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David Furst: This is All Of It. I'm David Furst in for Alison Stewart. Thank you for spending a part of your day with us. On today's show, Corinne Bailey Rae joins us to preview her first album in seven years, which comes out next Friday. We'll get to it to listen to some of the tracks today. Then in the new novel from Angie Kim, a father goes missing one afternoon in the park and the only witness is his neurodivergent son, who isn't able to speak. Kim will be our guest. [phone rings] Later, we get a sneak peek of Bushwig, one of the world's largest drag and queer music festivals happening in Brooklyn this weekend. Is there a phone in the studio here? [phone rings] I guess I better grab this. Hello, this is All Of It on WNYC. Who's calling?

Alison Stewart: First-time caller, longtime host.

David Furst: [chuckles] Wait a second. This is the actual host of All Of It. Alison Stewart, hello.

Alison Stewart: Hey, David, how are you? I know how you are. You're doing great. Thank you so much for sitting in.

David Furst: Well, Alison, I am so glad you called because I think we can officially announce this now. After more than a month away on medical leave, after you donated a kidney to your sister, you are returning to the host chair on Monday, is that right?

Alison Stewart: That is correct. I am very excited. I came into the office yesterday. We had a little bit of a pitch meeting and I'm ready to go. I'm really excited to see everybody and to talk to our radio friends.

David Furst: How are you feeling right now?

Alison Stewart: I'm doing really, really well. It's not a linear process of recovering. I have to remind myself. Now, I still have stitches and stamina is an issue, but I'm ready to go. I'm excited. I'm feeling great. People have been so generous and kind and, oh, doorbell, of course, right? That's ringing right now.

David Furst: Aside from pushing me out of this chair, what are you most looking forward to when it comes to coming back to the show?

Alison Stewart: I'm really excited to talk with the listeners again. I'm really excited to talk to some of the folks we have on. You know how exciting it is to talk to people who are making and creating and doing it really is energizing. I've become really very, very devoted to our mission at All Of It being as somebody who has been reading the news and consuming the news, how important it is to have a place where there is inspiration, where you do celebrate art, where you do celebrate the good. We really need that.

David Furst: I don't want to keep you too long right now, but other than the physical experience of the kidney donation, would you say that this experience has changed you?

Alison Stewart: Yes, for sure. I think, for sure, it makes you think about big-picture things. It makes you think about family. Our family is very close. It makes you think about what you can do for other people. It also made me realize I really love where I work and I love the people I work with and I can't wait to be back.

David Furst: All Of It host Alison Stewart. Great to hear from you and we all look forward to welcoming you back on Monday.

Alison Stewart: All right, thanks, David.

David Furst: Right now, let's get started today with a new book that examines the rise of toxic achievement culture and how it affects the lives of both kids and their parents. We'll get to All Of It next.

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David Furst: The competitive nature of the college admissions process says increased anxiety for some kids and for some parents. A new book investigates how these anxieties gave birth to a toxic achievement culture. It's called Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—and What We Can Do About It. The book includes observations based on conversations with teenagers and parents of kids who work to keep up with today's notions of success while also exploring the roots of the anxiety.

It also provides parents with resources to build healthy relationships with their children and help them untangle their self-worth from achievement. Joining us is the author, Jennifer B. Wallace, who writes about parenting and lifestyle trends as a contributor to The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. Jennifer Wallace, welcome to All Of It.

Jennifer B. Wallace: Oh, thank you so much for having me.

David Furst: Listeners, please join us in this conversation. Are you a parent? What steps have you taken to encourage your child's academic success? Do you think that your kids are maybe over-involved in extracurricular activities? Did you take AP or IB courses growing up? How did you balance your academics and extracurriculars while growing up? Maybe there wasn't a balance. Did you feel like you burned out? What happened? Give us a call or send us a text at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC, or reach out to us via Twitter or DM us on Instagram @AllOfItWNYC. How do you define toxic achievement culture for the purposes of your book, Never Enough?

Jennifer B. Wallace: Thanks for asking that. This is not a book that's anti-achievement or anti-ambition. The way I distinguish between healthy achievement and toxic achievement is when we become as adults or as children where our sense of self and our sense of worth become so entangled with our achievements that we only feel like we are valued or worthy when we're only as good as our next achievement. We're only as worthy as our failure. That's, to me, when it becomes toxic, when it becomes really enmeshed in our sense of self and our value as a human.

