To wonder why the children of very hardworking/talented parents can turn out very lazy?

[ReallySpicyCurry]

Just something I was discussing with a friend recently. We both know various people whose parents were exceptionally hardworking, and/or who pulled themselves up in the world due to an unusual level of intellect or talent. I'm not saying they're all millionaires or anything like that, but their efforts have enabled them to create notably better lives and opportunities for their children, and they're looked on as success stories.

Now the children are adults, and have a really lazy view of the world and of work. They will only work the bare minimum they're capable of, and only if they have to, and anything that requires the least bit of effort is looked on with suspicion. They moan a lot and act suprised about having to do things that other people take for granted as part of adult life.

Obviously it's not everyone, but it was interesting that we've both noticed the same thing in very different people - though maybe it's just highlighted by the success of their parents, but as my friend (who has done a lot of online dating) pointed out, even when she was dating men like this, it got to the point where nine times out of ten it turned out he'd had parents who built their own business out of scratch or something, yet he would be moaning about working 25 hours a week.

I do understand what you mean and is also quite interesting about the difference between siblings in that situation. DH, before he met me, was a single parent living in poverty, working but struggling to make ends meet. DSS therefore experienced real hardship as a child but knew he was loved and secure. Then we met, had DS, and our fortunes started to improve with good luck and hard work - having two people there made parenthood easier obviously and having two income massively changed things. By the time DSS left home for university we had started to be able to afford nice things, and not rely on Provident loans and food parcels from family.

DS doesn't remember the poor days. DH grew up very poor, I didn't - my parents weren't wealthy but had enough for ballet lessons, holidays, private school (albeit with an assisted place). DH was determined that he didn't want his kids to struggle when it was possible to afford stuff, so with DS being at home as our situation improved, he never really wanted for anything. He may have had cheaper versions of things sometimes, or had to wait for things, but when we could afford it, we would let him have what he wanted within reason.

DSS is really motivated and has a strong work ethic. DS is lazier. He has always worked - both boys got their first jobs at 13/14 - but he is happy to remain at the local he is and just do the bare minimum. He is capable of achieving more but isn't as motivated as his brother, and I do wonder if it's because he's not experienced being poor like DSS has.

@biggirlknickers

Maybe they’ve had a charmed childhood (on the back of the successful parent) and didn’t learn the same life lessons as the parent.

Definitely the case with a lazy friend of mine. He is lovely, kind, dependable, but lazy as anything!

@NovemberR

I'd like to know if there's a solution to it!

(As the hard working parent of an idle teenager...) It massively frustrates myself and DH that our teenager can't be bothered to put the effort in to anything, despite being bright and capable. We both have a real work ethic that appears to be missing in him.

What does he go without?

And Mia Farrow has a lawyer son.

You just won't hear about non celebrity job kids unless you like reading autobiographies or in depth Wikipedia!

Plus if the parents are driven, they will tend to not let the child do things as the kid is too slow.

This is definitely the case with the very driven, highly-successful parents I know (I know them very well). They are both so highly productive that they never stop for long enough to let their kids have a go. They just do it all themselves as its quicker. They're go, go, go, go, go so their kids just learn that mum and dad do it all and do it faster and better, anyway. It's like busy people have an inbuilt impatience.

I think some of it can be because in certain fields kids can think 'Oh well, I'll never be as good as my DPs at x career/business/whatever and all of my contacts, family assume I will be be the same' and many successful business families don't give the kids challenging roles, as they don't want to let go of control. [Family experience of this, DPs have a very successful business] I work and always have, but have been able to pursue my passion through being able to afford to do extended education and unpaid internships when I was younger. Ended up in a very niche and not well paid, but glamorous job prekids where I met DH. When we had the kids the hours were not conducive re childcare so I went into a very low paid arts and culture job that I love in education. I could do this, as I had sufficient money from my family to supplement the wage drop. So, I am not lazy, but do not want the same life as my parents.

My DH is from a different, but reasonably comfortable background, but is much more 'driven' than me, because he wants to be able to afford things I had as a child. I'm not that bothered, because I am happier in a flat than in a large London house on a fancy square and I know this because I have lived in both. I also would not want the maintainace and things of multiple properties that my parents have.

In a way, I hope our children will have my confidence to do what makes them happy and not worry about striving for things. I do realise I am very very privileged to be able to say that though, I will not tolerate laziness though, and do stop my parents from lavishing money on them, because we are their parents and I don't want them to expect inheritances ect. when they are older.

This is me.

I also remember a teacher saying to us, as the top set class, 'you're the cream of the crop, you'll never have to make the effort!!' : so I didn't!

