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Although there has been comparatively little empirical research conducted with wealthy children, more has been done with their adult counterparts, and relevant evidence is presented here. Consideration of these findings is important even for those interested primarily in child development, inasmuch as the processes that affect rich adults will affect their children too, both indirectly through their parents and directly through exposure to the same subculture. Discussions in this section begin, accordingly, with a brief summary of scientific evidence on adjustment problems associated with material wealth.
This is followed by more detailed descriptions of conceptual arguments offered to explain such problems, which collectively implicate processes that operate at the level of the individual, of the community, and of the broader culture of affluence. In a special issue of the American Psychologist published at the turn of the 21st century, several scholars argued that high material wealth can be associated with low psychological well-being. Reviewing cross-national epidemiological data, Buss noted that rates of depression are higher in more economically developed countries than in less developed countries.
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Considering the United States, historical trends show that Americans have far more luxuries than they had in the s, with twice as many cars per person, plus microwave ovens, VCRs, air conditioners, and color TVs. Despite this, they are no more satisfied with their lives Diener, In the words of Myers b , p. Meanwhile, the divorce rate doubled. Depression rates have soared, especially among teens and young adults. The more people strive for extrinsic goals such as money, the more numerous their problems and the less robust their well being. Links between wealth and unhappiness have been explained, by some, in terms of high stress levels and dearth of intrinsic rewards.
Deiner , for example, has argued that to the extent that the high productivity associated with affluence involves little leisure time, people become increasingly prone to distress, as economist Schor has described how the pressures to work, acquire, and consume tend to deplete personal energies. Csikszentmihalyi , p. Friendships, art, literature, natural beauty, religion and philosophy become less and less interesting. Pittman , for instance, has argued that people who accumulate high wealth often have a special talent and are single-mindedly dedicated to its development and marketing, resulting in scant time for personal relationships.
Perkins similarly showed that adults with Yuppie values—preferring affluence, professional success, and prestige over intimacy in marriage and with friends—reported being fairly or very unhappy twice as often as did others. Although inordinately high desires for wealth can impoverish relationships, causal links can also operate in the opposite direction. Kasser, Ryan, Zax, and Sameroff found that teens exposed to cold, controlling maternal care came to develop relatively materialistic orientations, whereas better nurtured teens came to more strongly value intrinsic goals such as personal growth and relationships.
Experiments by Chang and Arkin indicated that people tend to turn to materialism when they experience uncertainty either in relation to the self feelings of self-doubt or in relation to society e. Individual-level explanations of affluence — unhappiness links have also implicated discontent following habituation to new wealth, in a process similar to any unfolding addiction. Csikszentmihalyi has noted that wealth, like many good things, is beneficial in small quantities, but it becomes increasingly desired and ultimately becomes harmful in large doses.
It enticingly offers happiness, but it cannot provide satisfaction, so those who attain some of it keep thinking more of it will provide satisfaction…. Withdrawal from wealth, and the hope of wealth, can be terrifying. Competitive structures of market economies can promote distress by inhibiting the formation of supportive relationship networks.
Political scientist Putnam , has argued that when there is high use of market-based services, there is, correspondingly, limited engagement of individuals outside the marketplace, low levels of cooperation for shared goals, and growing use of the market to acquire child care and other services historically provided by family and neighbors. Collectively, such trends erode social capital, as exemplified by diminished attendance at PTA meetings, churches and temples, or community development groups, all groups that are vital for the well-being of communities.
Evolutionary psychologists have suggested, furthermore, that wealthy communities can, paradoxically, be among those most likely to engender feelings of friendlessness and isolation in their inhabitants. As Tooby and Cosmides argued, the most reliable evidence of genuine friendship is that of help offered during times of dire need: People tend never to forget the sacrifices of those who provide help during their darkest hours. Modern living conditions, however, present relatively few threats to physical well-being.
Medical science has reduced several sources of disease, many hostile forces of nature have been controlled, and laws and police forces deter assault and murder. Ironically, therefore, the greater the availability of amenities of modern living in a community, the fewer are the occurrences of critical events that indicate to people which of their friends are truly engaged in their welfare and which are only fair-weather companions.
These contentions are relevant to processes among the affluent inasmuch as material wealth reduces the need to depend solely on friends. In essence, therefore, the rich are the least likely to experience the security of deep social connectedness that is routinely enjoyed by people in communities where mutual dependence is often unavoidable Myers, a. Physical characteristics of wealthy suburban communities may also contribute to feelings of isolation.
