High achieving families

[Coldemort]

this isn't about politics disclaimer
So... I ended up down a twitter/wikipedia rabbit hole around the Javid family (most famous being Sajid, but brother Baz is also very high ranking, another brother a CEO, another a millionaire property magnate).
That family are first generation, working class. What is the family dynamic that makes them so very successful?
The Johnsons of the world, I get. When you have wealth, privalege and the best education money can buy, it makes sense you are going to be in the elite.
But what is the dynamic in working class families that produce such high achieving children? (I could reference other families, but the Javids are the one that caught my eye tonight)

Hard work. The assumption that it's all down to you. Not making excuses. And sometimes doing it for someone else. A very high achiever I know lost his dad just before his GCSEs. Nothing is going to stop that boy.

I agree the Johnson family and those of their ilk already have the hugest leg-up so they don't count. It's the Javids of this world and the boy I know who are to be applauded.

I think you need a certain mindset too.

I don't think it's as simple as JUST having that mindset before everyone jumps on me, but I don't think you can be a high achiever without it.

I think you need to believe that you CAN achieve before you do.

My mam is very very left wing and she believes that social mobility is impossible because they system is set up to keep you down. And so she never looks for opportunities because she doesn't believe they are there and that everyone who has achieved anything has done so down to luck alone.

I believe that the system is totally fucked but that there are opportunities out there for some people if you look for them; so I look for them and have found some.

I'm a leftie too but I made a decision to think more Tory when it came to my own personal development, to believe that social mobility was possible and that I could create my own wealth.

If you believe you can't you won't.

@user13745865422563

Lol. Luck. Capitalism relies on a large number of people staying at the bottom of the heap. That doesn't mean plenty of them haven't worked hard, been driven, and thrown everything at trying to better their life. I find it quite a nasty, distasteful view to suggest only the random few who end up in positions of wealth or power worked hard.

It would be impossible for everybody in a capitalist society to rise to wealth. So it's not a case of "work hard and it will be yours".

Although of course the ego of those who end up nearer the top of that pyramid scheme becomes dented somewhat by that reality.

I'm not sure your marker of "high achievement" is one I share.

Yes, not all who work hard are going to be successful and some who are successful will work hard to achieve it.

However, the majority of the successful work hard every day and when they mess up, learn from it and then come back the next day and work smarter, as well as hard. Then, one day, there is a thread that they pull to get to the next step which they pull and then work hard again.

Some will say that the thread appearing is luck. I say it is keeping yourself in the right place to see it.

When I see families where all the children have achieved a lot, I wonder how much of it is down to a competitive environment at home.

I also wonder how much they missed out on by being so focussed on one kind of success, or success in a particular field.

Some who are successful will not work hard to achieve it 🤭

I also think that problem in these discussions is that "success" is very subjective. For someone it's a CEO position for someone it's considerably less.

My electrician is really successful in my opinion. He does good job, enjoys it and is making good money.
For someone that would be "meh" because their idea of success is more academic or more corporate ladder climb. Neither is wrong. It's simply subjective.

That's why these discussions will never end up in an agreement. All this is subjective to people. Everyone has different values, personality, goals, standards, idea of what is luck etc.

@Dongdingdong

Like Margaret Thatcher you mean?

Well - whatever you think of her politics, she did come from a modest background and work incredibly hard. I suppose being seriously bright always helps too OP.

Modest? She came from a middle-class family.

I've skimmed the thread so forgive me if already mentioned. Immigration and race definitely plays a part.

I'm second generation, as are many of my friends. My parents came to this country with barely a penny to their names and they worked damned hard to build a good life for us. The biggest life lesson they taught us was that nothing will be handed to us and if we want to be successful we have to work harder and better than our white peers. We can never give anyone the opportunity to say us immigrants don't pull our own weight or we don't contribute to society. My fellow second generation friends can recount the same conversations with their parents. You have to prove yourself and your worth if you're a person of colour in this country.

I also agree that generally people that come from a tougher background work harder and push themselves more. Maybe to prove their own self worth and to ensure their own children don't face the same issues.

Among my siblings, we've chartered careers in business, law, and management. None of us are or (bar a lottery win) will likely be millionaires. But for me, success is coming from where I started to where I have got to. Success for me also includes the happy family I've created, my husband and daughter, the home we own and the friends we have. Whilst my dad worked long hours every single day of the year apart from from Christmas day, I get to enjoy life at the weekends. Whilst we never once took a family holiday growing up, I'm already planning the next one (once this pesky Covid business is out of the way). Whilst I had every hand me down going growing up, I'm about to splurge on a new pair of boots just because I want them.

