BOOK CORNER
May Book of the Month
“America’s newly identified at-risk group is preteens and teens from affluent, well-educated families. In spite of their economic and social advantage, they experience among the highest rates of depression, substance abuse, anxiety disorders, somatic complaints, and unhappiness of any group of children in this country.”
What? At-risk affluence?
The above study may come as a shock to most of us. After all, we have been told, by our society, our history, our media, our friends and family, ourselves, that money equals happiness. That material success is a sure recipe for living happily ever after. But then what? What happens after economic security and financial well-being and material comfort is achieved? According to Madeline Levine, Ph.D., often, oddly enough, a lot of suffering.
In her recent (2006) study, The Price of Privilege, Levine examines many well-intentioned, but often culturally toxic, styles of parenting privileged adolescents. And her findings force us to rethink our assumptions of how happiness, or lack thereof, plays out in the affluent community.
A clinical psychologist, Levine lives in the largely affluent county of Marin County, CA, where she has counseled numerous teenagers from privileged homes. In addressing the paradox of those who have so much somehow still not getting what they need, she notes, “indulged, coddled, pressured, and micromanaged on the outside, my young patients appeared to be inadvertently deprived of the opportunity to develop an inside … the development of a sense of self.”
Levine realizes that “it is tempting to trivialize the problems of kids who have been the recipients of exhaustive parental intervention and … educational opportunities.” Yet goes on to note that “adolescent suicide has quadrupled since 1950.”
“Why are the most advantaged kids in this country running into unprecedented levels of mental illness and emotional distress?” Levine asks. And it’s an important question and one of the reasons we need to address the impact of class on children and adults across the class spectrum.
View previous Class Action Book of the Month selections...
April 2009: The Price of Privilege
March 2009: Immigrants and the American Dream: Remaking the Middle Class
February 2009: Affirmative Advocacy: Race, Class, and Gender in Interest Group Politics
December 2008: (Movie) Zoned In
November 2008: Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide
October 2008: The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers and the Great Credit Crash
September Book of the Month: Race and Class Matters at an Elite College
July Book of the Month: Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill)
June Book of the Month: Without a Net: The Female Expereince of Growing Up Working Class
May Book of the Month: Women Without Class: Girls, Race and Identity
April Book of the Month: Trembling in Bones
March Book of the Month:The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality
February Book of the Month: Class and Parenting
January Movie of the Month: The Story of Stuff
December Book of the Month: Graceful Simplicity: Towards a Philosophy & Politics of Simple Living
November Book of the Month: All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life
October Movie of the Month:The Milagro Beanfield War
September Book of the Month: Tearing Down the Gates
August Book of The Month: Staff Picks
July Book of the Month: Theory of the Leisure Class
June Book of the Month: Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons
May Book of the Month: Death in the Haymarket
April Book of the Month: Food Politics
March Book of the Month: Psychology and Economic Injustice
February Book of the Month : What's My Name, Fool?
December Book of the Month: Dead Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming
November Book of the Month: Awol
October Book of the Month: Class Passing
September Book and Video of the Month: Beyond Silenced Voices and Declining By Degrees
August Books of the Month: Human Cargo and Gathering the Sun
July Book of the Month: The Overworked American by Juliet Schor
June Book of the Month: More Money Than God by Steven R. Leder
May Book of the Month: Global Class by Jeff Faux
April Books of the Month: Classified and Strapped
March Book of the Month: Welfare Brat, A Memoir by Mary Childers
February Book of the Month: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
January Book of the Month: Invisible Privilege: A Memoir about Race, Class, and Gender by Paula Rothenberg
View last year's Book of the Month selections...
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