Abstract

It’s hard not to worry about, and plan, our children’s future. We want the best for them and we can help them comb through the plethora of choices. But we can offer them more if we encourage freedom.

Connection to website’s theme

In many ways, our children are our life. Certainly, a significant amount of life’s intense experiences come from our children. And we humans are aware of our life persisting into the future. If we wish to be fulfilled, we can neither ignore the future nor live only in the future. We need to know how to do so.

We’ve all done this kind of parental thinking

I was speaking to a relative who is looking to branch out into real-estate investing through a rental property. Now definitely any new investment involves multiple considerations. In this case, it would include such aspects as investment potential, investment plan, specific tradeoffs, cash flow, etc.

But one question this relative had was whether to get the place in her own state or to get it just across the state line. Why? To qualify for the option of in-state tuition for her children, who will start kindergarten this fall. I winced. It wasn’t just because it is an unusual and premature requirement next to the other investing considerations. But it was mostly because I’ve done precisely similar things as I began my journey as a parent.

A common response

Most people’s response to this kind of question would be that we don’t need to worry about this now. We can get such an avenue for in-state tuition later if needed. After all, we can’t be sure our child will best fit with colleges in that other state, depending on major and other interests.

But this response misses the crux of the matter. Even if this specific question is pushed for the time-being, more such questions will arise. Why? Because this kind of perspective on our children’s future – the need to examine so far in advance – is embedded in our cultural values.

And it’s not just for our children. Across our own lives, we encourage ourselves to think about – and plan – the future. The imperative is to begin saving for college as soon as we become parents. It is an accepted, nay I say necessary, approach today. We are expected to map out and plan not just for tuition when they get to college, but for before and after. To ensure our children will be well rounded and obtain acceptance to the right schools, we work to make sure they have the right extra-curriculars, the right volunteer and leadership experiences, and of course the right grades.

The alternative

Whoa! An “alternative” to planning?! I’m not listening.

I would like to propose that this approach is in error – not just for us as parents, but most especially for our children. Now, the knee-jerk reaction to “we shouldn’t do this at all,” even in my own mind, is that I would be jeopardizing the future of my child.

But I want to take a step back and review the fear that keeps us on this set path of structure for our children. Is that truly doing them a good service? Or is it the planning, in fact, that is jeopardizing their future, and their own life?

Will our approach of planning for a successful future that focuses on satisfying the quantitative measures of money, status, career ladder, prestige, etc. really be more beneficial than the alternative? In the abundance of our recent modern world, these criteria have ceased to be the primary concern.

A changed world

College at one point was the gateway to a new life. It guaranteed a new, promising career that your parents cannot train you for; a career that won’t suffer from the fluctuations of agriculture and changing technology; a career that is critical for one to have for supporting a stable home and family. But is college still that way now?

Alternatives to a full degree abound in the form of cheap online courses and group and self-built projects. Tuition prices have risen faster than inflation. It is no longer possible to work one’s way through college. And if cheap government student loans weren’t available, it’s unlikely that the salary difference from going to college would be worth it except for the handful of engineering-type degrees.

We, of the recent generations, accept that this approach was effective in getting us into successful situations. But it’s not the same stark contrast like it was a hundred years ago when college was a major game-changer. The generation that will be next sending their current grade-school age kids to college are starting to wonder: did my successful situation come at the cost of my joy?

A proposed alternative

And that is the point of discussing this difficult topic. But it’s not just about college, or even about success. The question is what, and who, is the future for?

Even if we minimize the college-attending drawbacks and barriers and focus only on the good things it can bring, aren’t we forgetting something important? By structuring our kids’ lives in advance, we are allowing our fear of scarcity and limitation to direct us. But limitation and scarcity constraints only minimally apply to our current prosperous world.

The structured future we provide actually deprives our children of the one great advantage of our technology-driven world: flexibility. I argue that we owe it to ourselves to stop the fear that is preventing us from enjoying the ups and downs of parenting in the modern world. We owe it to our children to let them experience their lives for themselves, not burdened by the approach of a lifestyle no longer relevant. Rather to let them free: to be in the world they currently live in and lead themselves into the next one, with all the meaning that comes from finding a new way, in a new world.

For comments or questions on this article, please email jeremy@tobeandwhattobe.com 

Article image courtesy: Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay