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

by Jennifer Breheny Wallace

“Sure, it’s easy to point to outlier parents, the ones who are hiring SAT tutors for middle schoolers or starting nonprofits for their kids so it looks good on the college application,” he said, “but they are not really the problem.” The parents that really concern Weissbourd are the ones who organize their entire relationships with their children around their kid’s achievements, a hidden curriculum that becomes the main, if unspoken, focus of their parenting.

In reality, higher education has become what economists call a “positional good.” This means its value lies less in the actual education provided and more in the fact that not everyone has access to it. An acceptance letter to Amherst or Pomona is a more powerful status symbol than, say, a Gucci handbag.

When we talk about pressure, perfectionism, anxiety, depression, and loneliness in kids, what we are really talking about is an unmet need to feel valued unconditionally, away from the trophies, the acceptance letters, the likes, and the accolades. When we say that “pressure” is detrimental to children’s (and parents’) well-being, what we mean by “pressure” is a set of circumstances that cause our children to wrongfully perceive their value as contingent on achievement. When an adolescent believes they must sustain a certain level of success in order to earn their parents’ love and affection, they feel inadequate, and this interferes with a healthy, stable identity.

No one is born knowing their inherent value. We form this perception over time, based on how we are seen and treated by the people in our lives, most critically by our primary caregivers. In other words, self-worth isn’t developed in a vacuum.

In his book The Psychology of Mattering, Flett notes seven critical ingredients to feeling like you matter: 1. Attention: Feeling that you are noticed by others 2. Importance: Feeling like you’re significant 3. Dependence: Feeling like you’re important because others rely on you 4. Ego extension: Recognizing that someone is emotionally invested in you and cares what happens to you 5. Noted absence: Feeling like you’re missed 6. Appreciation: Feeling like you and your actions are valued 7. Individuation: Being made to feel unique, special, and known for your true self

The difference between what we say and what our children hear is magnified in the teen years. Like all of us, teens come wired with a negativity bias. Simply put, adverse events elicit a stronger neurological response than positive ones.

Of course, having unconditional positive regard doesn’t mean that parents can’t have expectations about a child’s behavior. Psychologists say we must be mindful about how we express those expectations. When a child acts in ways that are inconsistent with our values or hopes, we need to signal warmth even while expressing disappointment.

Our children feel freer to express their true selves when we focus less on molding them into what our communities regard as “exceptional” people and more on seeing and loving them for who they are right now, their wonderful, “ordinary,” authentic selves.

Our job as parents isn’t to push or drag our kids to excellence. It’s to correct the lies that our society tells them: that they matter only if they’re performing, if they’re achieving. Our job is to let them know they are enough, right now, in this moment.

Like criticism, praise is a form of judgment and can make a child vulnerable to shame when they don’t measure up. As one student in my survey explained, “Being told that I was especially good at something felt like I had to then work really hard to maintain if not exceed the levels at which I was already doing it . . . [or] I would be worth somewhat less.”