Protecting Parent-Child Relationships in Toxic Achievement Culture

A Q&A with bestselling author, Jennie Wallace.

As we enter into a new school year full of stress and chaos, I am reminded of a conversation I had with the amazing Jennifer B. Wallace, author of ​Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic-And What We Can Do About It​. This book came out a year ago and has hit many of the important “best of” lists—for good reason. It offers a compassionate yet powerful wake-up call to the dangers of achievement culture. It’s also chock full of practical and profound advice for raising healthy, happy, and yes, successful, kids. And it all comes down to the important ingredient this newsletter centers on: relationships.

I’m re-releasing this conversation today to bring our attention back to what matters. To remind us that when we get overly focused on achievements, we lose sight of who we are and how we want to relate to those we care about.

[Paid subscribers, you can enter for a chance to win a copy of this book by scrolling to the end of this post.]

In this Q&A, Jennie and I discuss the data behind pressing parental fears inside of an achievement-oriented culture, and a powerful antidote any parent can get more skillful in applying. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity, but no brief interview can go into the depth of this incredible book. So, if you enjoy this Q&A, I highly recommend you pick up the ​book​ (or, if you’re a paid subscriber, enter for a chance to win a copy at the bottom of this newsletter)!

If you want to get more hands-on guidance than a book can offer, my friend and colleague

Emily Edlynn

, author of Autonomy-Supportive Parenting just launched an awesome small group program called Parent Smarter, Not Harder. Emily helps parents learn how to parent less intensively in what we know is a toxic, hyper-parenting culture. If you’re interested in more information about the program and how to enroll, click here.

And now to the Q&A!

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Yael: Jennie, your book is such a game changer in how it counteracts cultural directives about good parenting and ideal childhoods which turn out to be quite unhealthy.

I want to start by having you tell us about some of the surprising findings of affluent versus inner city kids in terms of well-being and what achievement culture has to do with that.

Jennie: I should start by saying I’m a mom of three teenagers and a journalist. My articles and certainly this book are very much about me-search—it’s a book I needed to read for myself. The journey really began in 2019 when I wrote an ​article for the Washington Pos​​t​ about how kids attending what researchers call high achieving schools are now an at-risk group. That’s after kids in poverty, children with incarcerated parents, recent immigrants, and children living in foster care. It’s these children who are going to these competitive private and public schools that are now at risk–two to six times more likely to suffer from clinical levels of anxiety, depression, substance abuse disorder than the average American teen.

What researchers first thought about this population was that it must be something about living in an affluent family causing this disturbance. But what they have found more recently is that it’s not growing up with affluence, but rather going to a school that is hyper-competitive, where you put all of these same very bright students in the same rooms and they’re all competing with each other for these finite spots.

Not only are we talking about the excessive pressures that they’re feeling in these environments, but also the buffers that used to be there—like close relationships with peers and with teachers, having time to play, having time to discover who they are, being permitted to fail—these things have been removed from modern childhood.

I was trying to figure out why my children’s childhoods were so different than my own. I would say that my values are really similar to my parents’ values, so it wasn’t that. But there I was spending an hour and a half on a Saturday morning to take my son to travel soccer in the sleeting rain. And I remember standing on the sidelines and asking, “Why are we doing this? What is this for?” And that was my entry into writing this book.

Yael: It does seem counterintuitive that affluence, resources, and competition are the opposite of the surest pathway for a healthy, happy, and successful adult life. Can you help us understand that?

Jennie: There are lots of reasons but one that I really dive into in the book is how our values relate to our well-being. When you put a child in a hyper-competitive environment, you organize their life around what researchers call materialistic goals. Those are not just about brand names and logos, but about a way of orienting your life, career success, getting the next trophy, making the next level, all of these things. We over-emphasize materialistic goals and under-emphasize things like caring for your neighbors, being a good person, being empathic, taking time to develop deep friendships. Those intrinsic values protect mental health, whereas materialistic values are related and linked with mental health disturbances.

Yael: Something I hear a lot from parents in the therapy room and peers in my everyday life is, “But it’s my duty to help my kids fulfill their potential, particularly if I have the means to do so.” What’s wrong with that thinking?

Jennie: I have yet to meet a parent who doesn’t completely love their kids and want to do everything they can to ensure their happiness and life success. So, I completely get that, and I, too, am a parent of three teenagers and thought it was my job to help my kids reach their potential. But in an environment where kids are saturated with achievement messages that make them feel like their value is contingent on the college they get into their value, is contingent on how they play on the field, the job of a parent in those environments is actually to do the opposite.

The job of a parent in a hyper-competitive environment is to make the home a place where a child can recover from those messages. Not only recover, but get firm messages from you that counter that narrative. For example, “Your worth is not contingent on your performance. I love you no matter what.” And, “My love for you doesn’t hedge on how well you do in school.”