Houses in these communities are often set far apart with privacy of all ensured by long driveways, high hedges, and sprawling lawns Weitzman, ; Wilson-Doenges, Neighbors are unlikely to casually bump into each other as they come and go in their communities, and children are unlikely to play on street corners.
Cross-cultural researcher Triandis noted that in complex, individualistic settings, people can belong to many groups without being strongly committed to any. They can choose their churches or clubs from among many choices, for example, and they tend to remain with these or leave them as suits their needs. In simpler, collectivist societies, by contrast, choices are fewer and groups such as village or tribe are often assigned. As allegiances shift less often, there are concomitantly more opportunities for the development of strong group-based relationship networks.
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Arguments offered by Schwartz are also based on cultural emphases on individualism, except in this case the mechanisms involve high choice and control on the one hand, and vulnerability to depression on the other. The reasoning in this case is as follows. Extraordinary material wealth usually implies high levels of autonomy and choice, so that many affluent people can live exactly the kind of lives they want. They are able to purchase an endless variety of goods and services, and given high professional skills, they are able to move from one job to another with relative ease.
Whereas all these options might be assumed to engender happiness, they often lead to depression instead. Because increases in experienced control are accompanied by increases in expectations about control. Continuing this argument, Schwartz noted that when perfection is not achieved, the ethos of individualism biases people toward attributing failures to personal rather than to external causes. Finally, cultures of materialism carry the strong message that affluence brings happiness—with the implicit corollary, of course, that wealthy people who are unhappy must be ungrateful, self-indulgent, or both.
Psychotherapists report, in fact, that affluent individuals commonly struggle with confusion and guilt about their distress e. This makes no sense at all—I must get over this! Tower, personal communication, April 7, Our own work with suburban teens has revealed similar themes. Over the years, several troubled youth have reported that disclosure of their depression has elicited negative reactions ranging from incredulity that they could have anything to be unhappy about to dismissal or even scorn of what are seen as self-centered and entirely unwarranted complaints.
The cultural trivialization of their depression—via the ubiquitous message that the rich have no right to feel emotionally deprived—only exacerbates existing feelings of isolation and alienation.
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Aside from intrapersonal, community-based, and cultural factors that contribute to wealth — unhappiness links, there are also some challenges relatively specific to women in upper-class communities and other challenges more salient for men. To consider women first: Many affluent mothers do not work outside the home.
Despite excellent qualifications and, frequently, stellar early career trajectories, several of these women leave the work force once they have children.
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As sociologist Hochschild has demonstrated, American parents in general—from diverse backgrounds and socioeconomic strata—tend to prefer being in the office to staying at home to care for young children, perceiving the former as generally more gratifying and the latter as comparatively more stressful. Mothers who do remain employed, conversely, often experience the dual pressures of having to excel not only at fast-paced, demanding jobs such as investment banking or corporate law but equally in their roles as mothers e.
At the same time, many of these women set very high standards for themselves as parents. Describing this phenomenon, Dr.
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Although this concern with appearance may be disparaged by some as a shallow preoccupation unique to the rich, evolutionary psychology experiments suggest otherwise. As Gutierres, Kenrick, and Partch and others have argued e. Thus, women in general can come to doubt their own appeal as mates when surrounded by others who are highly physically attractive. Consistent with this reasoning, results of experiments established that female participants, when shown pictures of other physically attractive women, subsequently reported lower feelings of personal adequacy and decreased ratings of their own attractiveness as marriage partners Gutierres et al.
Given that dominant and influential men are likely to be ubiquitous in the most high-paying professions, there is again considerable potential for the festering of self-doubt and insecurity among men working in such settings. Furthermore, failures can be particularly painful for those most accustomed to power and success. In their studies of vervet monkeys, Raleigh, McGuire, Brammer, Pollack, and Yuwiler found that the highest ranking alpha males had levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin that were twice as high as those of other males in the group.
When these alpha males lost their position, however, their serotonin levels fell and their behaviors resembled those of depressed humans: They huddled, rocked, and refused food. These behaviors were then reduced with the administrations of drugs that raise serotonin levels, such as Prozac. As Buss , p. High-income professionals are commonly seen as excessively ambitious, volitionally choosing their fast-paced careers given lopsided priorities concerning the importance of money or fame versus the welfare of their families. Although there may be some validity to such views, there are at least three factors that bear consideration before making sweeping judgments in this regard.
