Question
How are the children of rich people socialized into wealth? What behavior codes do they learn that signal their belonging to the wealthy class?
Answer
While not specifically about the socialization of children, the general theory of the social psychology of the wealthy basically explains most of what you see.
The classic on this subject is Thostein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class, well worth reading. Since it was written in the Robber Baron era (1899), which is closer culturally to 2011 than any decade between the 1920s to 1990s, it has actually become suddenly more relevant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The...
There are some new elements (which User-9918985937555143421 , who is rapidly heading towards becoming a Veblen for our age, is hinting at).
Primary among these are the ones that represent contamination from the intervening Organization Man era. These include an odd sense of morality, a do-gooderism that is reminiscent of what Whyte called the "social ethic," which was best exemplified by the lives of the Organization Wives, as portrayed by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique (and Betty of Mad Men as well), who got involved in a lot of do-gooderism.
That middle-class sensibility has now carried over into the new rich, in their high-end charity-fundraiser circuit. Below this hierarchy (usually topped by the First Lady, Michelle Obama at the moment), there are layers and layers. At the bottom of the class I'd call "rich" are the wannabes in the Real Housewives layer. A class that makes me want to throw up.
So I'd guess that the new rich kids have the same wealth around them as the Robber Baron kids, but are being raised on a premium version of middle-class values, rather than the openly predatory elite class values, which assumed the legitimacy of their privilege as a given.
What J. C. is calling the sense of being the "anointed ones" destined to save the world though, is not a phenomenon restricted to the rich. It is true of all Americans who are even moderately successful by any standards. This is illustrated in Dan McAdams' The Redemptive Self. What is new is that the rich have also adopted this "chosen one" script in place of their historically more common, "it is my birthright" script (born to rule etc.)
This Organization Man influence is clear from the fact that many of the new rich are self-made working-rich who arose from the middle/upper middle classes, as opposed to either the elite or the streets, which gave us most of the Robber Barons. In a way this is because there WAS no real middle class before around 1920, when the William Whyte style Organization Man dynamics started to kick in. You had to rise from either the top, out of boredom, or from the bottom, out of desperate drive. The middle launches people with distinctly middle-class motivations.
The sensibility of the 2011 rich, as opposed to the 1890s gilded age rich (read some Edith Wharton to get a sense of that) is a rich topic of discussion. Hmm... that deserves another question, which I'll post.
The classic on this subject is Thostein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class, well worth reading. Since it was written in the Robber Baron era (1899), which is closer culturally to 2011 than any decade between the 1920s to 1990s, it has actually become suddenly more relevant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The...
There are some new elements (which User-9918985937555143421 , who is rapidly heading towards becoming a Veblen for our age, is hinting at).
Primary among these are the ones that represent contamination from the intervening Organization Man era. These include an odd sense of morality, a do-gooderism that is reminiscent of what Whyte called the "social ethic," which was best exemplified by the lives of the Organization Wives, as portrayed by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique (and Betty of Mad Men as well), who got involved in a lot of do-gooderism.
That middle-class sensibility has now carried over into the new rich, in their high-end charity-fundraiser circuit. Below this hierarchy (usually topped by the First Lady, Michelle Obama at the moment), there are layers and layers. At the bottom of the class I'd call "rich" are the wannabes in the Real Housewives layer. A class that makes me want to throw up.
So I'd guess that the new rich kids have the same wealth around them as the Robber Baron kids, but are being raised on a premium version of middle-class values, rather than the openly predatory elite class values, which assumed the legitimacy of their privilege as a given.
What J. C. is calling the sense of being the "anointed ones" destined to save the world though, is not a phenomenon restricted to the rich. It is true of all Americans who are even moderately successful by any standards. This is illustrated in Dan McAdams' The Redemptive Self. What is new is that the rich have also adopted this "chosen one" script in place of their historically more common, "it is my birthright" script (born to rule etc.)
This Organization Man influence is clear from the fact that many of the new rich are self-made working-rich who arose from the middle/upper middle classes, as opposed to either the elite or the streets, which gave us most of the Robber Barons. In a way this is because there WAS no real middle class before around 1920, when the William Whyte style Organization Man dynamics started to kick in. You had to rise from either the top, out of boredom, or from the bottom, out of desperate drive. The middle launches people with distinctly middle-class motivations.
The sensibility of the 2011 rich, as opposed to the 1890s gilded age rich (read some Edith Wharton to get a sense of that) is a rich topic of discussion. Hmm... that deserves another question, which I'll post.