I had this discussion with my BFF few weeks ago and again with a colleague friend yesterday. I am worried, conflicted, and not sure what to do to address my worry. What is it?
What would motivate my kids to work hard and pursue progress.
Several reasons that led me to wonder this
- They are privileged. They have access to a comfortable life, access to opportunities for good education, experiences, and exposure to a lot of things.
- When I was little, as an immigrant kid of two working parents, I knew I could only improve my life by working hard. So I had a strong driver to excel in whatever I do. This is not the case for my kids.
- I see my friends’ kids, who are older in college, lack of motivation to work hard, to pursue anything, to even wanting to get married, as they are so comfortable with the life they are, and they want little to live, a phone, a bed, food, and they are content.
What can motivate kids if they don’t want to get a better life, if they have everything they think they need. I am not thinking about the pursue of a better life as end goal, but having to go through the process of doing something hard in life with a purpose. That is the greatest joy in my opinion. Have an ambitious goal, work very hard for a long time, toward fulfilling it, enjoy the journey, and come out satisfied and content with the effort and outcome. Isn’t that like a marathon? That’s why I love the process so much. The grind, the hard work, the struggle. Doing something hard is very satisfying to me. But for that to happen, one needs a purpose.
For my generation, the purpose was to get a better life, more financially speaking. I am leaning to think that for the next generation, the purpose will not be financial, rather social and worldly.
What do you think?
Our New Journey 
If it helps, I have also wondered that – my kids are extremely privileged in every way, but I am happy to say that they are very motivated and hard working. Perhaps this is because they have seen other extended family members who are not? I don’t know. But in any case they are very motivated (and they are 20 and 18.5)
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I don’t know, but I work for shelter and food and am not particularly ambitious beyond that. *shrug* I think your measure of happiness/contentedness doesn’t have to be everyone else’s.
I work, but not particularly hard (please don’t tell my boss that). I don’t get the same satisfaction after achieving the end of a hard project – I just get a bit annoyed because there’s almost always another hard project at hand. Life’s just a series of unenjoyable hard things to do. I’m happy that you enjoy the grind, but it just makes me want to not get out of bed in the morning.
So maybe if all of just simplified our lives and weren’t so ambitious, it would be better. But without the ambitious people, buildings would never be built and we wouldn’t have gotten to the moon, so there’s that.
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I think about these things too; I believe we sometimes look back with rose-coloured glasses. It IS great to work hard at things but, also, I feel like I felt like my worth was correlated to how well I did academically. It was such a driving force for me, I didn’t really stop to consider if I LIKED what I was studying. It all worked out in the end for me, but I so far have not pushed my kids academically at all. I want them to be happy, I want them to learn the value of hard work, but in the context of doing things they enjoy. I think being content (and not operating out of fear/anxiety) might be one of the best motivators?
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Well… it’s true that most of us (most of us reading and writing blogs) have a fairly comfortable life, which means our kids have a comfortable life. It definitely can’t compare to your upbringing in a family of immigrants, struggling to improve their lives by working hard. I don’t know the answer to this- I agree that many young adults these days are not as motivated as they could be. My feeling is that you’ll pass your work ethic on to your girls, and they’ll have their own motivation for working hard? I don’t know, it’s a tough one.
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this is very close to my heart. As an immigrant who left the country of origin at 18, I passed through much adversity and that gave me grit. My kids don’t have grit. Adversity is good since it teaches you the strength and self discipline. My kids are also extremely privileged and the grit is simply not there. At least not yet..
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I think about the privilege aspect of things quite a bit. We especially talked about it when setting up our will. We had a discussion about whether, if we both passed, we would want the kids to get money over a course of years or all at once. I wanted it parsed out over a course of years in case they weren’t financially responsible and would spend too much if they got it all up front. But ultimately after talking through it with the attorney we decided that the guardian would help with this aspect and that hopefully they will end up being really financially responsible people by absorbing how we approach life and if they don’t, there isn’t much we can control about that once they are in their 20s and beyond. This is a different topic because it’s about financial responsibility, but working hard is kind of related because they will need to work have to be financially responsible.
I didn’t come from as challenging of a background as you did but we were very middle class and I had to pay for my own college so I didn’t have the privilege my kids will have. But my siblings and I all ended up being very hard workers and live successful lives and I do think it’s because we saw my parents work hard and care about what they did. So hopefully our kids will learn from us as well. All that said, we will not encourage our kids to go into asset management! Phil and I have had great careers but it is a tough industry with fee compression and non-stop cost cutting and layoffs, etc.
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Shoot… I wrote a long comment on this and then had to answer my phone before I submitted it and now it’s gone. 😩 Anyway, this is something I think about a lot too, and so does Ivan as an immigrant. I don’t feel satisfied currently with my kids’ work ethic, honestly. It concerns me…. (Like the bathroom cleaning example I texted you about.)
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This is an interesting topic. I don’t have kids so I don’t have to think it in a serious way, but I think kids learn by example (and they probably see you and your husband work hard for what your family has) and I think even if privileged, you can teach them to appreciate what they have and have them “work” hard for what they want (e.g. not give instant gratification).
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