To think people underestimate impact of advantages

[brasty]

I think lots of people underestimate the impact of advantages in their life.
So having parents who value education and encourage you.
Having parents who find the best school for you.
Having loving parents who create a loving environment to grow up in.
Getting help with house deposits.
Having a parent who will help you out when things go wrong.

All or some of these things makes it so much easier to have a good life. Yet so many people underestimate the impact.

I grew up with none of the advantages listed. I am also from an immigrant family and have never been considered to be pretty or attractive.

The baseball player analysis is correct. But if you keep batting and keep going and keep your eyes firmly on the prize at some point you can pass those that started at 3rd Base
Dd and ds have everything I didn't. The main thing is having a parent who actually knows you and takes your likes and dislikes into.consideration and who doesn't dismiss a chosen career.
The results are that both dc are heading for careers they enjoy doing. Not like me who left school with not a single qualification and ended up working in a series of boring jobs on little pay.

I agree that social mobility is on the decline and that is scandalous. However, we do need to acknowledge those who have overcome their disadvantages as an example to young people who are having a shitty start to their lives.

Of course what people do makes a difference. But luck and advantages we are born with/without, also has an impact.

Anyone who pays for private education/tuition that will help their kids over the majority who cannot afford advantage is doing this. It. Is. Wrong.

The system is wrong. The parents are making the best choice they can within their means.

Just like the concept of tax credits is wrong - private employers allowed to pay such shit sub living wages that the taxpayer has to top them up. But those who take the tax credits to feed their families are not wrong.

I think the fact that you can have kids sent to shitty sink schools is wrong. I think the wage structure that allows tax credits to even be needed is wrong. I don't think someone claiming tax credits is wrong and I don't think someone sending their kids to private school rather than the sink school that's the only other option is wrong either.

We need to differentiate between systemic injustices and the choices individuals make to maximise their successes within those systems.

I also know people who have had incredibly shitty starts in life. Lots of abuse, being sold by parents as a child to other men for sex, poverty, and no one who was looking out for them. When you start with such big disadvantages, getting and holding down a job, having a long term relationship, taking care of yourself, these are all big signs of success.

I'm not well enough to form my thoughts as articulately as all you others but I wanted to chime in because I agree with the OP and many others and Zaurak's post resonated with me.

I share similar personal traits and circs to zaurak but I was hurt in an accident and now dont have the advantage of my higher than average intelligence and grammar school education as my brain is affected, although I am still stubborn but flexible, and that gives me resilience! But the effect of ill health for both of us, and subsequent housing issues means that we are falling down and down the rungs of the ladder. And there are structural/ practical issues with housing that just do not allow us to compensate/ work around for poor health. Also not good family relationships.

It doesnt matter how creative, persuasive, and persisitent with the effects on ability to work in jobs, I just cannot get us suitable, secure housing and we feel the loss of that security, both of us having moved nearly 20 times in as many years with periods of homelessness too and I personally have never had a safe, secure home.

To use an analogy; emotionally it is like surviving your ship sinking but spending all of your energy sturggling to get onto a life raft but then having no energy to paddle to shore and so you just drift slowly out to sea - alive but realising you are actually just slowly dying because, short of a miraculous rescue, you will never get to shore.

As well as the emotional toll this takes it is also practical; you just cant spend time and focus on progressing when you are dealing with something bigger issues. It is like being on a long car journey and dealing with constant punctures while others race past to their destination.

All around me I can see people who have had better and worse luck and circumstances, and better and worse traits and ways of dealing with situations.

Could there be an element of neurobiology in being able to see the big picture?

The older I get the more I am surprised at how few people are able to be truly balanced and rational in their thinking. Even educated people can be blind to truths or illogical in their interpretation. I think the answers are rarely one thing OR the other, but a complexity of all factors. Perhaps this is just too difficult and unsatisfying to many people - the internal/ external focus thign, I am not sure. Many people want the answers/ required actions to be simple and easy.

I understand how awful it is to lose your power and maybe this is part of it - no one wants to realsie just how close they are to being powerless and a nobody - if they realsie this what will this do to thier self image and view of society? How will they then have to change to cope with this? I've seen eduacted people deny and victim blame becasue they somply canot believe certain situations are real and not the fault of the person going through them but of society/ bureaucracy.

Anyway, I wish I could say what is in my head, and be coherent. I have studied and read in this area of discussion but just no longer have my proper thinking :( As you were!

I totally agree, OP.

My parents were emotionally abusive to me growing up, and my father was physically abusive to me.

They didn't give a shit about how I did at school and forced me to leave school at 16 to do a secretarial course.

I have found, and still do find, life extremely difficult and like wading through treacle. I have zero confidence and self esteem. I've had no career. I'm in a marriage where I'm not treated with respect.

Childhood and how your parents treat you totally shapes the rest of your life.

Goodness I disagree
I absolutely can appreciate that incredible foot up my parents gave me. The safety net they had beneath me that permitted me to take chances and opportunities knowing I'd be ok whatever the outcome.
And lastly, all the love.

quercus you articulate it well. There's definitely only so much mental and physical energy you have. I know from personal experience that if you're spending that energy on survival you don't have much spare for other things.

Also I agree totally with your views on complex causes. Look at the debate over autism and vaccines. It's not a debate, because all the carefully collected evidence says the two are not linked. But people do not want to have an answer that says 'it's complex. We don't know, we may never truly know, it's probably a combination of genetics and environmental factors l but we don't know.' They want an easy bogeyman they can blame, and campaign against. Because it's easier to think 'x has hurt my child' than it is to grapple with uncertainty.

