Butter and Uggs

Steve and I have been in deep discussions about moving to a town with a better school system. The school system in this town is pretty good, but I went to one of top public high schools in the country and I hate to give my kids' a second-best school. The downside to moving would be a much smaller, uglier house and a community of rich, spoiled kids.

Right now, my kids have zero stress about stuff. Their friends wear Payless sneakers and jeans from Old Navy. Jonah never comes home agitating for clothes or fancy vacations or expensive haircuts, because his friends don't have that stuff. It may be a girl-boy thing. I'm not sure.

Since we have moving on the brain, I've been quizzing other parents about their schools and communities. One woman in a nearby fancy town said that ten year olds get made fun of for wearing Children's Place clothes. The kids somehow know which t-shirts came from which store.

My buddy in Cold Spring Harbor told me that she had to get Uggs for her six year old daughter, because the girls formed an Uggs club and wouldn't let the other girls sit with them. She also told me that every kid had to have a Butter-brand sweatshirt ($100) or else they were not cool. All the girls in the town have three pairs of Uggs, the Butter sweatshirts, and two North Face jackets. (Vomiting a little in my mouth.) 

I really do love that my kids are unconscious of status symbols. I'm not sure if it's worth losing that innocence in order to gain a better school.

Comments

[bj]

"We did a BC ski trip in January and MIL wants our oldest daughter to do a sailing camp (also British Columbia). Maybe it doesn't count unless it's actually Austria and the Caribbean? "

I think it doesn't count if you actually ski or sail. It's when you don't want to do those things but go for the status that it's an issue.

[Amy P]

"It's when you don't want to do those things but go for the status that it's an issue."

I definitely didn't want to ski. Too expensive (ticket, rental, clothes), plus after all these years, I'd probably hurt myself, and there's nothing worse than being an injured mommy. (Right, Wendy?) We went to see my elderly grandparents and get the kids skiing. My husband and the kids got sick, of course, so each child skied about two days (instead of the three that I planned). I'm not repeating that anytime soon, but I'm glad we went.

[MH]

We keep talking about a sailing camp on Lake Erie, but never go. I think the "Lake Erie" factor cuts the status pretty quickly.

[Anjali]

I went to private schools my whole life. Yes, there may be some uber-rich, but there are probably just as many kids on financial aid. The key is to find out how many kids receive financial age -- that will help you gauge how many kids are actually walking around in Uggs.

I'm sure it's not even close to half of them.

[Christiana]

"re: values from the home (anti-materialism or prioritizing education). Studies have shown that peer values out weigh home values by the time they get to middle school."

But until when? I used to work in university admissions and the "Who is your hero" question regularly netted 90% "my mom" or "my dad", 5% Jesus/God and 5% other as responses.

Isn't it our job as parents to build our children's characters so that they can stand up to bedazzled bullies and then, later, Mr. Burns-type bosses, evil neighbors, and/or corrupt governors?

In any case, I don't think familial influence can be that easily dismissed.

[Wendy]

I'm just trying to imagine living in a town where all the kids are going on a trip to the Caribbean.... We're the crazy ones who take our kids everywhere. People in my town take their kids to Disney and Portugal.

I'm not going to spend too much time thinking about kids and peer pressure. S has always been pretty strong-minded, and E will always be clueless, I'm convinced.

SF was nice but unusually cool (everyone we saw was bundled up--LOL! we were practically in shorts and t-shirts). Then we came back to SE Mass where it was frickin' snowing. Ugh. Or Ugg.

[MH]

it was frickin' snowing.

Our snow is finally melting fast. But this winter was bad enough that I bought actual snow boots*. Something happened to my last pair sometime in the early 90s and never replaced them as I never needed them.

*Not Uggs.

[Professing Mama]

I went to an absolutely shitty, fundamentalist Christian school for 12 years. I learned very little there, including almost nothing about science, and the emotional and social sides of school were awful. In spite of all that, I went on to earn a PhD from one of the best, if not the best, programs in my field.

