Designing Teacups: The Atlantic on Why ‘Average’ Is Underrated

In the latest issue of The Atlantic, Lori Gottlieb writes about the latest in middle-class parent neuroses: designing childhood happiness. She goes on to explain how well-meaning parents may be, increasingly, landing their kids in therapy. As a clinical psychology, writer, and mother, Gottlieb writes that our obsession with children's happiness may be dooming them to unhappy lives as adults.

Wendy Mogel, another clinical psychologist, explains in the article that, “Our children are not our masterpieces.” Today, she says, “every child is either learning-disabled, gifted, or both—there’s no curve left, no average.” When Mogel first started doing psychological testing in the 1980s, according to Gottlieb, she hated telling parents that their child had a learning disability. "But now," according to Mogel, "parents would prefer to believe that their child has a learning disability that explains any less-than-stellar performance, rather than have their child be perceived as simply average. ‘They believe that ‘average’ is bad for self-esteem.’”

The irony, as the article points out, is that measures of self-esteem aren't actually good predictors of how happy a person will be, "especially if the self-esteem comes from constant accommodation and praise rather than earned accomplishment." (See Nurture Shock, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman.) Jean Twenge adds that research suggests that "perseverance, resiliency, and reality-testing" are much better predictors of life fulfillment and success.

In the article, Mogel also talks about how college deans are now seeing more and more incoming freshmen called "teacups" — people who are "so fragile that they break down anytime things don’t go their way."