My daughter is mixed race but race aside, she will naturally have an easier life because of everything my husband and I will be able to provide. I often wonder if she will have the same drive that I still do.

Hard hard work, a family 'ethic' that's just absorbed from infancy, and also a fair bit of natural intelligence from simple genetics - you can't be slow on the uptake or unable to think creatively, quickly and well and succeed like that.

Whereas the Johnson families of this world show the opposite - you can be spoiled and buffed and fed and puffed up and educated to absolute distraction and it still can't actually turn you into someone incisive, quick, clever.

Johnson is thick as mince and even his dash of native cunning and ability to remember some of the Latin that was shoehorned into him can't cover up the appalling mess he's made of absolutely everything as a result of his complete inability to think critically.

Thatcher was from a lower middle class background, Mike, very different from your average MP back then.

@Lalalatte

Thatcher was from a lower middle class background, Mike, very different from your average MP back then.

Her dad was a mayor, is that "lower" middle class? Sounds quite bourgeois.

@OutwiththeOutCrowd

I would say being able to present yourself in an attractive light is more important than it used to be. There's a lot more CV polishing going on, self-marketing and attention to personality over character.

If you are introverted by nature, the odds are stacked against you more than used to be the case, I feel.

I agree with all that. Introverts do seem to have more of a fight these days. Especially when it comes to group interviews/activities etc.

My grandfather came from a v poor background, one of 10 , an even mix of brothers and sisters. Every one of them managed to stay in education to tertiary level. Most became teachers, one an engineer, one a lecturer. Considering their background and the time they were born into this was an impressive achievement, I would love to know how they did it.

@ContessaDiPulpo

There was a definite difference in work ethic between the European expat kids and Arab expat kids in the place I grew up (very few of us were from the actual place itself). The European kids were generally told to do their best and oh well, never mind, next time, at least you tried. The Arab kids were dumbstruck at this and worked hard to avoid being howled at by parents for the dismal failure of getting a B or less it was similar amongst the kids with parents from India or Pakistan. As a half European half Arab kid I was most put out not to get what I perceived as an easy ride

I doubt I'd have got as far as I have without the drive to push forward though. I think as long as you have that (whether innate or exogenous) you'll achieve degrees/status.

Can you say where you were, @ContessaDiPulpo? Because when I lived in the UAE, young Emiratis generally had so much privilege, free education at home or abroad to post-doctoral level etc and the expectation of high-ranking public sector jobs via Emiratisation programmes, that they had zero work ethic.

(I once had a meeting with a visiting US cardiac specialist who had an academic link to a medical school in the UAE, and who was absolutely fuming because he had organised a get-together for UAE medical students with world-ranking specialists and researchers, including Nobel Prize winners, and had scheduled this during a mandatory on-campus hour and even organised transport from campus to the venue -- and two students showed up out of the entire cohort. He snorted and said 'These guys are just too fat and happy.')

The very successful family I know is a large sibling group which is highly successful across business, politics and the arts (think household names) and think nothing of something like sailing around the world together in relays for charity in their 'spare' time -- their highly successful father died unexpectedly young, which I think was a factor, and they also absolutely spur one another on in competition.

I like them, but I must say that being in their collective company is absolutely exhausting.

My ex was very successful professionally and money-wise. He was from a poor family in a northern town, where the parents always argued about money. He vowed never to be poor and worked really hard to get to where he is. Money and work success were most important to him. Other successes in life (friendships, family, contentment etc), not so much.

He had crippling low self esteem, was never happy, always an outsider, never fit in in the well heeled circles in London. He was never satisfied, always wanted more and more money, more success.

• Lalalatte

Thatcher was from a lower middle class background, Mike, very different from your average MP back then.*

They were not poor, they were 'Trade'.
What you mean is very different from your average Conservative MP back then.

The fact that you are breathing could be considered luck then.

It certainly can be. There is quite a bit of writing out there about those who've had brushes with death and some end up racked with fear and/or guilt on one end of the spectrum while for others they attach a lot of meaning and purpose to the situation or just feel lucky at the other end and go onto success in various ways. Mindset can be seen as part of luck or in addition to it - lucky and/or working hard to have the right temperament.