David Furst: Can't that be so hard to sort out? We also always sometimes think, "Oh, I'm overdoing it." How can you tell the difference between someone who is busy, who wants to do well academically, and is maybe really interested in doing and trying a lot of things, and someone who is veering into this toxic situation?

Jennifer B. Wallace: Well, I think achievement shouldn't have to hurt. I think we should push ourselves. I think we should approach it with joy and sometimes dread. Writing this book, I had my moments, but I never doubted myself as a human or my worth as a writer when I was stuck. I think the difference is we can motivate ourselves and our kids, either with clean fuel like I write about in the book or dirty fuel, which is criticizing a child or criticizing ourselves excessively. That dirty fuel could potentially get us to a short-term goal. Over the long run, it's going to clog our engines. In these four years of researching and writing this book, boy have I adopted this clean fuel approach. I've seen such a change in my own life and in my home with my kids.

David Furst: What are some of the most recognizable examples of toxic achievement culture in our day-to-day lives? You mentioned this criticism.

Jennifer B. Wallace: I think excessive criticism. As parents, I have yet to meet a parent that does not love their child unconditionally. In my life and in my reporting, every parent I have met does. Unfortunately, our kids don't always feel that love as unconditional and our regard is unconditional. Too many kids that I spoke with talked about one boy in particular. I remember, he said to me, "Our house certainly is a lot lighter and my parents are a lot more happy to see me when I'm doing well in school."

For that child, I didn't ask explicitly. To me, it sounded like he was feeling his worth is contingent on his success. Another New York City student I interviewed talked about how his father was only interested in him when he was achieving. When he wasn't achieving, the father was more focused on his own work. His worthiness as a child was really contingent on his performance, at least the way he felt it.

David Furst: How did you decide that this is what you wanted to focus on and write about? You do address this in the book's intro, but some would say that, "Hey, we're talking about a very privileged segment of society here." Their problems don't compare to what children growing up in poverty are dealing with.

Jennifer B. Wallace: Absolutely. I completely agree with you. I chose this group for a few reasons. One, because in 2019, I wrote an article for The Washington Post about how students attending these, what researchers call "high-achieving schools." Those are competitive and private schools around the country. Those students were now considered an at-risk group, meaning they were two to six times more likely to suffer from clinical levels of anxiety, depression, and substance abuse disorder than the average American team. I am the parent of three teenagers who attend these competitive schools in New York City. I wanted to know. What could I do in my own home to buffer against this excessive pressure?

David Furst: Within this group of people that you focused on, was there a varying range of demographics?

Jennifer B. Wallace: Yes. Generally, I focused on families in the top 25% of household incomes. That's roughly $130,000 a year for a family, depending on where you live, or more. Again, the reason that I very much focused on this group was because they were newly named at-risk. Now, of course, this never-enough feeling is being felt by all youth and, actually, many adults today. While I did focus on this top 25% of household incomes, it is a feeling that I think many of us, no matter our socioeconomic bracket, could identify with.

David Furst: If you'd like to join this conversation, call us, 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. We are talking about the book, Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—and What We Can Do About It, with Jennifer Wallace. I wanted to ask you, in Never Enough, you use this term, "at-risk." What do you mean and what do researchers and school districts mean when they reference at-risk youth?

Jennifer B. Wallace: Yes, so the term "at-risk" is really about identifying youth who are more likely than the average American youth to suffer from negative mental health outcomes. It doesn't mean that every student attending these competitive schools will suffer from debilitating anxiety or depression. It just means that they are more likely than the average teen to encounter it.

David Furst: How has the meaning of at-risk evolved in recent decades?

Jennifer B. Wallace: Well, traditionally, at-risk youth were kids living in poverty, children with incarcerated parents, recent immigrants, children living in foster care. Generally, kids on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum. What we are seeing now according to these two national policy reports, the National Academies of Sciences and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is that there is a risk to youth at the other end of the economic spectrum, which I think is really surprising and counterintuitive.

At least here in our country, we tend to believe that wealth equals well-being or at least protects against some of the risks that would be found in children living in poverty. I think as a parent raising my kids in these competitive schools, it woke me up to the fact that this wasn't just anecdotal. It was actually data and evidence and research pointing to these kids as being at-risk.

David Furst: You share a story in the book about a young woman named Amanda. I should say that you've changed a lot of the names in this book, is that correct?

Jennifer B. Wallace: That's correct.

David Furst: Now, Amanda, who was a varsity athlete, the president of the debate club, received top grades in her class at a competitive high school who struggled with depression. Can you talk about the notions of what it would take to be successful, her notions of what it would take to be successful in life that she grew up with?

