SHOULD TEENS WORK?

Victor Bloom MD

An excellent book on parenting, "Parenting Teens With Love and Logic," (Cline & Fay) coincides with a front page article in Monday's New York Times (January 8). The Times article relates how it is not 'cool' among suburban teenagers to flip hamburgers at McDonald's. Working after school or evenings or weekends is not cool at all, according to many teenagers. It interferes with all aspects of shopping, partying and just hanging out. A few jobs have some cache, such as working in Gap or Starbucks, but fast food emporiums are low-class. Working there can get derisive comments from peers who come there and the working teen may even be the target of arrogant behavior and petty snobbery.

This book recommends teenagers working for at least part of their college expenses. Experience shows that many teenagers given a free ride from their well-heeled parents neglect their studies and play instead of work. They skip classes, drop courses and lie about their grades. They make endless excuses which the parents accept. Of course it is still true that subsidized students can be serious and work hard to learn and get good grades. But they are not the problem.

The book recommends that parents take a realistic approach to college students with failing grades. The example given is the father who puts his arm around his son, explaining that he understands that C is average. He admits that most of us just do average in life, in the workplace and in the family home. We are also average at sports for the most part. Average is acceptable, but below average is not. The father explains that if he were doing below average work, he would not be able to keep a good job or earn a decent income, and could therefore not be able to afford to send his kid to college.

The father explains further that he doesn't feel good about working hard doing average work, making mortgage payments and buying groceries, while the son is doing below average work and squandering the parents' money. It's just not responsible, and the main goal of parenting is raising responsible children who contribute to society, rather than be a drain, a pain and a burden. Parents may even tell the boy or girl while in high school, that they must work and earn the money for their first college semester, and that if they do passing work, the parents will reimburse them completely or in part, and agree to pay for future semesters as long as the grades are at least average. Otherwise, the parent will let the offspring go it alone and get his or her college education later, when they have worked and saved up for it. Although colleges nowadays are permissive about allowing students to take five or six years to graduate, this can be a hardship for the parents, and so many parents are now insisting that they will pay for four years only. Getting a degree will be up to them after that.

Research has shown that students who have to pay their own way rarely get failing grades or flunk out. This is true even though it is very hard to work part time or full time and still keep up with a full academic program. It is also possible to work full time and take college courses at night. Many a successful professional or businessman did just that, getting an education the hard way. Succeeding at work and school is the best way to establish real self-esteem and a sense of adequacy and responsibility.

An important aspect of working, especially at entry-level, minimum wage jobs, is learning about life, and people from the other side of the tracks. Most successful business and professional people are successful because they know about life and people and relationships. They understand the plight of the underclass by working with them and establishing relationships of mutual respect and understanding. We need to learn about being the target of envy and prejudice. We need to understand how and why there is racial polarization and conflict, and why there is antagonism between the haves and the have-nots.

It should be no shame to do any work, and those who do work are making a contribution, however small. Sometimes these small contributions are also essential to the working of society. Working is in itself an education, and the fact of flipping hamburgers is not lost on admission committees of colleges and graduate schools. Those who succeed in work and have a history of work are more apt to follow through with their studies. Although resumés full of extra-curricular participation and volunteer work carry some weight, resumés with real work experience are even more impressive.

Dr Bloom is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Wayne State University School of Medicine. He is a member of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and on the editorial board of the Wayne County Medical Society. He welcomes comments at his email address--- vbloom@comcast.net.