I talked with three moms this week, each of whom has a child graduating, two from college and one from high school. Each described themselves as cracking up from the demands of properly celebrating their graduates. While from different parts of the country, each mom was down the same rabbit hole, caught in the frenzied madness of being a good parent and giving their graduate the celebration she deserved.
The moms I spoke with each described the gifts their girls were receiving—from friends and friends’ families. Just to name a few: customized Uggs, monogrammed tequila bottles, matching outfits, fancy jewelry boxes, spa visits, giant care packages filled with skin care and makeup, gold bracelets, weekend trips… you get the point. It goes without saying that these gifts were not cheap. So, too, the gifts were coming not just from good friends, but also from kids with whom their daughters were not close, and from families whom these moms had never met.
It’s interesting to note, as well, that many of the presents their daughters had received remained in exactly the place in the home where they’d been opened. In some cases, the Instagram-worthy packaging was entirely intact as the present had not been opened at all. It seemed that none of their daughters seemed to care much about what they’d received, just that they’d received it, which may in fact be the most insidious part of all this madness, but more on that later.
Celebrating graduation is now a competitive sport. Gifting other kids has become a way of proving how much our children love and value their friends. And at the same time, demonstrating that our kids and family are cool. The more fabulous the gift, the more fabulous the kid and family who gave it. Gifting is a way, ultimately, of protecting and possibly raising our children’s social status.
It’s also interesting to note that it’s usually the moms who are put in charge of this gift-giving enterprise, regardless of whether there’s any room left on her to-do list, if she works full time, or anything else. Moms have been tasked with finding the right products to properly and fully express how much our children matter to us, and their friends matter to them. Doing graduation right means finding and buying the products and experiences that will adequately capture the meaning of this moment and this milestone. It’s the new litmus test for being a good enough mom, and all of it has become an impossible feat.
These moms I spoke with were suffering with, what I call, graduation anxiety and fatigue syndrome. While aware of being caught in this steroid-injected brand of keeping up with the Joneses, and aware of the tsunami they were spinning in, they were simultaneously aware that it was the madness in which their daughters were growing up, the toxic river in which their kids wanted and needed to swim, and succeed.
That said, this is precisely where we moms get stuck. The moms I spoke with all felt similarly, like they didn’t have the luxury of opting out of crazy-town; imposing their values on their child wasn’t fair and would hurt their child. While they knew it was madness, and even knew that it was bad for their daughters in the long run, still, they felt compelled to play the game, because it was what their daughters needed to be socially desirable and survive in the social jungle. They also knew that it was what their daughters now required to feel sated and truly celebrated. Moms will do anything for their daughters, even if it means keeping up with a culture suffering from a malignant and misguided consumerism, and swimming in what felt like a toxic river.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be looking at various aspects of this shift in what it means to celebrate graduation. The expectations and demands it places on parents, who are not just responsible for gift-giving, but for planning the slews of activities, meals, parties and outings that will prove we’ve adequately celebrated our children, that we’re proud parents, and that we recognize and honor our children’s efforts.
I’ll also be investigating the impact that this social-media-driven graduation machine has on our kids, their parents, and our society as a whole. How it contributes to the anxiety and depression that our kids are experiencing at epidemic rates, and that’s ballooning in every generation. So too, how it plays a part in young people’s declining ability to appreciate, enjoy, or derive meaning from their lives—beyond the social cred and identity that things and experiences can provide. And furthermore, how it takes away from the family and communal effort that an education requires, and puts all the focus on the child, which may be creating young people who have a skewed and bloated sense of their own importance and achievement.
Pulling the lens back, I’ll examine how this consumptive excess, in the name of celebration, this buying and doing tsunami in which we’re drowning, both reflects and contributes to the emptiness and lack of meaning so many people feel—which we then try to fill up with more products and wow-experiences.
But this kind of celebrating can only fail, because we’ll never fill ourselves up for real, make ourselves truly happy, or feel appreciation and gratitude—from things. As we tend to do, we’re looking for meaning in all the wrong places, trying to derive fulfillment from more and better stuff and experiences. And sadly, in this case, we’re teaching our kids that these are the right places to look and if they get enough of the right stuff, they will matter and their life will matter.
For many people, these celebrations that go on and on, and demand more and more money, time, and visible demonstrations of our love, don’t feel like celebrations at all, they feel like social-media-manufactured symptoms of a society that’s suffering. We’re sending our kids off into a system of values that many of us don’t share, and that we know will not serve them in the long run. It makes one wonder if the graduation smiles we see in the thousands of mandatory iPhone photos taken to mark these moments, aren’t really Photoshopped versions of Edvard Munch’s character in The Scream.
As I venture forward, I’ll also offer an alternative path for parents, a way off this treadmill and out of what has become a competitive sport, the sport of celebrating. So too, in the midst of this madness, how we can teach our kids our values, and what celebration and appreciation might look and feel like in another incarnation. And not just what we value, but what, ultimately, will offer them a fulfilling and good life, a life where they can actually experience meaning and not just try and buy it.
