Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic-and What We Can Do About It

by Jennifer Breheny Wallace

“Critics of this generation say they are being coddled and overprotected, but I actually think it’s quite the opposite,” Luthar said. “They’re being crushed by expectations to accomplish more and more.” These students are playing out their young lives in a kind of gilded pressure cooker—shiny on the outside, punishing on the inside. Every win sets even higher expectations: harder classes, tougher tournaments. Even activities that are supposed to be fun and stress reducing, like playing a sport or a musical instrument, become a means to an end: padding for life’s résumé. Speaking to young people crystallized for me just how poisonous these pressures are. One New York student recalled bursting into tears in her third-grade classroom because she thought getting a C on a math test had ruined her chances of getting into Harvard and “living a good life.”

Wow