You just made the down payment on your dream home, and the
three-car garage glistens with shiny new European imports.
You've paid off all your high-interest debt. Your bedroom
community is clean and safe, and your business is growing.
Everything's great, right? Your toddler's on the waiting
list for the top preschool in the state. Your 12-year-old daughter
gets regular manicures, pedicures and facials. You're working
weekends and you missed your teenage son's last two basketball
tournaments, but you'll buy him a faster PC to make up for
it.
Everything's great, right? Well, maybe not
everything. Yes, thanks in large part to entrepreneurs, the
number of families with a net worth of at least $5 million more
than doubled during the '90s, and those worth $10 million or
more quadrupled. And while entrepreneurs are spending more money on
their kids, they're spending less time with them and burdening
them with outrageous expectations. In turn, the children of
America's new rich are growing up with low self-esteem, lack of
motivation and depression-to name just a few symptoms. In fact,
there's even a term for this fast-spreading epidemic:
affluenza.
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"Self-made millionaires really need to pay attention to
what values they're passing on to their children," says
Kathy Marshack, a psychologist and family business consultant in
Vancouver, Washington, and author of Entrepreneurial Couples: Making it Work at Work and
at Home (Davies/Black). "Frequently, children who grow
up in wealthy families feel they're worth less because their
family says 'Your value is how much money you earn.'
Children don't earn money, and they feel
insignificant."
Many guilty parents try to make up for their deficiencies by
purchasing extravagant gifts, which only exacerbates the problem.
Not only are the kids' real needs not being met, but they also
learn to equate material possessions with self-worth and are unable
to differentiate between want and need. What can parents do?
"We say no a lot," says Sheri Brooks, 35, co-founder with
husband Gary, 38, of eMailDirect, a digital direct marketing
company. The couple has two daughters: Montana, 11, and Billie Jo,
5 months. "I know Montana has more than most kids," says
Sheri. "We don't want her to think everything's just
going to be handed to her."
The Brookses spent 15 years enduring the peaks and valleys of
entrepreneurship before eMailDirect took off in 1997. Now, the
family lives in a $2 million Italian villa in Southern California.
"Montana's seen a lot of changes recently," says
Sheri. "She's run the whole gamut-from living at
Gary's mom's house four years ago to moving into a mansion.
She knows what it's like not to have anything, so that puts
things in perspective for her."
Maintaining perspective is also important for the parents.
"The kids of entrepreneurs get neglected a lot," says
Marshack. "It's sometimes hard to remember them when you
have contracts to write and phone calls to make. But if parents
don't pay attention to their kids, the kids assume they
aren't of much value."
Many parents pay nannies or sitters to take care of their
children, while others simply turn the job over to electronic
devices. Just as video games and TV sets raised the latchkey kids
of the '80s, computers have become the new surrogates of
choice. "The Internet is great, but it shouldn't take
over," says Sara Lewis, 46, site director of Pasadena,
California-based KinderStart.com, an online resource site for
parents with children under 7. "Computers give immediate
one-to-one feedback, but it's not part of a social setting. If
kids are getting babysat by the computer or TV, they're missing
out on vital human interaction."
As a mother of two (Matthew, 4, and Lily, 4 months), Lewis makes
sure her kids spend more time with people than machines. "Why
does my son need a computer or a TV in his room?" she says.
"Socialization is more important. We read together or go out
to a museum. He's not trapped inside watching television all
day."
Lewis enjoys working from home because it allows her to spend
more time with her children. But many office-based entrepreneurs
aren't interacting enough with their kids because they
didn't anticipate the effect children would have on everyday
life. "If you add a complex piece like a child, you have to
readjust all the other pieces of your life to make it work,"
says Marshack. "Some entrepreneurs don't realize that. You
can't keep running the business full speed and expect to just
plug the kid in somewhere."
The irony is that while wealthy parents are having trouble
fitting children into their busy schedules, they seem to have no
problem heaping outrageous expectations on them. "Your kids
might not be capable [of] or even want to do the same things
you're doing," says Sheri Brooks. "You don't want
to pressure them to the point where they resent you.
To a certain degree, you have to let them do their own
thing." Marshack agrees. "There has to be room for
independent action," she says. "If not, you're going
to see a whole generation of kids with ADD and depression, who
regret not having a childhood. You can hire the nanny, you can put
them in private schools, but how are you going to feel years from
now when you're alienated from your kids?"
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