Yael: I wonder if you can talk a little bit about some of the counterintuitive findings about the consequences of taking the pressure off the gas pedal on achievement. Because many parents worry, “If I don’t push my kid, they aren’t likely to push themselves.” But what do researchers find instead?

Jennie: I asked psychologists and researchers this question and, one of the suggestions, which I’ve taken to heart in my own life, was instead of focusing on a shiny outcome, like a specific grade, focus on help kids learn how to work. That means setting up parameters like, “we don’t keep our cell phone on our desk, we put it in the other room.” Or, “You can take a break when you get home from school, but before you do anything else, before that TV or YouTube goes on, all the homework has to be done.”

So, if we can instead put our parenting energy towards pushing our kids to get the A’s, we harness that energy towards scaffolding and helping them to learn how to work in a way that doesn’t incite more pressure. They will then start taking ownership of their work.

Yael: I love the idea of teaching your kids how to know when it’s time to take a break. Because in our high-pressured society, we sometimes fail to teach our kids how to when and how to stop, and that’s a part of what leads to lifelong repeated cycles of work burnout.

I want to switch course and talk about the central thesis of your book, which you’ve already touched on, and that is the importance of mattering and how this is a really a place where we can put where we can do a lot of beneficial things as parents is emphasizing. So, can you start us off by defining mattering?

Jennie: My research began with a search of the kids who, despite the pressures in their environment, were thriving. I wanted to know what they had in common, what home life and school were like, what relationships were like with peers, what parents focused on at home? And as I was looking for a framework to present my findings to parents, I came across this psychological construct of mattering and mattering has been around since the 1980s. It was ​originally conceptualized by Morris Rosenberg​, who brought us self-esteem. And what he found was that teens who enjoyed a healthy self-esteem felt like they mattered to their parents that they were important that they were significant.

Over the decades, researchers have been studying ​mattering in youth and adults​ all over the world. And the definition of mattering that really resonates with me is the idea of feeling valued by family, friends and community and then being depended on to add meaningful value back to family to friends to community.

These kids who have this high level of mattering—it was like a protective shield that buffered against anxiety and stress in their environment. It wasn’t that they didn’t feel anxious or down—they did. They had failures. But there was something about mattering that served as a buoy. It gave them a confidence that they were not going through this life alone and that their value was their value and not contingent on their performance.

Yael: I love the piece about adding value back, about giving back and being able to be relied on. Once upon a time kids were expected to contribute in meaningful ways, but especially affluent families, we think, “They don’t need to contribute to the household running because that’ll take away from them building their report card.” But you make the opposite point. Can you talk a little bit more about why that is so important?

Jennie: Yes, for kids that were laser focused in what they had to do to get to the next level were never depended on to add value to anyone other than themselves, what happens is that they might hear from their parents that they matter, but they lack the proof of it. That’s one thing. And the other thing is these kids also seem to be struggling because they were overly self-focused. So, every rise and fall was never put into perspective. They were living inside their heads. They never had the opportunity to zoom out and have an orientation that was not about their own work.

We see in the research that when we are overly self-centered and overly concerned with ourselves, it can lead to mental health struggles. We need context. We need to see ourselves as part of the bigger whole. That that gets us out of our head and into a healthier head space.

Yael: That reminds me of ​research from the 1800s​ conducted by French sociologist, Emile Durkheim. He studied risk factors for suicide all across Europe, comparing married people to unmarried people, Protestants to Catholics, people who had various jobs. And what he found was that the thing that predicted lower risk of suicide was more role obligations.

There’s something about being needed that is so important for our mental health, but we kind of push against it in our modern society thinking that it interferes with our ability to accomplish, to achieve. But what your book explores why we need to embrace the obligations.

Jennie: I had a real light bulb moment about this when I was talking with Ken Ginsburg, a pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He was talking about how as American parents, in our hyper-individualistic world, we believe our task is to raise our kids to be independent adults.And while that is a worthy goal, our more profound responsibility (if we want to protect their mental health and their well-being) is to give them the mindset and the skills of interdependence. That’s the idea of feeling that they are valued enough to rely on other people and that and to allow other people to rely on them. And the kids I met who were the healthiest had this, and their parents had this strong sense of healthy interdependence (not to be confused with codependency).

It’s only in these last few decades where we have really focused on hyper individualism that we’ve gone away from the interdependence that allowed us to thrive from the very beginning.

Yael: You share many great stories in the book, but one that is really stuck with me is the story of a woman that you interviewed whose neighbor came over to ask for a cup of flour. The woman felt so good being able to help a neighbor out with cup of flour. But pretty soon after, the neighbor came and left an entire bag of flour on her doorstep. And it just really deflated her. It’s eye-opening to realize that the overcompensation to receiving can be damaging to interdependence.

