Kate F

“If you dangle in front of parents the kind of 1 percent life outcome that goes with being a star, some of them will grab for it, even if objectively it’s not a very good plan for their child’s long-term wellbeing. Once a parent hears that their kid might have potential - as a painter, a dancer, a tennis player, a musician, whatever - all the stories of struggling artists and washed up athletes fade to the background.”
― Malcolm Harris, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials

“What distinguishes the way a caring family or state institution treats a child from the way an investor would, if they’re both primarily concerned with the child’s future success? An investor may want an asset to achieve its full potential, but the investor doesn’t particularly care whether that kid is happy while they do it. A caring parent, on the other hand, balances an interest in a child’s future achievement with the child’s present wellbeing.”
― Malcolm Harris, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials

“Above all, [Averintsev] argued, do not distort reality. Facing the past was one thing; reinventing it was quite another. “Christ tells people to return from the imagined world to reality and from the imagined self to one’s actual self. A return to God is possible from any real place - however shameful and disgusting, but not from an imagined one - because we are not there. An imagined self in an imagined world cannot start a journey toward God.”
― Arkady Ostrovsky, The Invention of Russia: From Gorbachev's Freedom to Putin's War

“A hypercompetitive environment sets parents up for dreams of champion children, and then for almost inevitable heartbreak. Millennials of all abilities have grown up in the shadow of these expectations, expectations that by definition, only a very few of us can fulfill.”
― Malcolm Harris, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials