Affluent parents can be prone to neglecting their children as much as everybody else

[bluestateguy]

Maybe more.

When you have successful or famous people as parents and they have a lot of money, it is easy to see how neglect could take place. Maybe it's neglect with a silver spoon, but in the end it's still neglect.

If Mom and Dad are very invested in their well paying careers, that may require a lot of business travel and socializing with other adults. Or maybe they jet set a lot with expensive vacations and leave the kids behind to care of nannies and babysitters.

Sure, such parents can indulge their kids with a lot of nice things, nice clothes, cars, tennis lessons, send them to private schools and the best colleges. If they need help, send them to a pricey therapist, or a posh rehab resort if drugs or alcohol become problems.

But such parents often fail to get emotionally involved in their kids' lives, and while the kids are financially supported, they end up feeling neglected and un-loved.

[Demit]

1. Sure.

And some children are so needy that no amount of attention is enough. They will always feel alienated and unloved, and will demand more, always more, and still feel deprived.

[whathehell]

2. I agree..

You can see how some kids of celebs do..I'm not saying celebs are necessarily

bad parents, but they almost ALWAYS have money.

[Warpy]

3. I knew kids who grew up like that

and one set had an outbuilding on the property converted to living quarters so their parents would never have to hear teenager music or put up with teenager drama. They had no clue what their kids were up to. The kids had been fed separately since they were young children so family dinners, when they occurred, were an aberration and usually set up because some kid's grades had fallen short or s/he had been expelled.

Even when the kids lived in the same house, it was at the opposite end of some sprawling pile of masonry from their parents.

The kids I knew didn't have famous parents, which is why most of them came out OK. The ones with famous parents have an additional burden of either trying to live up to the fame or rejecting it completely, trying desperately to distance themselves from a famous name that doesn't fit.

Even the chilly Irish Catholic upbringing I got was preferable to that.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. When I volunteered with street kids, some of the them were from locally prominent families

We volunteers didn't know any last names (and most of the kids had chosen "street names" for themselves anyway). But the paid staff assured us that we would recognize the last names of some of the regulars at the drop-in center.

They were neglected rich kids, and when they acted out or got into trouble, the parents, being too busy or sociopathic to get emotionally involved, often sent them to one of those abusive wilderness programs or other abusive institutions.

When the kids ran away from these programs, the parents refused to have anything to do with them, so they ended up on the streets.

In the meal program that I'm currently volunteering in, there is a girl from an affluent family who is on the streets. She has dreadlocks, tattooos all over, and more piercings than I've ever seen on a single human being. Her parents give her money on the grounds that she stay out of their neighborhood and away from all the parents' friends and work environments.

[LiberalEsto]

5. True. My older daughter worked as a nanny for several years.

She worked for several affluent families,and her experience was that the parents couldn't even be bothered with potty training, let alone teaching their kids basic manners like saying please and thank you. They bought their kids all kinds of trendy and expensive toys and video games, but never read to them, and rarely spent time with them.