The world can be a tough place. How do I prepare kids?
Life can be rocky, but teaching kids that the world is usually a bad place doesn鈥檛 prepare them for it. Here鈥檚 something I wrote recently about the topic for as a :
Like many kids of the early 2000s, I learned my life lessons from 鈥淭he West Wing.鈥� At one point in the show, Toby and Andrea realized that they divorced because their opposing fundamental beliefs impacted their parenting.
Andrea: I do worry about the kids. Because instead of showing them that the world is for them, you鈥檙e going to be telling them that they have to work hard in school so they can bone up for a life of hopelessness and despair.
Toby: Wouldn鈥檛 it be ironic if our kids were the only ones who were properly prepared?
Andrea wanted to teach their kids the world is good, embrace it. Toby wanted to teach their kids the world is bad, gear up.
How common are Toby鈥檚 and Andrea鈥檚 approaches? Which helps kids more?
To find out, my colleagues and I what basic world beliefs they thought were best for their kids. We call these beliefs primals because they鈥檙e so fundamental, with most boiling down to whether or not you see the world as a bad place. As many as half of parents aimed to teach their kids that the world is bad鈥攂arren, unfair, dangerous, cutthroat鈥攁nd getting worse. And almost all of them thought that seeing the world as very good can harm kids.
Then we surveyed 4,500 people in 50 professions to find how these beliefs played out in real life. After all, maybe people who see the world as dangerous can better spot threats and stay healthier. Maybe if you assume everything will fall apart, you never get disappointed.
But those with negative world beliefs were on average worse off on every outcome we measured: less healthy, more depressed, and with much lower life satisfaction, all while disliking their jobs and performing slightly worse at them compared with peers in their profession. And there was surprisingly little upside to moderation鈥攖he more positive the views, the better.
What鈥檚 more, our research suggests that seeing the world as bad isn鈥檛 just the consequence of having an objectively tough life. For example, people who grew up rich aren鈥檛 more likely to see the world as good than those who grew up poor. Primals are more like hidden lenses we use to interpret life than mirrors that reflect what we鈥檝e been through.
So, Toby鈥檚 鈥渆xpect the worst鈥� approach is popular, but current data favor Andrea鈥檚 鈥渆xpect the best鈥� parenting.
顿辞苍鈥檛 assume teaching young people that the world is bad will help them.
Do know that how you see the world matters. Personally, I plan to teach my daughter specific bad things to watch out for but, on balance, the world is good. There鈥檚 beauty everywhere鈥攚e have only to open our eyes to see it.
