The Millionaire Next Door
THE WEAK AND THE STRONG
ANN AND BETH: HOUSEWIVES AND DAUGHTERS
Ann is thirty-five years of age. She is the younger daughter of a couple we’|l call Robert and Ruth Jones. Her parents are millionaires. Mr. Jones owns and operates several businesses in the distribution industry. Mrs. Jones is a traditional housewife. She never completed college and has never been employed outside the home. She is, however, active in several noble causes in her community. When her children were young, she served on the PTA.
Her daughter Ann is very candid about her relationship with her parents:
It would be so easy ... to take money from my parents ... for the house, ... for private school tuition.... But it always comes with strings.... My sister [Beth, age thirty-seven] learned that.... She does not lead her own life.... She has learned that the dole comes with a price ... do it Mother’s way.
Ann understood the components of the parental control equation early on. When she was first married, she and her husband sought employment out of town. She insulated herself from her parents’ influence by putting more than one thousand miles between herself and them.
Ann gave up her own career after her second child was born. But unlike her sister, Beth, Ann never accepted economic outpatient care from her parents. Ann became sensitive to the real cost of being on the dole by observing her sister’s experience.
According to Ann, Beth and her family live in “subsidized housing.” Mr. and Mrs. Jones made a sizable down payment on Beth’s home. They also dole out thousands of dollars to Beth each year for housingand other expenses. She receives $20,000 in cash from her parents every Christmas. Beth lives less than two miles from her parents. (One of the proven ways that domineering parents control their adult children is by living close to them.) Ann reports there is some confusion about home ownership between Beth and her parents. It seems that Mother is always at Beth’s—invited or not. And Mother was more involved with the choice of Beth’s home than Beth was.
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Beth married and became a mother before completing college. She and her husband lived with her parents for three years after they were married. This gave her husband an opportunity to complete college. Neither worked, even part time, during this period.
Beth’s husband completed college and accepted an administrative position with a regional corporation, but after less than two years his position was eliminated. He then accepted a position as vice president of administration in his father-in-law’s business. According to Ann, the vice president of administration was a newly titled position. The former title was office manager. But, as Ann explained, the job pays very well, and “you should get a load of the splendid fringe-benefit package.”
It is difficult under such conditions for Beth and her husband to develop much self-confidence. Ann’s parents, especially her father, do not show respect for Beth’s husband. According to Ann, they always felt he was socially, economically, and intellectually Beth’s inferior. They demonstrate much more respect for Ann’s husband, who graduated with honors from a prestigious college and earned a master’s degree with distinction at the age of twenty-four. Robert and Ruth constantly tell their friends and relations of the great accomplishments of “our Ann’s husband.”
Robert and Ruth rolled out the red carpet for Ann’s future husband the first time he paid them a visit. They were very impressed with his academic credentials. Ann reported that during this brief stay, Beth’s husband, then a boarder with his in-laws, acted much like a waiter. Father-in-law Robert would direct his son-in-law to mix and serve drinks and snacks, for example. After several cocktails one evening, Robert referred to his son-in-law as a “bozo.” Ann and her beau were shocked. This treatment left a lasting impression on the couple. Ann pledged that she and her husband would never become “bozos” in her parents’ eyes. To date, she has kept her pledge. This is the case eventhough Ann’s parents pressure her unrelentingly to accept economic outpatient care. In contrast, Robert and Ruth regularly ask Beth’s husband to do chores for them. They treat him more like a handyman and chauffeur than the man who married their older daughter.
Why does Beth’s husband tolerate this situation? Because he has been conditioned to do so. He and Beth have a high-consumption lifestyle congruent with that of his in-law’s. Yet their ability to sustain such a lifestyle is a function
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of their being controlled. Robert and Ruth have communicated a central message to Beth, not so much in words as in deeds:
Beth, you and your husband are not capable of generating enough income on your own to maintain your ascribed station in life. You are economically handicapped. You and your husband need our special brand of economic outpatient care (EOC).
Are Robert and Ruth correct that Beth and her husband would be unable to achieve in life without assistance? An objective third party would contend that they are. But what would the same objective third party say if he had examined this situation from its origin? He might have concluded that Robert and Ruth made a special effort to prove their hypothesis. After even just a few years of receiving aggressive and overbearing economic outpatient care, Beth and her husband have lost much of their ambition, economic self-confidence, and independence. No one will ever know if this couple could have functioned productively on its own. Beth and her husband were never given this opportunity.
The role of enlightened parents is to strengthen the weak. Robert and Ruth did just the opposite. They weakened the weak and continue to do so today. Not surprisingly, they never appreciated their role in causing much of the dependency Beth and her husband experience today. Today Ann has some resentment, even bitterness, toward her parents. She holds them responsible for creating the economic and emotional dependency that her sister and brother-inlaw must deal with every day. Ann has learned much from Beth and her husband’s experiences.
Ann is especially sensitive about her parents’ role in usurping control of her sister’s children. In them, the mistakes of the past are likelyto be repeated. Ann can only wish that her parents had followed some simple rules about raising children to be independent. They can’t now. But Ann can. It’s not too late for her. Ann will never allow her parents to control any portion of her life or the lives of her husband and children.
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CINDERELLA SARAH
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