Jennifer B. Wallace: She described growing up in a household where perfectionism, being perfect, was the standard. Anything less than that was not good enough. She and several other students I interviewed talked about the subtle ways that their parents communicated their expectations. It wasn't so much explicit, "I expect to see all A's on your report card."

Instead, if she brought home a B, she told me that her mother or father would get very cold and would say, "This isn't your best effort." The way she felt it was really as a withdraw of love. She described that feeling as really being tormenting, that home did not feel safe for her. Home was a place where she had to perform. She couldn't just be herself. She had to look good. She had to perform well in order to really earn her parents' love. That's her belief. That was her--

David Furst: How did she balance her mental health and academics as she went to college?

Jennifer B. Wallace: Not very well. There is a wonderful social psychologist, Gregory Elliott at Brown, who talks about this idea that what gets in early gets in deep. The patterns of thinking and the patterns of behavior and the unhealthy coping strategies she used in high school, which was drinking to excess, drinking to blackout, not just to have one or two beers with friends but literally to check out after a very hard week. She went off to college. She went to a very competitive college, where the acceptance rate was less than 10%.

She found herself in a pond of hyperachievers. It wasn't like the pressure let up. it ratcheted up. In college, she started dabbling with drugs. Then she went and she got a very prestigious job. Again, the pond, very, very pressured. She found herself in her mid-20s starting to drink at work. It all came to a head when she was driving home one day after work and she got pulled over for a DUI. That was when she had to confront that what she was doing, how she was living her life was not sustainable.

David Furst: We're going to take some of your calls next. If you want to join this conversation, 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Let's hear from Neil joining us from Westfield, New Jersey. Neil, welcome.

Neil: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I was really struck by what you were saying about it never being enough. With regard to an article that was in The New York Times yesterday about how Yale has announced that they have changed their mental health policies with regard to students who wanted to take leave or withdraw from a semester. Wherein the past, if a student withdrew, they might not necessarily be allowed to come back to school.

In some cases, students were very stressed because they might lose a scholarship. In other cases, they were just so stressed about the possibility of not being allowed back if they stayed. In at least one instance, this led to a student committing suicide. Finally, after years of Yale being told that their policy was ill-advised, they just announced that they were changing the policy to allow students to take leave when needed without the threat of not being readmitted.

David Furst: Neil, thank you for bringing that to our attention. Jennifer, do you want to comment on that?

Jennifer B. Wallace: Well, I commend Yale. I feel like it's very late in coming to that conclusion. I will tell you what I am finding to be a new trend among-- I have a senior applying to colleges. I am very aware of--

David Furst: You are deep in the mix.

Jennifer B. Wallace: I am deep in it. One thing that I have found to be a really sad trend is that colleges are now accepting kids for sophomore year. If you're a senior in high school, they will say to you, "Go take classes somewhere else and we could transfer you in sophomore year," because they are expecting so many students to drop out. We are setting our kids up for this failure. Anyway, I appreciate you calling in. It's something that, as a parent, I'm really watching closely in my own home. The college campuses are being crushed by this mental health epidemic. They are seeing it firsthand and they're extremely contributing to it.

David Furst: Well, after the break, we're going to continue speaking with Jennifer Wallace, author of Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—and What We Can Do About It, and we'll take more of your calls right after the break.

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David Furst: You're listening to All Of It here on WNYC. Thanks for joining us. We're speaking with author Jennifer B. Wallace. Her new book is, Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—and What We Can Do About It. We'd love for you to join this conversation. Call us at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Let's hear from Vince calling from Manhattan. Vince, welcome to All Of It.

Vince: It's great to be on. A really terrific topic. Thanks for putting Jennifer on. Super.

David Furst: Did you want to talk about something connected to the topic?

Vince: Yes, so I am a native New Yorker. I went to a charter school, graduated in the early '70s. My daughter went to a charter school, graduated in the early 2000s. I will compare and contrast that. In the early years, everyone was very collegial. I had a good time where I was, though my daughter did very well. I found the parents and I want to point it to the parents.

I found the parents at this particular charter school were highly competitive. I just want to contrast the fact that, though, it didn't cost me in my instance to pay for my daughter because New York provided this wonderful education, and she did go on to an Ivy that, today, parents who are paying $40,000 and $50,000 a year for private schools, Jennifer, is some of the problem parents pushing their kids. I'm paying $40,000 and $50,000 and I expect an outcome.

