An Empathy Gap?
In my last post, I discussed research on the social isolation that wealth creates, and what this means in particular for the children of the wealthy.
A growing body of research indicates that the wealthy have more difficulty reading other people's emotions and difficulty understanding the fears, hopes, and problems of people different from them. After all, when you find that money and power can leverage problems, it is less important that you understand where other people are coming from or how to read social cues. This becomes a problem for us all, then. The power and influence that the wealthy wield in this society is not tempered by an understanding of the difficulties that the rest of the society face.
Yet children from affluent families face complicated pressures that can distort their sense of self, particularly in the schools. One independent school teacher observed that, “I hate to lump the wealthy kids I teach together, but many of them struggle with a few core dynamics.” This teacher pointed out that many children from wealthy families feel their life is already defined: they face pressure to achieve the same level and kind of success that their (often) high-power, highly successful parents found in school-- to get into the same “prestigious” colleges, etc.-- and they are burdened, too early, with a resume-building focus on the things they do. Secondly, many of them struggle to find happiness because “a lot of the little wins - such as buying a first car - are taken from them.” An example: “one kid I work with recently admitted that his parents’ personal assistant actually wrote his senior thesis and college admission essay...”
Can We Empathize with the Wealthy?
It’s tempting to roll our eyes when we think about the emotional problems of the wealthy. First World problems, we may scoff. Yet to do so is to ignore a real social challenge.
We live in a time of an increasing divide between the very wealthy and the rest of us. The opportunities for envy and projection increase as the divide does. As one psychiatrist observes: " For most of us, empathy directed toward the less fortunate comes easily. But ultimately empathy must transcend economic class. If we cannot approach the wealthy with empathy about their situation and unique problems, we cannot engage them in constructive conversation about this divide. Their isolation and exclusion from the dialogue will only add to polarization and hostility." [i]
How do we encourage empathy and a curiosity about the world in the children of the wealthy? This coming school year (2015) looks to be the first year in which the public school population of this country will have a majority non-white composition. How do we prepare the children of the wealthy to deal with the changing demographics of this country? After all, we are all unprepared for the changes of adulthood and the changes we face socially in this country. The children of the wealthy need the same experience of being heard and listened to, to feel and understand the importance of being heard and listened to, as anyone else.
How Teachers Can Make A Difference
While there needs be many levels of response, from social policy to individual interactions, I want to focus on the important micro-, everyday level—in particular, on the difference that teachers can make in the emotional development of their students, wealthy and not.
So much of our attention is focused on the teaching of cognitive skills in contemporary education that we can forget that good teaching is actually founded on a caring relationship with students. Research shows over and over that teachers who make a difference are good at instruction and also are able to form a strong relationship with their students. We need both in teachers: instructional skills and relational skills. [ii]Good teaching fosters emotional development, helping students understand how the social world works and what it means to be a human being.
The teachers of the wealthy are key players in this drama of social change, with opportunities taking place in classrooms every day. What do these moments look like?
First, it’s important for teachers to recognize that kids who look like they “have everything” may not in fact have what they most need to succeed in life. Don’t assume a kid is “doing fine” just because s/he seems to be highly achieving. Be attentive to moments of challenge, even failure, in student’s lives and take a moment to be curious with them about how they are doing, what they are feeling, whether they want to talk about what it means to be themselves.
A colleague who works with children of wealth described the time an eleventh grader sat in her office in tears because her parents had just sold one of her four horses. She only had three left and she was hurt and angry. Her parents’ had broken a promise—that if she showed she could take care of her horses, they would allow her to explore her passion for riding She had done so, keeping her part of the bargain while they’d not kept theirs. And she was sad: she missed the horse. My friend struggled with her judgment of this child’s entitlement and impulse to dismiss the girl’s feelings (how many horses are enough?)However she was able to realize that the girl was talking about a deeper struggle: that parents make promises and don’t keep them. That we lose things in life that we love very much. My friend could see that the girl felt betrayed and hurt by her parents—something a child might feel regardless of the income level of their parents. The issue was how to help the girl deal with her feelings of loss and injury—that her voice counts too, and that her hurt is worth hearing about and attending to.
Ironically, children of the wealthy may have little experience in feeling listened to and heard by an adult. If their futures are pre-planned, if everyone around them is busy, who actually is listening? Teachers have the opportunity to create conversations that provide an opportunity—sometimes for the first time—for such students to experience their own perspective, their own feelings, their own sense of choice and self-hood. So, for example, consider the teacher whose student told him that his parent’s personal assistant wrote his college application essay. The teacher told me that “at first I was tempted to respond by offering to broker a conversation between the student and the parents, or to reach out to the parents directly.” That’s not what he did though. Instead, he began a conversation with the student that focused on how the student felt about what happened and why it happened. “We discussed what might be motivating his parents to handle things that way. The student ultimately commented that he felt like the outcomes of his life was way more important to his parents than how those outcomes were reached, that he wasn’t allowed to fail, ever, because his parents would always step in and fix things if he got in a pinch! I got a strong sense that the student felt like he was just floating downstream, waiting to hit some moment in his life when he started ACTUALLY living. So, we chatted about what he could do here. One thing the student proposed was to be more proactive, to write the essays, apply, etc., before his parents had a chance to step in.”
In other words, the teacher was listening to the student, raising the important question of the student’s own perspective on what happened and what—if anything-- the student wanted to do about it. The teacher didn’t become the proactive “fixer,” taking away from the student the possibility of developing his own sense of choice and responsibility. (Which would have replicated the parents’ behavior.) Instead, the teacher served as the trustworthy listener who took seriously the dilemma of the student’s life and was truly interested in helping the student develop a response that felt rooted in his own feelings and experience.
And perhaps, in helping a child of privilege understand their own emotional life, and to begin to understand how relationships heal, such lessons will extend to their understanding of all people, regardless of their material wealth.
Schools need to do this for all students, of course, and in an upcoming post I’ll talk about what the role of teachers and schools is in truly “educating” students, regardless of income level of their families.
Dr. Sam Osherson is author of The Stethoscope Cure, a novel about psychotherapy and the Vietnam war. He is a Professor of Psychology at the Fielding Graduate University.
[i] Stangler, R., Comment, “Dialogue With The Wealthy,” NY Times, Feb, 24, 2014