By all the data science, I should be dead a few times over by now - my mother tried to kill me at least twice, massive medical fuckups, more than a few high risk choices, plus having had suicidal ideation from the age of 9. Yeah, it would be a bit rude if someone else said my life was all down to luck, but I don't see recognizing that things could have just as if not more easily gone entirely differently and likely horrible wrong as taking anything away from me -- some of my survival is down to my laying the ground work, looking for opportunities & taking risks, but those opportunities had to line up & the risks had to not bite me too hard. Lots of people do the same thing and end up in terrible situations or dead. Recognizing that just doing the hard or just taking risks isn't always enough recognizes those people and the issues within society that keep a lot of people trapped.

Personally, I think being an immigrant played a part in seeing so much luck in my life -- if I'd taken the 'safer' route, I wouldn't have been able to immigrate as months later, the immigration laws changed. I had nothing to do with that other than taking what most would have seen as a very risky option - immigrating and marrying at 18. Many women who do the same aren't as lucky as I've been nor would I think most on MN with the mantra 'why are you financially reliant on a man' see it as working smart. It was all balancing the potential risks and responsibilities with the potential benefit.

Luck is getting the potential benefits more than the potential risks. Some things are just inherently risky, some things are riskier because of social structures, and some things we're not and probably never going to really know the risk-to-benefit ratio. That doesn't change the work and willpower it takes to take those risks whether we win or not.

Parents. Pushy parents who hold you account like the big bad world does. They love you unconditionally and provide for you but do not indulge you with bullshit about you being special or blaming others for your failures.

Family is a big thing, I’m a first gen immigrant from an Asian background, there were a small number of acceptable career paths I was allowed to follow. Medical, law or financial. Compared to my parents my brother and I have been very successful, my sister sadly hasn’t. My brother and I worked our arses off, not because it was expected, but because we needed financial independence to escape the family. My parents had good skilled jobs, they’re both intelligent people, but due to the language barrier and training differences they had entry level and very poorly paid jobs in the UK.

My boyfriends family are very successful, he comes from money, he attended a top boarding school in the UK (also a first gen immigrant). He is ‘normal’ and you wouldn’t know his background if you were friends with him etc. He probably has the ‘worst’ job out of his parents, cousins etc as he is ‘only’ and actuary.

We both have good jobs so we tick that particular success box.

@LakieLady I am from one of those families and there was no competition at all. We all support each other. I would check over and help my younger siblings with their cv/ work applications and school work. We are all very happy and had a extremely happy childhood and are all very close to each other. I attribute it to my excellent parents but also we were all intelligent to start with.

@Coldemort

this isn't about politics disclaimer So... I ended up down a twitter/wikipedia rabbit hole around the Javid family (most famous being Sajid, but brother Baz is also very high ranking, another brother a CEO, another a millionaire property magnate). That family are first generation, working class. What is the family dynamic that makes them so very successful? The Johnsons of the world, I get. When you have wealth, privalege and the best education money can buy, it makes sense you are going to be in the elite. But what is the dynamic in working class families that produce such high achieving children? (I could reference other families, but the Javids are the one that caught my eye tonight)

Genetics?

A small increase (or decrease) in intelligence makes massive differences in outcomes.

Theres a reason the average prison population IQ is 2 digits.

I once had a conversation with someone about this and they said that most of the people they knew who were very successful had some sort of trauma in their early childhood (for example parent dying). They were saying this in the context of saying to me that they thought that was the reason I was where I am today - I am from a working class family in one of the poorest parts of the UK. I am now in a senior professional role earning a significant salary. I was a victim of child neglect when I was growing up and very quickly learned to stand on my own two feet and not be reliant on anyone

When I see families where all the children have achieved a lot... also wonder how much they missed out on by being so focussed on one kind of success, or success in a particular field.

Our society is sort of obsessed with making money and success of one kind isn't it? Do we all really want that for our children? I don't.

@Dustballs you’d prefer your children struggle for money and opportunities and don’t further their education??? As I said to @LakieLady I am one of those families and feel privileged to have grown up in such a warm and loving family.

Honestly there seems to be a lot of bitterness on this thread... success is down to luck/ they must be unhappy/ they had to have suffered a trauma / they probably hate their pushy parents etc .

Outliers is a really good book on this.