Ok, so even if you can get behind the idea of taking your foot off the gas pedal of pressuring achievement and instead focus on mattering and interconnectedness, we live in a culture where that’s not the norm. And it can feel as if letting up on the gas pedal means that all the other kids are going to outcompete your child or your children and leave your kid behind. And then that really is going to be problematic for your kiddos because everybody else is sort of swooping in to fill the void that you’ve now created for them by releasing the pressure on the gas pedal.

So how do we go against the tide while still protecting our group membership?

Jennie: First of all, let me state clearly that this is not a book that’s anti-ambition. There is this false idea in our culture that you can’t be healthy and a high achiever. And I will tell you that the healthy high achievers that I met and I followed these people. These are not independent of each other. Having this mattering mindset is what drives healthy ambition.

What I’m saying is to be ambitious for more for your kid. Yes, you want them to succeed academically. But to have those safety nets that are so important to individuals and families, we need to help kids learn how to have deep relationships. You want them to have people that they can come to and not worry alone; people who will raise them up. I know that any success that I’ve had in my life is not because of where I went to college—it is because of the relationships in my life. Relationships are what open doors.

We may believe as parents that we have to help our kids get that brand name college, as if that’s how we can like strap a life vest on our kid to carry them through a sea of uncertainty in the future. But what I’m here to tell you and what I have found in my research and what you find even the ​Harvard Adult Study​ (one of the longest running studies on adult well-being), is that relationships lead to the well-being we want, and frankly, the financial well-being that we want for our kids.

So, it’s not that we don’t want to be ambitious for our kids. It’s that we’re thinking too small.

Yael: That kind of brings me to my next question: If we were to zoom out and redefine what success is for our kids, what could that definition look like?

Jennie: In my own home, I used to try to solve for my kids’ happiness. But now I want to solve for their mattering, because what I have found with mattering is that if I can help my kids get the skills and mindset of mattering—of knowing your strengths, knowing how to use those for the greater good. Mattering not only will help in their relationships, but it’s also what drives healthy achievement is.

So, in my family, living a life of mattering is the ultimate form of success.

Yael: If somebody is reading this newsletter, what is a concrete step to take that would embody helping your kids know that they matter in the way you’re advocating?

Jennie: I asked the same question to ​Soniya Luthar​, who recently passed away, but was one of the leading researchers in resilience. When I asked her, “What can I do right now in my home?” she said, “Minimize criticism, prioritize affection.” Scott Galloway wrote this great line in ​The Algebra of Happiness​, something like “Growing up, the difference between thinking someone loved him and knowing that they did was affection.” So, I would say prioritize affection. If you grew up in a family that was not openly affectionate work really hard through the awkwardness to get there again.

Another thing that a psychologist I interviewed told me was to greet your children at least once a day, as like the family puppy would: with total unabashed joy. The family puppy doesn’t care if you just lost your job or you gained 15 pounds or you just had a workout and you’re sweaty and gross. The family puppy loves you no matter what. Our kids need that from us. They need that source of unconditional love.

There was this great study our of Notre Dame that talked about how important affection was for later life well-being. And in the Harvard Longitudinal adult study, I interviewed George Vaillant, who was the director for many decades of that study, and I asked him, “What should I be doing at home if I want to raise children who will be fulfilled and happy and successful in midlife? What do I need to focus on?” And he said, maternal warmth and a work ethic like one that’s developed through chores. So, I would say that another tip that I would give is to look for chores (and maybe don’t even call them chores because I think we need a whole rebrand on that). Look for ways that even young children and old can contribute in a way that feels meaningful to them and to the family.

Yael: I love that and I’ll mention that before we started this recording, I asked how did you manage to interview so many people in so many different states which required you to go for long periods of time while raising three teenagers? And what you said is that your kids supported you, that they were a big part of helping their mom launch this huge, ambitious project out into the world.

Jennie: They were extraordinary helpers. My son earned the dubious distinction as being the head of tech for my, for my book writing process. He set up my office, got me a computer and set up my computer when I was having tech issues. There was one day in particular, I thought I lost my book and I texted him and he went and pretended to go to the bathroom and called and helped me and talked to me through how to get it. My daughter, before all of my reporting trips would, while I was asleep, go in and make sure that all the extra batteries you can use for your phone were fully charged and that my computer was fully charged. They have been extraordinary helpers.

Yael: And it’s such proof that they matter to you and that you let them know that their existence really makes a huge difference.

Any final words that you want to leave readers with about the book?

Jennie: For me, the biggest takeaway was if we really want our kids to live a life of meaning and purpose and fulfillment and well-being, the best thing we can do in our homes is really to put mattering in front and center. Particularly if your kids are growing up in a competitive school or competitive school environment, show them their worth outside of the system and show them the power they have to unlock mattering in the people around them. I think that’s our best hope for a better society for our kids.

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If you found value in this conversation with Jennie Wallace, I urge you to grab ​Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic-And What We Can Do About It​. Jennie is a terrific writer and the book is such a fascinating, rich read!