Are We Raising Assholes?

Well, this one’s a winner. 📖 We meet Nina, married into her husband’s wealthy world, enjoying a lavish lifestyle. Their only son, the adored Finch, a senior at Nashville’s most prestigious high school has been accepted to Princeton.🎓 Lyla, raised by her middle-class, single dad, attends the same school on scholarship. Finch and Lyla are two years apart and do not run in the same social circle.

What do you do when your teen becomes not only part of a scandal but is the scandal? 🤔

While Lyla is passed out drunk at a party, half-naked, Finch takes and shares a photo of her, with a cringe-worthy caption. A reckless, insensitive act? Or a misogynistic crime? 🤷🏻‍♀️

While reading this novel, the question that played over and over in my mind was: How do we not raise assholes?

We live in an era of misguided power, where the wealthy feel they (and seem to) matter more. Civil libertarians demand the right to bear arms, women are still objectified, and racism is at its peak. The untouched remain untouched -- as they do in the town of this novel. And a community divided along ethical lines over Finch’s act, waver in the blame game. This is a hard-working kid, albeit one of privilege, en route to a bright college future. Who claims it is all a misunderstanding. And some say this girl put herself in an entirely compromising position. Did she? In any plot dealing with teenagers, the grey areas grow thicker and thicker. If he is found to be guilty of intentional disregard, Princeton will be notified. Should Finch’s Ivy-League life be compromised over a ‘mistake’? Or is this a symptom of the entitled values of a boy who grew up rich? What could make one boy take a photo upon finding a girl in such a compromising position, while another might maybe put a blanket over her?

And what message should Lyla, and society at large get? She herself says Finch ‘didn’t mean it’, the layers of her justification for the exploitation are many. A victim of social standards that place her lower on the hierarchical scale, how does her dad fight for her, in a town where the rich have more power not only in the school, but in life? ⚖️

This novel does what gripping novels do. It forces us to choose, between impossible choices. 📚

Parents will do anything for their children. We hear this all the time. But what does that “anything” actually mean? And at what age does “anything” start?

A segment of Glennon Doyle’s Untamed came to mind after I finished this novel. Doyle writes about her child’s early morning team practices and how parents take turns providing breakfast for the kids of bagels, cream cheese, bananas, and juice. 🥯 🍌🧃 On the eve of Doyle’s turn, one of the parents emailed her, concerned over last week there being only two choices of cream cheese. Apparently, several of the children did not like either, and therefore had to eat their bagels plain, and cream cheese-less. 😱 This parent’s solution was to instead provide all five different flavours from the nearby shop, so that the kids could pick one.🙄 In her thinking, Doyle suggests, “Five flavours of cream cheese is not how to make a child feel loved. Five flavours of cream cheese is how to make a child an asshole”.

Are we all cream cheese parents? Is giving our children the best of everything the definition of successful parenting? Or are we raising assholes? “Does having the best of everything make the best people?”

When we look at teenagers, yes we want bright, successful, happy futures for them. But don’t we also want (more so) integrity? Good people? What will carry this next generation forward in the best way? Money and self-sufficiency, or ethics and morality? And if the latter does not present a viable income, are we left with honest and moral, but economically dependent adults? Or if it does, are they then wealthy, but unscrupulous ‘winners’? How do we mesh the two, and teach our kids to matter, but not matter more than another?

None of this can be answered in a day. But it does leave us wondering, thinking, questioning. If self-worth is determined by how others treat us, how we advocate for ourselves, and how we view ourselves, then TWO people matter in the dilemma of All We Ever Wanted. Finch’s academic future is certainly on the line, yes. But also his feelings about his rights, his entitlement, and his view of the world at large. Yes, he must take from the universe, but must he not also GIVE? And while Lyla’s education is not on the line in this scandal, certainly her self-worth and her own view of the world are. 🌎

If it is our job to make sure our kids have “enough” (whatever that means), isn’t it also to make sure it is not at the cost of another?

Every boy is someone’s son and every girl, someone’s daughter. ♥️