It is one of lifes many ironies that good things, pushed too far, turn into bad things. So it is, even when it comes to loving your own children.

Parents want to do whatever is best for their kids, and usually will sacrifice for the sake of their progeny. Children are our deepest investment in the future, and as close as we get in this world to a kind of immortality. We pass something of ourselves through the gates of death and into the future.

Still, even the deepest love must find its proper limits. Im worried that some of us, in our laudable desire to endow our offspring with all good things, nevertheless find ourselves sucking opportunities away from those less privileged.

Richard Reeves calls it opportunity hoarding. It means that the children of cognitive, educational, and economic elites crowd the ladder of success so tightly that its hard for less-advantaged children to climb it.

We and I count myself among these people engage our children in high quality athletic, aesthetic, social and intellectual enrichment activities, and we are able to pay for them.

My own child went to summer camp, took horseback, dance, and gymnastic lessons, had a math tutor, was a middle-school cheerleader, played lacrosse, swam competitively, and contributed her beautiful mezzo soprano voice to the high school choir.

When she was a little girl in elementary school, a weekend carnival might raise $25,000 in a few hours. That money paid for extras and materials at her school.

Meanwhile, across town, the less-advantaged families barely break even on fund-raising carnivals. My wife has been there and seen that.

All students in my district receive the same funding, but some of them receive more resources, thanks to parent support. That wouldnt be a terrible problem if the state and district allocations were sufficient for anything except the most basic educational services.

Im the last person to say we shouldnt invest in our own children, but all the oxygen gets sucked out of the kids who start life differently.

Part of the problem is single parenthood. Those who are married, even accounting for class and income, spend more on their kids than single parents, who are overwhelmingly mothers, do.

Two sociologists report that, While 84% of children whose mothers have a bachelors degree or higher-level education live with married parents, only 58% of children whose mothers have a high school degree or less do so. And while 75% of white children live with married parents, just 38% of black children do so.

I know, love, and respect many single mothers, including those in my own family. Theyre not always single by choice, and sometimes the choices they made are the best under their circumstances.

I also value hard work and the ability to better oneself through ones own merit. After World War II, this nation made great strides in allowing social mobility through effort and qualifications. My father was a geologist instead of a roughneck because of the G.I. Bill.

Nevertheless, as George Packer recently wrote: The system has hardened into a new class structure in which professionals pass on their money, connections, ambitions, and work ethic to their children, while less educated families fall further behind, with little chance of seeing their children move up.

The kids in my current school are packed 41 to a classroom. Thats a savage inequality. The children dont have any choice about being born into an era when the comfortable expectations of the past dont seem to apply anymore.

Somehow, all of us need to do better.

Frank Thomas Pool is a writer and a retired English teacher in Austin. He grew up on Maple Street in Longview and graduated from Longview High School. His column appears Tuesday.

Originally posted here:

Pool: Merit, inequality, and opportunity hoarding | Opinion - Longview News-Journal