Why rich parents need to memorize this curve

A half-hour drive up the road from Shepaug Valley, in the town of Lakeville, Connecticut, is a school called Hotchkiss. It is considered one of the premier private boarding schools in the United States. Tuition is almost $50,000 a year. The school has two lakes, two hockey rinks, four telescopes, a golf course, and twelve pianos. And not just any pianos, but, as the school takes pains to point out, Steinway pianos, the most prestigious piano money can buy.

Hotchkiss is the kind of place that spares no expense in the education of its students. The school’s average class size? Twelve students. The same condition that Teresa DeBrito (the principal of a nearby school) dreads, Hotchkiss — just up the road — advertises as its greatest asset. “[Our] learning environment,” the school proudly declares, “is intimate, interactive, and inclusive.”

Why does a school like Hotchkiss do something (have a tiny class size) that so plainly makes its students worse off?

One answer is that the school isn’t thinking of its students. It is thinking of the parents of its students, who see things like golf courses and Steinway pianos and small classes as evidence that their $50,000 is well spent. But the better answer is that Hotchkiss has simply fallen into the trap that wealthy people and wealthy institutions and wealthy countries — all Goliaths — too often fall into: the school assumes that the kinds of things that wealth can buy always translate into real-world advantages.”

The psychologists Barry Schwartz and Adam Grant argue, in a brilliant paper, that, in fact, nearly everything of consequence follows the inverted U curve:

“Across many domains of psychology, one finds that X increases Y to a point, and then it decreases Y.…There is no such thing as an unmitigated good. All positive traits, states, and experiences have costs that at high levels may begin to outweigh their benefits.”

The above paragraphs are from the book “David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants” by Malcolm Gladwell. The book earlier mentions that most teachers prefer a class of 18–24 students to ensure — optimal attention, having peers who struggle with you and ask similar questions, and healthy fun interactions. The class size attribute in education follows the inverted U curve. Too small a class size, and it becomes a disadvantage.

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I distinctly remember doing exceedingly well in phases of my life where I’ve had limited resources, and doing poorly when all constraints were removed. After I had kids, I felt that my ability to be a good parent was handicapped by my ability to spend more money. I wanted to hold back some luxuries, but it’s not always easy. For example, if I take an expensive vacation, my kids end up taking it too. I’ve also noticed that when children get far too much attention from either parent, they do less of self-study and self-play.

Given that I neither have too much money nor time (and yet I felt the curve inverting on me sometimes), I started wondering how the ultra-rich raise their kids. Here’s Elon Musk talking about his five children —

““I have the kids for slightly more than half the week and spend a fair bit of time with them. I also take them with me when I go out of town. Recently, we went to the Monaco Grand Prix and were hanging out with the prince and princess of Monaco. It all seemed quite normal to the kids, and they were blasé about it. They are growing up having a set of experiences that are extremely unusual, but you don’t realize experiences are unusual until you are much older. They’re just your experiences.”

It bothers Musk a bit that his kids won’t suffer like he did. He feels that the suffering helped to make him who he is and gave him extra reserves of strength and will. “They might have a little adversity at school, but these days schools are so protective,” he said. “If you call someone a name, you get sent home. When I was going to school, if they punched you and there was no blood, it was like, ‘Whatever. Shake it off.’ Even if there was a little blood, but not a lot, it was fine. What do I do? Create artificial adversity? How do you do that? The biggest battle I have is restricting their video game time because they want to play all the time.””

— from the book “Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future” by Ashlee Vance.

Too much too soon of anything takes away the most important part of our evolution — the struggle. Real constraints emerging through naturally occurring situations teach kids far more than what parents can do by simulating scarcity. Luxuries do not bring joy if they’re not hard-earned.

But what worries me the most is whether my children will preserve the most beautiful aspect of childhood — that sense of wonder about the world around them. I get so much joy from seeing their eyes light up, and little things bring that joy today. If I never leave them alone with that tiny piece of marble, they won’t learn to play with it.

As parents, we each will draw our version of the inverted U, based on how we were raised, and how long it took us to lose the glory that came from our struggles, and the joy that came from everyday wonders. No matter how we draw the curve for our kids, we need to stay vigilant; one extra step, and we’re down that slippery slope.