Why I’d rather raise a bogan than an upper-middle prat
Herald-Sun, 10/12/2016
WENDY TUOHY, December 9, 2016 6:00 pm
RICH white Australian kids don’t pick fruit. They think they’re above it, don’t want to stoop and couldn’t handle the hard work and low pay. Hearing these claims during the argy-bargy of the backpacker tax debate was pretty flipping depressing.
If any kid for whom I have sacrificed so much in order to raise them comfortably turned around and sniffed at a summer job that was “beneath” them, I would feel like a failed parent.
Compared to much of the world, all our white kids are “rich”, and none should think hard work is not relevant to them or they have a choice to pick and choose between early jobs that could help them build an employable CV.
I hate to sound like your grumpy aunt at the Christmas table, but “back in my day” we did whatever part-time job or holiday job we were lucky enough to land and attempted to save some of the money as well as cover our own teenage living expenses.
You feel proud of yourself when you have earned your own money, to state the obvious.
My policy was to stack on as many part-time jobs as I could without my marks suffering.
I mostly got away with it, but was once pulled aside by the Year 11 head teacher and given an ultimatum to either scale back on the jobs or the band I was singing in – although she could not stump up a good reason (in my mind) why I should.
Checkout chick, car washing, wrangling feral younger kids on school holiday programs, even church (and amenities) cleaning, I did whatever it took to start myself off on my own two feet financially from around Year 10.
There was not much spare cash around at home, but I think I would have worked anyway for the sense of independence and because I was already aware that having good references would help me land the job I really wanted post-school – a journalism cadetship.
“These days” too many kids you meet have not even considered getting paid work outside the house before they leave school, and some are useless at home as well.
I don’t blame indulgent parents. We live in an age when every moment in your child’s life is supposed to be Instagram glam, so who wants to be seen as “needing” their 15-year-old to work when they could be making a podcast on the features of their latest Yeezy sneakers.
Still, the cotton wool generation is now in its teens – and without the necessary life skills, like knowing how to take instructions in a low-status job, they will struggle.
We’ve all met people in the workplace whom you can tell have had absolutely everything done for them by their parents and have had nothing but praise for their schoolboy/schoolgirl achievements.
They’re the precious ones who struggle to understand the reason they are there is to make their boss look good, not be lavished with praise and recognition. They don’t tend to last.
One of the best skills you can help a kid develop, whether he or she is rich, white, black, brown or bright green, is to help them learn self-discipline, independent motivation and persistence, even if the job is not their favourite thing and even if they don’t feel adequately acknowledged.
Less-than-glamorous early jobs are a brilliant way to teach them life will not deliver special treatment like their parents may have, and to get by they need to suck up instructions and carry out the task without pausing to consider if it is “worthy” of them.
The kids willing to roll their sleeves up will be the ones who eventually can afford to own their own home.
Remember those boys who left school early to do trade school and were looked down upon from on academic high? They may have seen the inside of more sewerage pipes than they’d like to recall but they’re driving German cars on weekends now.
One reason the show Upper Middle Bogan has been such a hit (apart from the fact it is brilliant) is that it perfectly caricatures the affected and precious attributes some too-privileged kids are getting to adulthood with, without having had the benefit of them being metaphorically slapped out of them.
It also (caricatures) the pragmatism and practicality of the “bogan” mindset – not too big on worrying about how other people see them, ready to give things a crack even if it may blow up in their face and ready because they don’t care what snobs think.
When my son came home from his part-time bakery job and informed me he had learnt to wash the dirty, old dough scraps off the bottom of the mop bucket, I took it as a sign this kid will be fine.
If “upper middle” Aussies are silly enough to think fruit picking is too menial, then, as a loving parent, I would rather raise a “bogan”.
Linked from 12/12/2016 Journal