If our children are the future, America may be headed for some bumpy times.
Witness CSS, Concierge Service for Students.
For 10 grand per academic year, CSS will take care of mundane details like groceries, laundry, bill-paying, medical appointments and cooking.
No need for young Phineas or Delilah to waste time on chores that they could be spending on decolonizing calculus at Harvard.
That’s a hefty price tag to begin with.
And the service is clearly targeted at the ultra-well-off: Its founder cites “kids in pre-boarding schools, boarding schools or college” as clients.
Which means kids now heading down well-trodden paths to power — i.e. plenty of money plus an exclusive education — are going to stay kids for waaaaaaay too long.
These first forays into independent living used to be key moments in an adolescent’s life.
In addition to the liberal arts, they learned the basics of what’s now (sadly) called “adulting”, the simple tasks that make the world go round.
And we get it: Chores ain’t fun; paying someone else to do your dirty work is part of the American dream.
But teens, and especially affluent teens, are totally insulated from any obstacle or challenge these days.
It’s gotten so bad that the past few years have seen a mini-genre of essays arise about how the number of food choices and loud conviviality of college dining halls are causing students anxiety.
Adult life is, to gloss a remark usually attributed to the British historian Arnold Toynbee, “just one damned thing after another.”
With endless blankets of support structures, America’s rich parents are preventing the next generation from learning that — let alone being able to deal with it.
It’s the same impulse that deems opinions students disagree with “unsafe.”
And it leaves us all worse off.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
