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Comment by gyardley | Hacker News Reader

I'd love to hear some anecdotes from non-Americans currently raising kids, especially if they've also got some hands-on experience with American culture. Are American kids truly spoiled, or is the issue universal? If American kids are spoiled, what are you doing differently?

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I'm a first generation American (parents immigrated) and my wife and I are currently raising our daughter in the US, and so I think I have both an American and non-American perspective to some extent. (warning: this is based on a data point of 1)

First, I do think American kids are spoiled (and I prob am spoiling my daughter no matter my desire not to). I don't think this is an American thing necessarily and prob more of a wealth/prosperity/Maslow's hierarchy thing.

My parents were the typical immigrant story. They came here with nothing, knew nobody and so they worked to make it. There wasn't time to "find oneself" or just do what makes you happy or to read about how to parent in some magazine. And so the ethos in our house was you work hard and you get what you deserve as a result. There was no tolerance for whining, entitlement and tantrums and there was an appreciation for what we had that was instilled in us. For example, I was told to only take as much as food I could eat at dinner and that I could not get up until I finished every bit of food I chose to take. I would fall asleep at the table some times eating cold food 3 hours afterwards. Not fun at the time, but there was to be an appreciation for how fortunate we are. Some might view this as draconian but it's now somewhat oddly a fond memory of mine from childhood.

But I think scarcity of resources (translation: not being wealthy/materially prosperous) doesn't allow one to be spoiled and gives one perspective which is often what seems to be lost.

Now I fast forward to today, and I see tons of parenting advice which almost tries to make parenting a paint by numbers effort, a kids culture of "everybody is a winner" and conspicuous consumption (bigger bday parties, expensive strollers, etc) that suggest to folks that good parenting is possible out of a book of academic studies, is driven by always being encouraging and giving your kid material crap. And its this cocktail of things that seems to lead to spoiled kids.

This is a stream-of-consciousness rant so apologies for that.

I'm Russian, and I brought my 9 (now 11) year old daughter to the US. This process was (and somewhat still is) pretty painful for everybody, especially my wife. Russian women are often called 'sitting hens' back home because of their extreme hyper/over/megacare about all things, especially children. And the whole system is built around this - teachers don't talk to kids, they talk to parents (usually mothers), kids opinions are quickly dismissed just because they're kids "I don't care what you think, tell me what your mother says". Kids adopt to this (they're kids) and sit idle waiting for next command from the upper management. But at the end it turned out to be much easier for the daughter than to my wife. She felt like she suddenly lost control of her child - "what if she gets under the bus?!?!11 what if the will fall from the tree?!! what if she will drawn in the pool?!11", etc. My daughter adopted quickly (again, she's the kid) but in a funny fashion - she's very independent in the school and in the company of her classmates, but still very dependent at home (because it's much easier to manipulate your mother to iron your shirt than to do it yourself, you know). I can't say that American kids are specifically spoiled. There's fierce competition, who's cool and who's not. In their school it is cool to be cool AND also get into the advanced math class. Pretty tough objective, I'd say :-) Back home (we went to a very good school too) the relations between kids were much more relaxed, but there was much more physical abuse. All cultures have their benefits and drawbacks, but overall I like it here better. In particular because it's cool to be in the advanced math class :-) And because she was very disappointed to learn that there would be no advanced computer class in 6th grade. And because she wants to go to the summer camp in Stanford to learn special effects in video, etc. But I live in a pretty upscale neighbourhood, one of the best school districts in California, blah-blah. That's definitely offsets perspective.

«very independent in the school and in the company of her classmates, but still very dependent at home» seems to be very typical of young people here in Russia, good point.

Alas, that's purely our fault, parents.

Let me give you a South Asian one then. I was a pampered little brat who was waited on hand and foot. The only requirement be that I maintain good grades. This of course came to bite me hard when I had to live alone at the age of 16 in a totally different country and go to school. So I don't think other cultures have some magical secret sauce that turn out well behaved polite little children.

In fact, the only thing to infer from that silly article whose statistical methodology I would be extremely suspicious about, is that some individuals know how to raise their kids properly and some don't. After all, it doesn't take much to produce a child (just a few minutes of whoopee). :-)

"I was a pampered little brat who was waited on hand and foot."

Are you a male? Were your sisters/cousins/etc. treated similarly? Just confirming my (presuming) Indian stereotypes :)

>>Just confirming my (presuming) Indian stereotypes :)

Indian here,

Not sure, what let you to believe this. There are many kids in India, who still struggle with child labor etc.

Getting pampered isn't a luxury many kids can afford here.

No -- my stereotype is that sons often are treated with more reverence than daughters. This is in opposition to Western stereotypes of "Daddy's little princess" and other celebrations of daughters.

I am Indian too and have lived in India for most of my life in a small town. I have never seen this. Have you seen this quite often ?

I am male. No siblings. So your Indian stereotypes are both correct and incorrect. Depending on what part of the nation you are from, there are places where boys are preferred to girls. I came from a middle class expat family with a rather "liberal" bent. At least among the small sample of folks that I grew up with, most people had fewer kids and pampered the hell out of them focusing on ensuring that this went hand in hand with getting good grades. I believe the same is happening in China with the one child effect. I didn't see any sort of discrimination against women among this demographic. Obviously, India is the kind of place where you can cherry pick and find anecdotal evidence to pretty much support any hypothesis you want.

> Depending on what part of the nation you are from, there are places where boys are preferred to girls.

Preferred to the extent that female babies are often aborted. Female foeticide has been described by Manmohan Singh as a "national shame" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13264301)

I'm an American, with no international kid raising experience. But I'd say that declaring that "All Americans are raised spoiled" is an overly broad/general. America is an ENORMOUS country. These studies seem to focus on the Urban/large metropolitan suburban families. I'd wager that the rate of spoiledness varies vastly when geographic or economic conditions are examined. Whitey McMoney from the Upper East Side is going to be raised quite a bit different from the poor black kids in Queens. Both will be way way off the mark from where a midwestern farm kid will be.

Overall, what I'm trying to say is, I think the research behind this article has too small of a sample size.

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