If your schools are good enough and your kids are happy there...well, good enough is good enough. K-12 schooling is important, yes, but it is not the final word on your children's futures. They can have a wonderful life and be successful by any defintion, even if they don't attend one of the top 100 schools in the country.

You know what got me through a school I would NEVER want my own kids to attend? I loved reading and writing from a very early age, and my mom encouraged those interests as best she could. She was dead-set that I would be the first woman in my family to graduate from college, and I became dead-set on it, too. I didn't go to a prestigious high school or college, but I received an excellent education at my little, unknown college. I feel like my life is the embodiment of The Tortoise and the Hare--and yeah, I'm the tortoise. :)

I know this is hard, though. I am having my own issues with Pistola's school right now, and it's hard for me to be all, "Well, I got a horrible education and look how I turned out!" when it comes to her.

We want the best for our kids. The problem is defining what that best is.

[Jennifer]

From Australia, I still can't believe that ugg boots are a genuinely trendy (no irony) item. Here when I grew up they were largely worn by poor working class people. It's a bit like wearing sweatpants to wear them outside the house.

We got a pair from our cheap chinese kids clothes shop for each of our boys for $15 each.

But to the main point - I'm inclined to go with the slightly worse (but only if its slightly) academic school to avoid the extraordinarily sense of privilege you describe. Our closest high school (200m) away (and private) is like that and I won't touch it with a barge pole.

[Jody]

Isn't part of the issue here that Laura & Steve don't feel that their current schools are only slightly less qualified academically? I mean, it sometimes sounds like the schools are actively turning Jonah off to education. That's hard to handle, no?

There are 11 elementary schools in our district, and I know the three which would have had a really bad effect on MY ego, never mind my kids'. Stretching to afford a fancy house in a fancy neighborhood, and then not being able to afford the fancy lifestyle of all your new peers, that stuff is not easy to handle. Not when the school your kids attend creates a big chunk of your social world.

After first grade, our kids were re-districted from the school that included the hippy/bohemian neighborhoods to a school where half the kids live in a development where the median home price is $750K, and the school culture is just different. It's not a HUGE big deal, but it's noticeable. I find myself thanking my lucky stars that middle-school districting starts from scratch, and we're back with the hippies again.

Also, I think there are significant regional differences in this stuff. I would have a hard time finding a place to fit in the greater New York area or -- God forbid -- in southern CA.

[Matt]

SF was nice but unusually cool (everyone we saw was bundled up--LOL! we were practically in shorts and t-shirts)

A few times while growing up in Idaho we went to visit my mother's family is Southern California on our spring break. In Idaho it would be gray, mid-40's, sometimes still a bit of snow sticking around. In Ventura it would be sunny and mid 70's. People there would wear winter coats and hats and we'd wear shorts and go to the beach. (You couldn't swim, but it still seemed great to us.)

[Doug]

Steve wants to quit his job and start bedazzling shit.

There are limits.

[cranberry]

Girls get into clothes snobbery much more than boys. For some kids, a certain amount of lack of social awareness is a good thing, because it protects them from reacting to social bullying. Also, one report of a group of mean 6 y.o. girls doesn't mean that the entire school culture is mean. This often varies by grade.

I think every school and town has its own culture. Affluence doesn't necessarily tract with educational excellence (nor with mean behavior). It really depends upon the town, and the particular group of people who live there. A town near us has a large percentage of lawyers. It's very different in culture from the town which has a large percentage of doctors, and the town where the computer engineers end up.

If you want to decide between towns, don't look at the elementary school culture. Focus on the culture at the middle schools, and the high schools. In our neck of the woods, the lower the school's SES factors, the earlier the kids get into drugs. At the lowest end, a certain number of middle schoolers are waiting for court dates. The higher the SES factors, the more one runs into entitled behaviors. The very highest SES factor town in our area correlates with a weird, "don't want to stress the kids" school culture. This town also has the highest percentage of child psychologists in private practice.

If we had to move in our area, I would move to a real middle-class town, in which the parents are working professionals, but there's no upper-class delusions. I'd look for a high school which offers honors courses and APs in all academic disciplines (or IB). For us, a strong math team would be an indication of a good school culture.

