing up with an inner emptiness.

What Suniya Luthar’s research showed

The American psychologist Suniya Luthar spent many years studying children from poor neighbourhoods. In the late 1990s she added young people from affluent suburbs as a comparison group — and found something she hadn’t expected. On some measures these adolescents were worse off than peers from average families: they more often reported anxiety and depressive symptoms, and they used more alcohol and drugs.

Later, with her team, she followed two groups of young people from affluent communities into early adulthood. In a study published in 2018, they found that by the age of 26 they met the criteria for alcohol or drug addiction two to three times more often than is typical for their peers across the United States. The data must be read with care: these are samples from particular settings in the US, not all children of wealthy parents, and not Slovenia. But the pattern recurs consistently enough in her research that the profession takes it seriously.

It matters what the research does not say. It does not say that money is harmful. It does not say that wealthy parents are worse parents. It says that abundance does not protect a child on its own — and that in these settings certain factors carry particular weight, factors that can be changed.

Two paths to distress

Luthar and her colleagues have repeatedly highlighted two factors that most strongly predict difficulties among young people from wealthy families. The first is pressure to achieve — not in itself, but when a child senses that their parents’ love and approval depend on their results. The second is distance from parents, physical or emotional: parents who are often away, or who are present but with their minds elsewhere.

Interestingly, Luthar describes how these two factors can reinforce each other. Where there is little closeness, results become the only language in which parent and child meet. And where results are the only language, it is hard for a child to come to a parent with anything that isn’t a success — with doubt, defeat or sadness.

When a child hears that results are what count

In one study from Luthar’s circle, Lucia Ciciolla and colleagues asked adolescents how much they felt their parents valued their achievements and how much their kindness towards others. Those who felt their parents valued achievement disproportionately more were, on average, doing worse in how they felt and how they functioned — including at school. The key word is felt. Parents often sincerely believe they are telling their child “I love you, no matter what”. But a child reads what actually happens at home: what sparks excitement, what makes a conversation go on longer, what gets told to the relatives.

In wealthy families this pressure is often quiet and well-meant. It isn’t shouting about grades. It is an environment in which excellence is taken for granted, because the parents themselves have achieved a great deal, because the child has the best teachers, coaches and schools — and because, with all these opportunities, average seems inexcusable. A child can draw a dangerous equation from this: if I have every advantage, then every failure of mine is entirely my fault.

From this equation grows a perfectionism that is not a desire for quality but a fear of being seen as inadequate. There is more on this in the knowledge base under perfectionism and in Perfectionism and overthinking: two sides of the same fear.

The absence we don’t see

Parents with demanding careers and great responsibilities are often away a lot. This is not an accusation — it is a fact of their lives. Nannies, housekeepers, drivers and tutors can give a child a great deal of care and real warmth, too. What they cannot replace is the sense that the child matters to their parents.

Attachment theory holds that a child needs at least one person who is available and responsive when they are in distress. Not always and not perfectly — often enough. When a child knows they can turn to a parent, they also dare to go out and meet the world. You will find a short explanation of the concept in the knowledge base under attachment, and I wrote about how patterns pass from one generation to the next in Attachment and parenting: how the pattern passes to a child.

Emotional absence is even more insidious than physical absence. A parent can be at home, but with a phone in hand and their mind on the next meeting. Children feel this. Many of them learn that it’s better not to disturb — and in the teenage years this often turns into a silence that takes parents by surprise. How to open that silence again is the subject of When a teenager goes quiet: how family therapy opens the conversation.

Without want, but with boundaries

One peculiarity of raising children in abundance is that “no” isn’t necessarily about money. In most families children hear “we can’t afford that”, and along the way they learn to wait, to choose and to tolerate disappointment. Where almost anything is affordable, a parent has to say “no” for another reason — because they think it’s right. That is harder, because they can’t hide behind circumstances.

Yet this is exactly what children need. The capacity to tolerate frustration, to wait and to work for something you don’t yet have doesn’t develop by itself. It develops when a child experiences small disappointments alongside an adult who doesn’t take them away but accompanies the child through them. As early as the 1960s, Diana Baumrind described the authoritative parenting style — warmth combined with clear expectations and boundaries — which research still links to the best outcomes for children. You will find a comparison of styles in the knowledge base under parenting styles, and more on limits under boundaries.

Boundaries in a wealthy family don’t mean artificial scarcity. They mean that a child has the experience that some things depend on their own effort; that a broken thing isn’t replaced at once; that pocket money has a limit; that at home you tidy up after yourself, even though someone else could do it. These small experiences are the building blocks of a child’s sense of being capable — and of not being worth something only because of what they have.

