"Immigrants to Wealth"

After her recent visit to the US, my wife was telling me that her Indian-by-birth boss wouldn’t allow her (American) kids to do some of the American way of life things, like dating.

That reminded me of Malcolm Gladwell’s book, David and Goliath, where he talked about the “immigrants to wealth” problem. Huh? It’s a phrase coined by James Grubman, explained thus by Gladwell:

“For most of us, the values of the world we grew up in are not that different from the world we create for our children. But that’s not true for someone who becomes very wealthy.”

This group is the “immigrants to wealth”:

“They face the same kinds of challenges in relating to their children that immigrants to any new country face.”

A much milder version of that is faced by post-liberalization Indian parents:

“How do you teach “work hard, be independent, learn the meaning of money” to children who look around themselves and realize that they never need to work hard, be independent, or learn the meaning of money?”

Grubman explains the problem perfectly:

“A parent has to set limits. But that’s one of the most difficult things for immigrants to wealth, because they don’t know what to say when having the excuse of ‘We can’t afford it’ is gone.”

So immigrants to wealth have to switch from “No we can’t” to “No we won’t”. Easier said than done, says Grubman:

“No we can’t” is simple… It doesn’t take long for the child of a middle-class family to realize that it is pointless to ask for a pony.”

But “No we won’t” is so much harder:

“No we won’t” get a pony requires a conversation, and the honesty and skill to explain that what is possible is not always what is right.”

Even if you have the honesty and skills, values are a very grey area:

“I have to teach them: “Yes, I can buy that for you. But I choose not to. It’s not consistent with our values.” But then that, of course, requires that you have a set of values, and know how to articulate them, and know how to make them plausible to your child.”

Making it plausible to your kid… I’ve not had any luck on that front. I realized it when after yet another instance of toeing of the “No we won’t” party line to my daughter, she turned around and asked me, “Are we poor?”

Even if we get past the plausibility hurdle someday, the next hurdle seems even harder: the kid’s peer pressure, what her friends buy, their foreign holidays…