Her mother dislikes poor (black/Latino) people...not realizing that we're poor, too.
I've completely fucked up here by trying to do my best to provide for my daughter (and her mom). My parents and grandparents all worked to provide a middle-class lifestyle for us. There were precious few extras, ever, so I learned early on not to give a shit about brand names and the like. While other kids got fancy new clothes, my parents were saving every penny to be able to take my sister and me on eye-opening summer vacations throughout America.
I work hard, but have made it too easy for Mom to give her too much and have also done it directly myself. So as a result, she knows nothing at all about hardship. Mom does work hard with her business, too, but make no mistake - if I hadn't given her the initial capital she needed, she wouldn't be miss bigshot around town.
The genie can't be put back into the bottle. There's no way to start over. But I can take her to places and show her what the fuck is really out there for people who aren't so privileged as she's been. All I can hope is that an impression is being made. I don't want her to be a bleeding heart. But I want her to know how to spot a welfare queen...and how to properly hate those fucking bitches and the system that's created them.
You seem like an interesting guy, but
at that. My parents had the exact same attitude. My dad grew up the middle child in a family of six thousand, and my mom's dad was a dirt poor farmer. By the time I was born, my dad had a solid job, and my mom, well, probably wouldn't have dreamed of sniffing the kind of money he was making in a thousand years when she was growing up.
And as my brothers and I grew up, they took the exact same attitude you're showing here. They were absolutely terrified us kids wouldn't know hardship, and would become entitled little punks without a clue in the world about the value of hard work. They probably had nightmares we would become live-in thirty year olds and suck them dry, leaving the whole family worse off than than even their parents were.
I assure you, your daughter knows hardship. She's a human just the same as you or I, and her feelings are shaped by her circumstances, just the same as anyone else. People always warn the privileged about "taking things for granted" -- if ms. crackhead on the streets isn't phased when she can't have nice clothes, why should your kids be, right? Well, they are. That's their hardship. It doesn't
hurt a bum that he can't have nice clothes, a car, etc. or he would
perish. It does hurt a well-to-do kid whose parents are trying to "teach them a lesson." It doesn't hurt some tribesman to have to walk to the well for water -- he's done it his whole life. It does hurt a pampered upper class first worlder.
But more importantly than this, your daughter doesn't live in the same world you grew up in. It sounds like you've worked hard to make a better life for your family than you had growing up. If that's what you want (and I suspect most people do), then you have to realize your children aren't going to have the same values as you. Trying to simultaneously give them a better childhood than you had while instilling all the same values that were drilled into you will never work. It's a twisted aim.
My parents tried to do this, and I quickly lost all respect for them. I hope your kids don't follow suit.