This extends to so many aspects of life. We are plagued with illogical thinking methods, inbuilt biases etc. How far can we overcome them? Even our concept of reality seems shaky when you look at the sheer weirdness that is quantum theory.

Lack of secure housing is something no one should have to go through in a civilised society. I now live in Sweden and the difference here is immense. So much less inequality. So much less poverty. So much more equality through all aspects of society. My son goes to a subsidised daycare which costs us about 120 quid a month. He gets free meals. No matter how rich or poor you are you go to the same daycare because there really aren't other options.

We can do so much better than we are doing. We are rich as a country in the U.K.

Zaurak, well said.

It suits a lot of people to keep the status quo. The people in positions of power have no desire to help the less advantaged to get on because it creates competition for their children and threatens their way of life.
That's why the English have developed such complex and random rules about class. It keeps them in the club and others out.

I think the one thing missing from my childhood was security. We were working class, lived in council property in the 60's and 70's when I was growing up. I never felt "safe" as a child though my parents tried to supply what my sister and I needed, in material terms. I think security/love and encouragement are key, no matter the "privileges" of birth and status and "hand outs" along the way.

I had a pretty standard upbringing. Things I am doing differently is being actively involved in my children's extra curricular activities and education. Not just letting them happen. Also making sure my kids with have cultural experiences through days out and visiting places of history and interest.

I love my parents very much but we never went anywhere abd my childhood was extremely insular and dare I say boring.

I've a cousin who looks down on poorer people because they are obviously lazy and haven't worked hard enough.

He went to a private school, was financially supported through University (where he scraped a third) and was welcomed into a high paying job in his father's industry. His parents also bought him a flat. He is among the laziest people I know.

Also once when he was seven he had a runny nose and licked his lips as the snot poured into his mouth while I watched. I find it difficult to forgive him for this.

Because I grew up in fear (violent alcoholic father) and was often sent to relatives for safety purposes (no social workers in 1962) I have always resisted change and am a real homebody who just wants to feel "safe". It's taken many years and I still haven't entirely gotten there, despite having a lovely DH and and as secure as a person can be, in these very uncertain times. The way I grew up was damaging; it's always there.

sleep, mine was too, didnt have a car so didnt go anywhere. any
school trips were a bit of an eye opener to another world sometimes, although they used to moan about the cost of those!
My parents didnt have the money for any other trips out ( we did go on holiday for a week in the UK on a coach or train, but very cheap holidays, never abroad)
I have made sure my two have had a few cultural trips - purely because I didnt!

cant it's ok! I didn't take it as that. Just as I've got older I realise just how much luck and with that I include luck of birth has a huge part to play in later success.

i used to think success was down to yourself and your hard work, - we tell kids ooh you can do it - just work hard....we don't say, just work hard and hope you are lucky?

sayno, there you go , i would rather someone who knows how to use a hankie ( paper or linen) than someone who has had it all handed to him on a plate! I bet he doesnt have many manners either - that is something that costs nothing, yet to seems to allude people, whatever the upbringing.

class is mentioned on here time and again.
divide and rule, it is a thing. I cant see it changing much though.

Yes, exactly Zaurak. We could all be doing so much better.

It has to come from wanting to lift everyone up. But our UK society is just too much like a pyramid scheme I think - and few people at the top want to let go of their wealth and privilege because the last thing they would want is to have to live more like everyone else.

I do also think 'hard work' in our society can actually mean having the willingness to step on others to get ahead, and to ignore the effects of your actions on others eg sweat shops or cruel mega farming so long as you and your family are doing OK. Not for everyone, but for many.

Yanbu.

Re: Early Intervention. As a mum in a deprived area I have very mixed feelings about this.
My son goes to a nursery which is positivly messanic about his life chances. I'm extremely grateful as far as it goes.
The trouble is they very obviously view me (and mums like me) as an obstacle to be overcome rather than a positive influence in his life.
Which makes dealing with nursery staff an extremely awkward social relationship to navigate.
I do my best to navigate it, of course, because I can see some positive aspects in that attitude for my son.
I say some because he also has to contend with the sense of contempt the school has towards the parents and the area and by extention to aspects of himself. Which, if he is aware of it, will not be positive for him.

More broadly- I find the whole focus on early intervention over other forms of social engineering very interesting. I also read the book soem pp's have mentioned about the history of cohort studies. I find it interesting to see the differences in whatthe data has been used for overtime. In the 60's (i think..) you had the "wasted potential" study which looked into what happpend to high achieving poor kids and why they didn't achieve the same success in later life as less academic rich kids. To me that speaks of a society which is actually interested in removing structural disadvantage.

Later on, you get this study on what factors in the home might mitigate against structural disadvantage.
To me; even the framing of that question, its like saying "We're not interested in social change. Things are staying how they are. What should people be doing to cope with that?"
And of course they found all this stuff about engaging with small children and reading to them and yadda yadda.Which is all true as far as it goes....

But the entire focus has shifted to what working class Mums are doing wrong to perpetuate the class system.
I've seem some truely ridiculous things said by proffessionals (who ought to know better) that would place the entire blame for class inequality on lack of breastfeeding or poor attachment.
But when you look at the 60's and 70's and the huge explosion in class mobility- the people becoming middle class in that era would have been bottle fed, on a routine a la Truby King. So clearly something else is going on!

fucking vultures everywhere preying on the vulnerable is also problem

For me my resilience came from knowing I had nothing to fall back on. I'm not saying that will happen to everyone. It pushed me though. I knew I couldn't go back home if I failed.