I fit loosely into this category.

My dad left when I was a toddler, and my mum felt huge pressure to support us. She had neither a poor nor a privileged upbringing. She’s a very high earner, and still working even though she could easily retire now.

When I was a child she was always away working (I lived with my grandparents and auntie most of the time) and when she was home she was always stressed and usually spent weekends catching up on work. I also agree with pp - she’s quite impatient and she rarely left me to just ‘do’ anything myself.

From a young age, I vividly remember that I didn’t want to be that stressed when I was an adult.

I did very well academically but plateaued after uni. I do work FT but I don’t have much drive or ambition for promotions or pay rises. I don’t want to “work hard” because I’ve seen first hand what it did to my mum.

I’m so grateful for the opportunities she gave me, but I’d rather earn £30k and be happier and less stressed.

I worked hard and strove. My kids don’t.

In my job, I often interview recent grads looking for first job.

I have come across a lot who come in well dressed, look smart, excellent academics. No work experience at all. Not a single job ever. Why should I hire somebody like that?

Me: you haven't listed any previous jobs on your CV, what did you do with your summers, school and university holidays?
Them: erm study and read and travel

They didn't need to work. It really irritates me. Parents not doing them any favours at all.

I used to work all summer to pay my way through uni but as a result, gained a good work ethic and countless other skills.

@Poppingnostopping

I'm not talking about people doing reasonable jobs, or choosing a lesser paid career path or going part-time to be with the kids-I'm talking about people who are now in their late thirties, early forties, still living at home working part-time in a local shop and their parents wondering why they are still not quite functioning adults! I know several who just don't have the drive to do any of the things their parents did, even down to basic stuff like earn a living wage for a family or have a nice house. I don't want my children to 'work hard' in the pursuit of meaningless success, but equally I don't want them to be ignorant about the cost of living, or to realise that when you make choices, they have consequences. I think it's sad, the people I know anyway, who still live at home and can't seem to move on, because they are facilitated to become dependent way after it seems helpful, it also doesn't help relationships I don't think, living with mum and dad' beyond a certain life point.

But equally, you see that with plenty of people who don't have hardworking parents. Probably more so.

My DP's parents worked minimally all their lives (the odd part-time job here and there but mostly not) and two of her siblings fit the pattern you describe. When I met DP all four of them were in their 30s and none except DP had ever held down a full-time job. They just didn't see why you would. The youngest still complains working full time is 'too hard' and 'too much'. But you can actually see why they think this, because from their perspective, there is no point to working very hard, nothing ever gets better, and their parents are never going to kick them out or motivate them to do more. Indeed my PILs routinely ask why anyone would bother to work too hard, and are very judgy of me and my DP working while we have a young child.

I think it's actually much rarer for children with successful parents to fall into this trap. We notice it more, as a society. But we don't notice that society is failing people like my partner's siblings, because people just assume they're lazy, rather than that they're struggling to break away from bad examples and haven't had much reason to believe there's anything to strive towards.

I think young people are questioning everything nowadays. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. All this having a good “work ethic” is somewhat drone like. Earn money, pay plenty of taxes, buy “stuff” then die and have your relatives pay inheritance tax. It’s all economy based. If someone wants a simpler life, good for them! I think young people are questioning stepping on the hamster wheel at 21 and staying there for 50 years. They are asking themselves is this what I want from my life? To me success comes down to one word, happiness. You can be outwardly successful and utterly miserable inside. What’s the point of that? For some happiness will come from a high earning career, big house etc, but it’s not for everyone.

@Pukkatea

The automatic assumption is that being hardworking is a virtue.

But perhaps these children don't see it that way - it's possible they look at the lives their parents led and don't want that for themselves. Their parents had to be hardworking, but their kids can focus on their own life priorities.

I think that’s fair. DS is only eight, but I certainly don’t want him to grow up with the kind of continual fear and worry DH and I had from impoverished upbringings in the 70s and 80s — would Daddy lose his job again? Would we lose the house? Dared we say our school shoes were really pinching at Easter in case there wasn’t money for new ones until next school year? What was cheap enough to ask Santa Claus for?

We both exploded out of those lives like a bomb because we’d grown up with parents we’d always had to worry about, and because we had no safety net at all — we had to get on because we couldn’t fall back.

I’m delighted that DS has never had to pretend too-small shoes still fitted, or tear up letters home about school trips because he knew without asking there was no money for them, or worry about strikes, redundancies and lack of paid overtime when under ten. That he doesn’t need to bottle up worries because he knows his parents are already overburdened. That he won’t have the sheer hunger to get out and get on that we did is to me an excellent exchange, to my mind.