As cryptically noted by Myers b , p. The second consideration is that many parents in upper-class communities can be reluctant to give up their high-paying careers not out of shallow greed or insatiable consumerism but because it could imply reductions in opportunities for their children cf. In this regard, again, rich parents are not unique: All parents want to do the best they can for their young. Whereas fencing lessons or designer clothes might be viewed as frivolous indulgences, the desire for high-quality educational experiences is less easily dismissed.
Equally, however, it could—given the materialistic culture of contemporary America—reflect their guilt at voluntarily choosing not to work hard at acquiring all they possibly could, for the next generation. As previously noted, research has shown that many people become highly invested in acquiring wealth and prestige in reaction to, or as compensation for, lack of emotional gratifications Kasser et al. Interestingly, some negative views of the very rich are similar to those applied to their counterparts at the other extreme of the economic continuum.
In her literature review, Lott noted that the poor are often characterized as being dishonest, indolent, promiscuous, uninterested in education, and personally responsible for their plight. There is a parallel set of adjectives commonly applied to the rich: The wealthy may actually evoke more widespread dislike than the poor given their status as the keepers of the power rather than those excluded from it much as the schoolyard bully is usually more disliked than is the victim. Based on their extensive literature review, Exline and Lobel concluded that outperforming others can be privately satisfying, by engendering, for example, feelings of pride and efficacy.
At the same time, it can be a source of much stress—and most so among those highly successful—because of feelings of guilt or embarrassment; empathic sadness for those outperformed; worries about conflicted relationships with them; and fears of provoking their envy, exclusion, or retaliation. Exline and Lobel noted, furthermore, that wealth and possessions are among the domains in which people tend to experience high stress about having outperformed others, an assertion that implies, in turn, that wealthy folk are probably well aware that societal attitudes toward their difficulties will be unsympathetic at best.
To summarize, then, families in poverty are obviously greatly handicapped from the standpoint of basic necessities such as food, shelter, and education, but in terms of being disliked or distanced by society in general, the affluent may be at least as disadvantaged if not more so. Clinicians working with poor heroin-abusing abusing mothers are often cautioned about reactions such as judgments of their moral depravity or neglect of children e.
In parallel, therapists working with the very rich are warned of reactions ranging from dismissiveness at the one end to envy and active contempt at the other. Weitzman , for example, reported that many service providers trivialize complaints of spousal abuse from affluent women, assuming that they have all the resources needed to leave their abusive partners; consequently, assistance is often denied and referrals not made.
While discussions presented thus far highlight the psychological costs of affluence, several counterarguments warrant consideration in weighing the overall magnitude of the problems suggested. The first of these concerns the authenticity of disturbance reported by affluent youth. Although a few samples of high-SES teenagers have shown elevated levels of depression, anxiety, and substance use, it is possible that these problems reflect normative complaints in the culture of upper-class suburbia rather than serious psychopathology. In the years ahead, longitudinal research will be critical in illuminating this issue, identifying the degree to which high self-reported distress among suburban teens does in fact presage subsequent deterioration in critical domains, by affecting their school grades, for example, or leading to diagnosable mental illness.
A second issue concerns the geographic generalizability of problems among affluent youth. Extant evidence of modest inverse links between family wealth and positive adolescent outcomes i. Department of Health and Human Services, On the other hand, the studies showing elevations in negative outcomes—greater psychopathology as compared with normative samples—were conducted in Northeastern suburbs e. It is plausible that regions of the country vary in the degree to which affluence implies highly stressful, competitive lifestyles and, thus, increased vulnerability to symptoms.
In a similar vein, it is not clear whether the problems suggested represent a largely suburban phenomenon or might generalize to high-SES children in large cities. The third issue constitutes a critical caveat to the substantive take-home messages that might be gleaned from this paper: To be sure, epidemiological evidence will be required to ascertain the degree to which child psychopathology rates are truly elevated among the wealthy. Even as we await such evidence, however, it would be wise to recognize that a no child is immune to stressors from the environment, b extreme environments of all kinds are likely to have their own sets of problems, and c there is almost no developmental research on the ecological context of affluence.
