We all have a voice in our head that talks about money.
For some it’s the haunting voice in D.H. Lawrence’s story “The Rocking-Horse Winner“— the voice saying: “There must be more money! There must be more money!”
The children hear it when the elaborate and splendid toys came at Christmas while their parents struggled unsuccessfully to maintain their expensive lifestyle. The voice was an inaudible but palpable anxiety about money and always needing more. The title of Lawrence’s story comes from the horse on which the young son, Paul, rocks madly while hearing the names of the winners of upcoming races. But the voices in the house only increase as the family’s lifestyle becomes more lavish, always outpacing their newfound wealth. Paul finally rocks himself to a fevered pitch, collapsing as he delivers the name of the final winner. The payoff is enormous, but Paul never recovers. To quiet the voice of dissatisfaction would cost Paul his life.
But there are other, more hopeful, voices talking about money. And Ron Lieber, the personal finance columnist for the New York Times, has written a book about such voices that, unlike those in Lawrence’s story, lead not to destruction but to health and the adoption of important values. Lieber’s excellent book, The Opposite of Spoiled, is not as much about money as it is about virtue.
Lieber uses conversations around money to help inculcate seven basic values in our kids that will lead them to become mature adults. Once instilled, these seven virtues—curiosity, patience, thrift, modesty, generosity, perseverance, and perspective—will serve children for a lifetime. Without them, our children are condemned to the unhappy and unsatisfying life of being spoiled.
So how can we raise unspoiled kids? Lieber lays out his method:
“I assembled a list of values and virtues and character traits that come closest to defining the opposite of spoiled, ones that collectively add up to the kind of grounded, decent young adults that every parent hopes to send out into the world. And as I stared at the word cloud I’d created, I realized that every last one of those attributes—from generosity and curiosity to patience and perseverance—could be taught using money.”
But it’s not only our kids who should learn these attributes, parents need to as well. And a real strength of this book is that even when Lieber pokes fun at some of our more immodest lapses of judgment, he is not finger-pointing or hectoring. Lieber encourages us to ask: How can we as parents grow and mature while we struggle to make good choices about our priorities? We too are changing, and these conversations with our kids only underscore the importance of our own choices. Are we raising materialistic kids and using them as proxies in our own private status wars with others? How central is wealth and comfort to us? What are the disciplines we impose on our kids but not on ourselves?
Using exchanges and engagements with everyday families and the research of experts, Lieber has put together some of the best resources on the topic I have read to date. He does not overdo the use of experts, which would make the book dry and academic, nor does he select families who seem airbrushed and picture perfect. Rather, The Opposite of Spoiled is, as you might expect from a journalist, written to engage as well as to inform. It is written from years of experience with real people and families who have valuable perspectives to share with us.
What then is the opposite of spoiled? It starts with hearing different voices. Not the voices that dominate our culture, voices like those in the “The Rocking-Horse Winner” that demand more and more; rather, we need to hear voices like those in one of the final chapters of Lieber’s book:
Birch Rock Camp in Maine doesn’t have water toys, ski-boats, or horse-jumping rings. “We don’t think about stuff,” the camp’s alumni director said, “We think about soul.” Thinking about soul is a long-standing tradition for the older boys. They call it “The Whale” and it’s a five-mile swim around the lake for which they train all summer. Ron Lieber arrived at the camp just as one of the boys was far in the distance in his attempt:
As the speck grew near that day, a buzz arose and then, in unison, a chant as the aspiring Whaler came closer stroke by stroke by stroke.
“I BELIEVE THAT GABE CAN SWIM
I BELIEVE THAT GABE CAN SWIM
I BELIEVE THAT GABE CAN SWIM
I BELIEVE THAT GABE CAN SWIM”
I did not know Gabe and had yet to meet a single person at the camp, but I found myself holding back tears. The cheers grew to roars as Gabe reached the dock…The Whale, I later learned, is the moment that Birch Rock boys anticipate for years.
Perhaps this answers most fully the question asked at the beginning of the book: “What is the opposite of spoiled?” It’s not a life of artificial deprivation or denial. It’s not guilt or hiding what we have both earned and been given. Rather, it comes close to the verses in Ecclesiastes: “Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions and enables him to enjoy them […] and to be happy in his work—this is a gift of God.”
Isn’t that what we want to say to our children, after all? Aren’t those the voices we want ringing in their ears as they finish their lap around the lake for which they have trained from childhood? “You can swim. You can do this. You can be an adult. You can be fully alive.”
I cannot imagine anything better than that.
Note: This book review originally appeared in its unedited version for Cardus, a think tank dedicated to the renewal of North American social architecture. You can read Fred’s review for Cardus here.