You could present poor little me, sitting university entrance exams as a spindly 17 year old, surrounded by the boys in private school uniforms who expected to win them, as heroic and self-motivated, but I’d like DS never to have to sit an exam while desperately aware it’s his only chance out, and that absolutely nobody thinks he has the slightest chance.

My eldest acknowledges that he is much more motivated for success than younger sibling because we were in poverty when he was young. He remembers it and never wants to live like that again. It reminds me of Daddy Warbuck’s speech in Annie!

The idea of there being amoral dimension to ‘hard work’ is very culturally specific. It’s not in human nature as such but is learned behaviour.

We should think critically about whether we should be valuing hard work for its own sake. Does it really make someone a better person??

I think being driven is inborn, not something that can be instilled or learned. If you don’t have it you don’t have it.

I wonder if this is me. I feel quite lazy a lot of the time and definitely see work as a means to an end, though do work full time. My dad was a banker and was basically always at work, stressed, unhealthy and endes up dying in his fifties. I am grateful to my parents for setting me up with a good quality of life but don't see the point in working all the hours god sends to have more than I need.

Because the hardworking parents often hand them everything on a plate "to give them the life they never had growing up".

I agree with this but with a caveat, I was never lazy but my mother (dad left most of the parenting decisions to her)dictated things like not allowing me to go to college but to go to the VI form (that was rubbish for my her choice of A Levels) my brother had been to because she, 'only wanted me to have the chance she didn't'.

I was forbidden from having a part time job, until she decided I could work for my father, but then the 'wage' was withheld because she had to know what I wanted to spend the money on.

So I pissed about at VI form, or didn't go in and probably was thought of as lazy.

I think when some people have had homes bought outright for them ie no mortgage, just gifted by their parents, that removes a big disincentive for holding down regular work.

I can think of two men like this (one an ex). Both had very small trust funds, allowing them to live very frugally without working. So thats what both did. University educated, professional jobs which they gave up as soon as they were bought the homes by their parents. Both run "vanity businesses" ie teach a couple of spinning classes a week for peanuts and call themselves business owners.

Its quite sad really. They have to limit their lives so as not to go beyond their restricted budgets, and neither want to settle down or be seen as "respectable" so both sleep around (I managed to avoid the second one by recognising the same type after the first).

Whereas I know some people from even more wealthy, but old money backgrounds, who have not had homes purchased for them, who have worked during the university holidays and gone into careers to make their own money.

*Both run "vanity businesses" ie teach a couple of spinning classes a week for peanuts and call themselves business owners.

Its quite sad really.*

I think lots of people might be happier earning less working for themselves than a lot working for other people and if you have the added privilege of knowing your basic needs are covered by the trust fund, why not?

@HotChoc10

*Both run "vanity businesses" ie teach a couple of spinning classes a week for peanuts and call themselves business owners.

Its quite sad really.*

I think lots of people might be happier earning less working for themselves than a lot working for other people and if you have the added privilege of knowing your basic needs are covered by the trust fund, why not?

Yes, I don't personally see anything wrong with the situation @GreenlandTheMovie describes. Clearly it wasn't the kind of life she wanted to live, and not the kind of relationship she wanted to be in, which if of course her prerogative, but I don't see a problem with living frugally off a trust fund or not being in a monogamous relationship.

@biggirlknickers

Maybe they’ve had a charmed childhood (on the back of the successful parent) and didn’t learn the same life lessons as the parent.

100% agree

Eggcorns Yes, I don't personally see anything wrong with the situation @GreenlandTheMovie describes. Clearly it wasn't the kind of life she wanted to live, and not the kind of relationship she wanted to be in, which if of course her prerogative, but I don't see a problem with living frugally off a trust fund or not being in a monogamous relationship.

You need to know further context to understand my comment! No of course theres nothing wrong with taking your foot off the pedal of a stressful career and doing something else. And nothing wrong with choosing to live frugally either. But both of these individuals really talked up their vanity businesses, so as to make themselves seem much more successful than they actually were, and kept quiet the fact that they were supported by trust funds. And both used their vanity businesses to meet women and shag around - one was a spinning class instructor (presented himself as a gym owner when he wasn't) and one was a salsa dance instructor. I think both actually choose those businesses to be involved in in order to meet a ready supply of different women.

Hence, no not happy being involved with either of them. Thankfully the second one was so similar to the first one that I was able to avoid!

So that is why I refer to this type as having a vanity business.