In a recent New York Times piece, Ben Stein talks about his father, describing how he never thought of the problems that his father suffered while working to give his children opportunities.
O, brilliant kids, you get to put on the garments of the morally righteous and upstanding while your parents work — because mothers work now and always have worked — and your parents must say, ‘Yes, sir,’ or ‘No, sir,’ to those who hire them. O, golden children, you get to talk about how you’ll never ‘sell out,’ and meanwhile your parents stay up late in torment, thinking of how they can pay your tuition. Because, brilliant kids, work (business) involves exhaustion and eating humble pie and going on even when you think you can’t. And you are the beneficiaries of it in your gilded youth.As we approach Father's Day (it's my first as a dad), it's good to reflect on these things. Working is hard and requires effort and compromise. The middle years, where you realize your real chances at getting what you used to want, have always been hard, hence psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques's conception of the "mid-life crisis".
