The Secrets of a Privileged Childhood

it isn’t difficult to imagine a
privileged childhood we associate the
term with a swimming pool in the garden
holidays abroad lavish presence and
outsized birthday parties and maybe
someone deferential picking up the
clothes from the bedroom floor during
school hours
our ideas are plainly focused online the
idea has just enough truth in it to
convince the cynical parts of us but the
number of breakdowns and mental
illnesses knowing at the upper middle
classes should be enough to force us to
concede that money cannot on its own be
the reliable guarantor of privilege that
it would in a way be simpler to imagine
it was true privilege is an emotional
phenomenon it involves receiving the
nectar of love which can be stubbornly
missing in the best-equipped mansions
and oddly abundant in the bare rooms of
modest bungalows it is true privilege
when a parent is on hand to enter
imaginatively
into a child’s world when they have the
wherewithal to put their own needs aside
for a time in order to focus
wholeheartedly on the confusions and
fears of their offspring and when they
are attuned not just to what a child
actually manages to say but to what they
might be aspiring yet struggling to
explain
it is privileged when a parent lends us
a feeling that they are loyal to us
simply on the basis that we exist rather
than because of anything extraordinary
we have managed to achieve when they can
imbue us with a sense that they will be
on our side even if the world is turned
against us and they can teach us that
all humans deserve compassion and
understanding
despite their errors and compulsions it
is privileged when parents can shield us
from the worst of their anxiety and rage
and the full conflicts of their adult
lives when they can respect that it’s
many years before a child is old enough
to face the full complexity of existence
and when they are sufficiently mature to
let us grow up slowly it is privileged
when parents don’t set themselves up as
perfect or by being remote and
unavailable encourage us to idealize or
demonize them it’s privileged when they
can be ordinary and a little boring can
invite us to develop into a man or a
woman beside them and can know how to
let themselves be superseded it is
privileged when parents can bare our
rebellions and don’t force us to be
preternaturally obedient or good when
they don’t crumple if we try out what it
feels like to call them old idiots and
when they themselves reliably seek to
explain rather than impose their ideas
it is privileged when they can accept
that we will eventually need to leave
them and do not mistake our independence
for betrayal all of these moves belong
to privilege sincerely understood and
they are at present about as rare as
huge wealth but at points more crucial
it is those who have enjoyed years of
emotional privilege that deserve to be
counted among the truth 1% it can be
natural when we meet with any sort of
privilege that has been deeply and
unfairly distributed to seek to level
the playing field but it can’t be a
redistribution of privilege that is
required here rather a universal
increase and the assurance of a decent
minimum
a truly fair society would be one in
which a yearly rise in the degree of
emotional privilege in circulation would
become a national priority and where an
abundance of love concern and connection
was adequately studied encouraged and
prized as the true wealth it is the joys
and sorrows of parenting promises us a
gentle way of staying calm around one of
the most arduous yet deeply fulfilling
jobs in the world remember to like the
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