It is critical that we now begin to consider the other extreme that has remained ignored thus far, making a concerted effort to illuminate the challenges particularly salient for children of affluence, along with the severity and continuity of problems they might develop. As researchers begin to clarify these issues, it would also be prudent for applied professionals—educators, pediatricians, and other clinicians—to remain vigilant to the mental health vulnerabilities of high-SES youth.
Research on child psychopathology has shown that, in general, most parents tend to be aware when their children are emotionally troubled but, at the same time, tend not to seek help for these problems Puura et al. Classism is unconscionable whomever the target; a child who is suicidal or dependant on drugs deserves help regardless of how much money his or her parents earn.
In most low-income communities, the creation of quality mental health services would necessitate considerable financial support. Although obviously not panaceas for extant ills, such efforts could begin to sensitize caregivers to potentially insidious stressors in the context of affluence, stressors that they like we, in developmental science may have been only faintly aware of in prior years. Although children of the very affluent are typically seen as low risk, there are some suggestions that they manifest more disturbance than others, particularly in relation to substance use, anxiety, and depression.
Exploration of causes suggests two factors as being implicated: Extant studies with adults have also suggested psychological costs of material wealth. At the individual level, inordinate emphasis on material success can limit attainment of other rewards critical for well-being, such as close relationships. At the community level, material affluence can inhibit the formation of supportive networks, as services tend to be bought and not shared. At the systemic level, the subculture of affluence emphasizes personal autonomy and control, with the associated dangers of blaming oneself when control is not achieved.
Many upper-class mothers give up professional careers and are thus deprived of work-related gratifications; those who remain employed can face exacting demands both in their jobs and at home. Fathers, in turn, can contend with the substantial ramifications or fears of losing positions of power—the higher the status, the greater the fall—and with frequent absences from home due to professional obligations.
Many might believe that rich people should simply walk away from their pressured lifestyles, but to relinquish a lucrative career can be hard for anyone. Although not all possess wealth, the desire for more of it is universal. Moreover, many rich parents may stay with their high-pressure jobs not out of personal greed but to provide their children with the best they can in many cases, a stellar education.
Classism is directed to some degree at the rich, as it unambiguously has been directed at the poor. Without question, for those concerned about the next meal, the misery borne of ennui can seem ludicrous. On the other hand, the desire to be liked and accepted by others is universal, and the rich are not only often the focus of envy and dislike—from society in general and sometimes from clinicians—but are also aware that their misfortunes tend to evoke malicious pleasure in others.
Additional developmental research is clearly needed to illuminate the nature, magnitude, and continuity of problems particularly salient in subcultures of affluence. Also critical is the need to consider the mental health needs of high-SES children, who unlike adults cannot obtain therapy for themselves, and many of whom may be discouraged from using services available in their schools or communities.
Although in no way detracting from the myriad and formidable challenges faced by the poor, it is vital that psychologists correct their long-standing lack of concern with the isolation unique to affluence. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Author manuscript; available in PMC Aug Find articles by Suniya S. Author information Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to Suniya S. Electronic mail may be sent to ude. The publisher's final edited version of this article is available at Child Dev. See other articles in PMC that cite the published article.
Abstract Children of affluence are generally presumed to be at low risk. Suburban Parents and Communities Although there has been comparatively little empirical research conducted with wealthy children, more has been done with their adult counterparts, and relevant evidence is presented here. Research With Adults In a special issue of the American Psychologist published at the turn of the 21st century, several scholars argued that high material wealth can be associated with low psychological well-being. Individual-level processes Links between wealth and unhappiness have been explained, by some, in terms of high stress levels and dearth of intrinsic rewards.
Community-level forces Competitive structures of market economies can promote distress by inhibiting the formation of supportive relationship networks.
Gender-specific stressors Aside from intrapersonal, community-based, and cultural factors that contribute to wealth — unhappiness links, there are also some challenges relatively specific to women in upper-class communities and other challenges more salient for men. The Rich and the Poor Interestingly, some negative views of the very rich are similar to those applied to their counterparts at the other extreme of the economic continuum.
Counterarguments, Caveats, and Future Directions While discussions presented thus far highlight the psychological costs of affluence, several counterarguments warrant consideration in weighing the overall magnitude of the problems suggested. Conclusions Although children of the very affluent are typically seen as low risk, there are some suggestions that they manifest more disturbance than others, particularly in relation to substance use, anxiety, and depression.
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