One can always ignore the vapid and ill-informed. Many schools in more affluent districts are better because there's a certain quality of education below which the parents won't allow the school to fall, even if they have to donate money and volunteer. (Tangled grammar alert!)

[Amy P]

Laura,

I see that you've triggered a big google ad for Uggs in the sidebar. May I suggest a continuing series attacking consumption (taking care to drop a lot of brand names)? I'm not sure if it will help your advertising income, but it can't hurt.

[MH]

One can always ignore the vapid and ill-informed.

In school, you usually can. After that, it gets harder.

[Doug]

>>One can always ignore the vapid and ill-informed.

>In school, you usually can. After that, it gets
>harder.

Especially when the set includes customers or executives. Or both.

[MH]

Or peer-reviewers (present company excluded).

[cranberry]

I'll bet that the parents will include a certain number of vapid people. So what? In any "better" school district, there will be many families who are there for the education.

[Leslie M-B]

I attended public school, but because of the way the city’s GATE program was set up, I had to change schools in fourth grade. I went from a solidly working- and middle-class school to one where people lived on the beach and owned boats. It was really, really hard on me as a girl in particular. The pressure to have the latest clothes and to be aware of all the “best” things was ridiculous, and it plunged me into a period of low self-esteem that lasted until 11th grade and set off what has become a lifelong battle with depression. I can’t emphasize enough how seriously it messed with my brain and my self-image.

I think this situation impacted me extra specially hard because I was a girl, and was therefore expected to be extra specially image-conscious.

I understand the desire to give your kids the best educational experience possible. I will say that I went to one of the top high schools in California, but it was in the inner city, far far from that elementary school packed with wealthy kids. If a school has the right magnet program, you can get your kids among high-performing students and also shield them quite a bit from spoiled kids.

[Valerie]

As a kid, I attended some of the finest public schools in the country (my dad was an executive and we basically spent my childhood moving from one highly rated school district to another.) My sense of what a school needed to be "good" was profoundly influenced by this.

But my folks were pretty down to earth. We were comfortable, and probably fit in the middle of the economic scale in these communities. Our vacations weren't fancy or frequent (trips to visit family, mostly) and we probably had 1 of whatever the trendy must-have clothing options were each season, rather than a wardrobe of same. It was the 70's, and it was pretty easy to mock people who were too caught up in fashion.

My kids, on the other hand, attended a rural school, with a fraction of the resources the schools I had growing up offered. We're in a much more economically diverse school district, where some families don't always have a phone. So "fitting in" was mostly a matter of playing down the vacations we took, and dressing in the Target and Old Navy stuff everyone else (except the insufferable princessy lawyer's daughter) wore.

I'd have to say that despite my worries, their k-12 education was just about as good as mine. Here, the very talented teachers had more freedom to address kids' individual needs, and the opportunity to participate in a range of activities, even if one is only mildly talented, gave them a series of experiences which my nieces in their high-powered public school in an affluent community can't really match.

The aforementioned nieces probably fit on the lower end of the economic spectrum where they live, and have definitely registered feeling somewhat deprived as a result of not having what their friends do.

We have less in the way of economic resources than their parents do. But we are in the upper end of the spectrum where we live. The result is that our kids have not felt the pressure their cousins have. And managed to qualify for admission to first rate colleges ANYWAY, because the highly selective schools look for whether the kids have challenged themselves to the extent their environments permit. (Note. It is possible to get into, and excel at a top school with precisely zero AP courses, if you come from a school which does not offer them, but has teachers who see their role as preparing kids to excel at top schools)

Which is a long way of saying that in my experience, it's a lot easier to adjust for shortcomings in the academic environment than in the social one.

[Crimson Wife]

I grew up in that kind of town and was miserable in jr. high because my parents had more long-term priorities for their money than buying status symbols. This year will be my 15th high school reunion and the majority of my classmates I have deliberately not talked to since the day we graduated.

I *did* get excellent academic preparation for college. I'm just not sure it was worth having to endure the social nastiness...