David Furst: Well, Jennifer, what about that? Is this a parental problem first driving this issue?

Jennifer B. Wallace: I appreciate that question so much. I very much do not blame parents in this book. I am right there in the trenches fearful about my kids' future. When you were talking about your upbringing, I too grew up in the '70s and early '80s. My experience was very different than my own kids because I believe, according to the economist that I interviewed for the book, life was generally more affordable back then.

Health care was more affordable. Real estate was more affordable. Higher education was more affordable. Food was more affordable. There was more slack in the system. Parents could generally believe that even with a few wrong turns that a child would likely be able to replicate their upbringing, if not, do even better, which is really part of the American dream to do better than your parents.

Parents today are seeing a very different economic landscape. They're seeing steep inequality. They're seeing the crush of the middle class. They're seeing hyper-competition that comes with globalization. We have no idea what jobs will be available for our kids when they graduate school. There is this fear. I believe that what you are talking about and I have seen is that parents are relying on a "good college" to act as a kind of life vest in a sea of uncertainty.

They think if I could just get that brand name on that kid, it will help them in this really fearful, uncertain future. Unfortunately, what we're seeing in too many kids is that that life vest is really acting like a lead vest and drowning too many of the kids we are hoping to protect. Yes, I think parents are pushing. It doesn't mean to let us off the hook, but I would rather put it into context rather than personalize what we're seeing if that makes sense.

David Furst: Well, thank you for your thoughts on that. Let's hear from another caller, Christina from Jersey City. Thank you for calling us here on All Of It.

Christina: Hi. I just want to say thank you so much for talking about this subject. I'm a parent of three children that went to Montessori school till eighth grade, which is very rare to have Montessori up to eighth grade. They loved learning. They loved their school. I think this is a direction that schools need to go to because they didn't have homework and they didn't have grades.

They were allowed to pursue their passions but were still nurtured on the subjects that they needed a little more help with. Because the kids weren't all working on the same thing at the same time, they were in charge of their own learning, their own lessons, finishing up their work, and their work plans. They really were able to enjoy school, love school, and they did very well going into high school.

Now, two are in high school and one is in college, but high school has changed things because the landscape is no longer about loving to learn or enjoying learning and seeing where their academic growth goes. Instead, it's about the AP test, the AP score, the IB diploma. My oldest did the IB diploma. He loved IB for the first two years. Junior and senior year when he did the IB diploma, the depression set in because he is not sleeping. He's got too much work. It's so much pressure.

He did graduate with that IB diploma, but I honestly regret pushing my child that way. Now that my middle child is actually going to take some AP courses, I'm nodding my head wondering, "Should I tell him no?" because I want him to enjoy his life and pursue his passions. I think we've just got it so backwards on education. I wish every school could be like this Montessori school that my kids did because it's just beautiful. The outcomes of the alumni are tremendous because they got to pursue their passions and feel good--

David Furst: Well, what about that? What can we do with all of these choices? So many interesting, exciting choices. What do we do to preserve that joy of learning?

Jennifer B. Wallace: Well, I'll pipe in here. I was very privileged to be able to travel around the country and actually see schools that are doing this kind of project-based learning, solving real-world problems. I do believe that we are seeing a major shift in education, particularly coming out of COVID, realizing that the way we're teaching kids with this factory model of learning that you described, it isn't going to solve our 21st-century problems. We need creative problem-solvers. There are schools that are doing just that. Mastery-based learning is really what you're talking about and that's a new trend.

David Furst: I'm going to read a text here. We're getting a lot of calls right now. If you want to join this discussion, 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Here's a text we received. "I tell my 12-year-old all the time that I don't really care about academic achievement. I tell my son, I want him to enjoy learning and be curious. Grades are not important to me in the least. He is a very bright child with dyslexia and ADHD. School has always been very stressful for him and terrible for his self-esteem. I've tried to show him that the world is a big place and that there are so many possibilities outside of the traditional school-college trajectory." What about that?

Jennifer B. Wallace: I have neurodiverse children as well. I would say to this parent, go on the website Made by Dyslexia. It's a nonprofit in the UK and they are talking about the strengths of dyslexic thinking. Dyslexic thinking is actually now a job skill on LinkedIn. I think that you were hitting the nail on the head. I think what's great about parents who have children that have identified their learning differences is that we as parents can see our kids' strengths so clearly and their deficits and we can lean in on their strengths. I commend this mother for supporting her child so well.