How the conversation might sound

This is how part of a conversation with a mother in a session might sound (composite, not a real person):

“I don’t understand. She has everything. The best school, a coach, travel. Why is she so unhappy?”
“What do you think she would say if you asked her what she’s missing?”
“Probably … that I’m not at home. But I’m working for her, after all.”
“I believe you. But perhaps she doesn’t experience it as something for her, but as something that takes you away from her.”

In a moment like this there is no one to blame. The mother works out of love; the daughter misses her out of love. Both are right. Therapy then isn’t looking for who is at fault, but for how these two loves might find a shared language again.

Exercise: ten minutes without results

You can start this exercise today, however old your child is.

1. Choose ten minutes a day when you are alone with your child — a drive, dinner, the time before bed. Put your phone in another room, don’t just turn it face down.
2. During this time, don’t ask about results. Nothing about grades, matches or performances. Instead of “How did the test go?”, ask “What made you laugh today?” or “Who did you talk to most today?”.
3. Listen, don’t correct. If your child says something that worries or annoys you, don’t interrupt with advice. Say something like: “I see. And how was that for you?”
4. Praise effort or kindness, not the outcome. If you do praise, let it be something your child has influence over: “I saw that you helped your classmate” or “I can see how much you practised.”
5. After a week, write down what you learned about your child that you didn’t know before. Many parents are surprised how much opens up once a conversation is no longer an exam.

If your child doesn’t say much at first, don’t give up. With teenagers, silence is often a test of whether the space is really safe.

The difference between the two kinds of message is easiest to see in everyday sentences. From them a child builds the answer to a question they rarely ask out loud: do you care about me, or about what I do?

None of the sentences on the left is meant cruelly. Mostly they express pride, or a wish to spare the child a bad mood. But as they accumulate over the years, a child builds a picture of themselves from them. I wrote about how self-worth and self-confidence are built in Self-image, self-worth, self-confidence: how they differ and how each is built.

Where this view doesn’t apply

It is important not to read this piece as an indictment. Most children from wealthy families grow into content, capable adults. Poverty remains a considerably greater risk for children than abundance — Luthar’s research has never called that into question. We are talking about abundance not protecting automatically, not about it doing harm.

Nor is every child’s distress a result of parenting. Anxiety, depression, eating disorders and addictions have many causes — including biological and genetic ones, and those that come from the peer environment. If you notice that your child has been withdrawing for some time, that their sleep or appetite has changed, that they have lost interest in things they used to love, or that they are turning to alcohol or drugs, talk to your child’s doctor. I describe how to tell ordinary mood swings from depression in Teenage depression: telling it apart from ordinary mood swings. If thoughts of self-harm or suicide appear, don’t wait: the Samarijan helpline on 116 123 in Slovenia is available every day, 24 hours, and Klic v duševni stiski on 01 520 99 00 in Slovenia from 7 pm to 7 am. In an emergency, call 112.

And finally: this piece does not deal with inheritance, trusts or financial education. For how to talk about wealth within the family, see Inheritance and children: how to talk about wealth; for financial and legal questions, other professionals are the right people to ask.

The family as a whole

In relational family therapy, in which I am training, we don’t see a child’s distress as the problem of a single family member. We see it as a message about how the whole family lives. The child who withdraws, the perfectionist who can’t sleep, the teenager experimenting with substances — each of them often carries something that has no other place in the family.

It also often turns out that parents are repeating patterns from their own childhood. A father who grew up in want himself wants to spare his child everything he lacked — and doesn’t notice that in doing so he takes away the child’s experience of their own strength. A mother who as a child was only worth something with top grades unintentionally passes on the same message. In a longer session with a genogram, A Look into the Past, we can draw together how expectations, success and closeness have passed through the generations — and where you can break the pattern. I also work with English-speaking families, in person in Ljubljana.

It also helps if the two parents talk about this with each other before they talk to their child. What do you want your child to take away from home? What of what you yourselves received do you want to pass on, and what not? It often turns out that you have different ideas about success, money and closeness, ideas your child has sensed for a long time even though no one has put them into words. Once you say them aloud, your child no longer has to choose between you.

Don’t forget, either, the particular features of life in a wealthy family that others rarely understand: security restrictions, caution around friendships, public attention. Children experience them differently from adults. I write about some of this in Privacy as a prison: when security keeps you apart from people.

What to remember

• Abundance does not protect a child on its own; research among young people from affluent settings shows higher risks of anxiety and substance misuse.
• Two factors carry particular weight: the sense that only results count, and distance from parents.
• A child doesn’t need scarcity; they need boundaries — and a parent who accompanies them through disappointment.
• Praise effort and kindness, not just the outcome; take a few minutes every day for a conversation without results.
• If the distress persists, or substances or self-harm appear, seek professional help.