Is My Kid One Of Those Rich Kids I Once Hated?
Isn’t this what parents work so hard for? Musings from the Target parking lot on money, values and upward mobility
As my teenage daughter and I walked gleefully towards the mood-altering drug that is our neighborhood Target store, I spied a red and white banner covering the building almost as large as the Target bullseye.
“We’re hiring. $15 per hour. Ask inside for details.”
“Wow. Fifteen dollars. You love shopping at Target. Maybe you might want a job there.” The response was as immediate and bored sounding as it was unexpected.
“No thanks. I’m good.”
What? When I was her age, I was crawling under the fryers of a fast food burger chain cleaning out roaches (fried?). I did this noble work for $3.35 per hour. I hated the job, but it put gas in my eleven-year-old Subaru, kept me outfitted in the latest clearance rack Guess jeans and gave me a sense of pride and independence.
None of this history of ancestral striving swayed my daughter.
Growing up, I never wanted for anything, but there weren’t many extras either. My parents approached life with the middle-class sensibility that their parents gave them and that they imparted to me.