David Furst: We'll get to some more of your calls right now. Shayna calling in from Brooklyn this afternoon. Hello. Welcome to All Of It.

Shayna: Hi. Yes, thank you for taking my call and thank you so much for this very important discussion. I just left, dropped off for first day of high school, and was commiserating with all of my parent friends about the stress and pressure of the next four years. I have two kids in a competitive independent school. There's a lot of talk about what parents can do at home. We say everything that the callers have been saying. We don't care. Just be happy. Pursue your interest. Even schools that claim to be progressive or project-based are just seemingly not immune from this toxic achievement culture.

Even when they say they are, there's a lot of gaslighting with the parents like, "Oh, we tell them we don't care," but they're giving five hours of homework a night. When we try and find alternative schools, I would love to hear the list of the mastery schools because I could not find any in my search that were actually saying what they do say that they're doing. My question is, what can schools do? I cannot wait to send this book to every single person in my school, including the administration, because what can schools do? How can we hold them accountable also to what they're contributing to the mental health crisis of the teens?

Jennifer B. Wallace: This is a great question. If you get the book, at the end of the book, I have very explicitly what schools can do, what parents can do, what colleges and universities can do. I would say the first thing I would do is get your team of parents and request a mental health report card for the students in your school. There are nonprofits like Challenge Success, Authentic Connections that go into schools. They assess the student body, they print out reports, and they give really actionable items that schools can do to buffer against the excessive pressure.

It's going to involve and require all stakeholders, parents, students, administrators, and faculty. I do think schools are reeling under the pressures and they are seeing these kids suffering. No one goes into education to hurt kids. I really have been speaking with so many schools that are so worried. So much so that I actually co-founded something called thematteringmovement.com to give schools teachers and students free resources to encourage cultures of mattering in their community, cultures of unconditional worth and value.

David Furst: I want to get to another call in just a moment, but I want to ask you very quickly. We've been talking a lot about parents. What about peer pressure? How much of a factor is that here?

Jennifer B. Wallace: I think peer pressure is definitely a factor, which is why more than ever, parents at home should really try to make their home a haven from the pressure. Kids are getting it from their peers, from their peers' parents. They're absorbing the pressures from coaches, et cetera, et cetera. It's everywhere in the environment. Now, more than ever, it's important for home to be a place for kids to recover where their worth is never in question.

David Furst: Well, let's hear from Kristen calling in from Princeton, New Jersey. Welcome.

Kristen: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I love the topic. I'm a licensed therapist myself. My son attends a prep school in New Jersey and he's a junior. I've noticed some changes, for example, a couple of years ago. This is pertaining to mental health. He had some learning differences, very intense environment. He needed some minor changes to his schedule with exams. It was a very rigid no, absolutely not under any circumstance. I've noticed since then, this school unfortunately had a couple of losses by suicide.

I'm not saying it's always related to the school per se, but it's something they've thought about. Anyway, I've noticed this past year that they were a little more flexible in terms of attending to children's mental health needs. I've noticed an improvement. Also, what I thought was really interesting is that they hired a dean of wellness at the high school. I don't know if that's something that you're seeing more of. I think I am seeing steps the school is making to take mental health more seriously and this is a long time coming.

David Furst: To take it more seriously, yes, that sounds like they're trying some things there. What about that dean of wellness? It sounds like they're trying something. Is that effective?

Jennifer B. Wallace: Well, I would say, I think that is certainly a first step. All educators understand that achievement will not happen if children are suffering underneath it. It behooves schools to focus on mental health above and beyond and relationship and connection over rigor because you could be as rigorous as you want and then you crush your kids. These kids then drop out of school or they stop achieving. I do believe that schools are doing everything they can today coming out of the COVID crisis to create environments that are more conducive to learning. Those are the environments that actually are conducive to positive mental health.

David Furst: I'm so sorry. We have to wrap up right now because we have a lot of phone calls coming through at this moment. Jennifer B. Wallace, do you have a final thought on this project and whether there's just one quick final, what it has meant to you?

Jennifer B. Wallace: I want to leave parents with this little phrase that our researcher gave me to keep in mind this school year. Minimize criticism. Prioritize affection at home. Make home a haven from the pressure. Our kids are getting it everywhere. Don't pile on at home.

David Furst: Author Jennifer B. Wallace. The new book is Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—and What We Can Do About It. Thank you for joining us on All Of It.

Jennifer B. Wallace: Thanks so much.

 

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