5 Signs of Childhood Privilege

To someone from persistent childhood trauma and cumulative ACEs, these are indicators you came from a better world.

A dad, a mom, safe and functional parents; vacations, grandparents, siblings who aren’t too messed up to connect with, stories read to you at bedtime, no debilitating anxiety and fear of what your only caretaker will do during their next bender.

Everyone has these right? Unfortunately no and tragically there are people who never had any of this.

Yet people love to share stories of their incredible adventures with their families and meaningful connections and experiences with their parents or siblings. They seem to have little regard for the person in the group who has their eyes turned downward and clearly have nothing to contribute to the conversation.

I understand; if I had a dad, or a mom who wasn’t a drunk, or a brother who wasn’t homeless due to alcohol addiction — if my childhood was vastly different than it was — I would also want to talk about them, all of the time.

But instead I’m providing this list so the next time you are talking about your admirable dad or your stable mom and you see someone who is quiet and seems uncomfortable, you may consider how what you are sharing could be triggering for those of us whose childhoods weren’t so fortunate.

1. You have parents or siblings who graduated college.

I put this one first because education and privilege are unquestionably connected and can often determine the other. Attending college typically means you came from a home where education was (on some level) a priority and there was enough stability that your brain was able to develop normally. Kids who grow up in toxic stress — with unstable and possibly substance dependent parents — are less likely to attend and graduate college and here’s why:

With fight or flight responses over-activated in the brains of students of trauma, the learning and memory centers of the brain are conversely turned down. When the primary function of a child’s brain is to protect itself and process fear, normal brain development is affected. You might see students become forgetful, disengaged, or unable to concentrate. Over time, the effects can actually permanently alter the brain, making it increasingly difficult for a child of trauma to learn when it’s constantly fighting for survival — from Resilient Educator.

If your parent was able to make it through school they are less likely to have experienced an adverse childhood and their lower ACE score makes them less at risk of mental illness and addiction which means you (and/or your siblings) have a better chance at a stable childhood and academic success. A prime example of how cyclical and intergenerational privilege and trauma can be.

2. You had a dad. Or at least one parent who was around and not abusive — I need to emphasize that a father who is physically, sexually or emotionally abusive is not a sign of a privileged childhood — or incapacitated from addiction or mental illness.

I’m not saying he had to have been father of the year. But fathers are so commonly MIA from a child’s life (24.7 million kids in the US don’t have a father) which doesn’t make it any less disadvantageous. In fact, fatherless children are much more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression and addiction, and more than twice as likely to commit suicide. According to NPR

Children are four-times more likely to be poor if the father is not around. And we know that poverty is heavily associated with academic success. [Fatherless kids] are also twice as likely to drop out.

Clearly you can see having a non-abusive father gives you higher odds at having a better life.

3. Your mom or dad was/is your best friend.

I mean…duh, right? Typically parents whose behavior contributes to chronic adversity shouldn’t expect to be BFFs with their kids. But there is something much deeper going on here and it’s called secure attachment. According to Help Guide

A secure attachment bond ensures that your child will feel secure, understood, and calm enough to experience optimal development of his or her nervous system. Your child’s developing brain organizes itself to provide your child with the best foundation for life: a feeling of safety that results in eagerness to learn, healthy self-awareness, trust, and empathy.

While it’s probably easy to take a close relationship with a parent for granted, and not see its significance, there are few factors that are more momentous to a happy and healthy future. Perhaps most significantly — secure attachment protects children from toxic stress and promotes healthy brain development that is geared toward learning.

Children who are brought up with enormous stress, due to lack of comfort, among other necessities, are so busy preparing for danger that they can’t concentrate. Conversely, when children feel safe and supported, learning takes care of itself. — Nine Ways Children Benefit From Secure Attachment.

4. If you say “My parents were strict”

Of course there are extreme exceptions to this but having “strict parents” means they were likely engaged in your life. They set and kept boundaries with you. They weren’t too caught up with addiction or mental illness to prioritize your safety and well-being.

5. You were in dance or had private music lessons.

This one may seem oddly specific but this has always been an indicator that you didn’t grow up on the same side of tracks as me. There are are two reasons behind this; one is more obvious than the other.

The cost of ongoing dance classes and private music lessons is obviously a barrier that can keep the underprivileged off the stage or away from the piano. I used to loathe hearing my rich-kid classmates complain about their piano lessons. And I didn’t understood how these teenagers could be such talented dancers and singers. I didn’t realize it was because their parents had encouraged — and were able to afford — these opportunities for their children at such young ages.

Of course there are exceptions, and when they happen, they can be people like Misty Copeland.

By all accounts, Misty Copeland should not be a professional ballerina.

She didn’t take a single ballet lesson until 13, an age when most dancers have already been dancing for nearly a decade. Her single-parent household of six children was “barely scraping by,” in her words, where extracurricular activities were a luxury not even thought of. But even these formidable challenges were no match for the teenager who first stepped up to the barre in gym clothes. She was a prodigy.

This is from Misty Copeland: ‘Ballet Was the Light That Saved Me’. While I have never been a prodigy (or even blessed with any natural talent I can think of) and am in no way comparable to Misty Copeland, I can relate by saying drums probably saved my life. If I hadn’t joined a church youth group when I was 15 to escape my drunk, scary mom at home, I wouldn’t have started playing drums. And I believe it was behind the drum set where I started developing self worth.

The other reason why this is an indicator of a privileged childhood comes back to having parents who were engaged in your education and a brain that didn’t have to develop while under relentless toxic stress; making the childhood predisposed to flight-and-fight response rather than concentration and learning.

Let me be clear: I’m not discrediting anyone’s struggles. There are many different types of trauma, just like there many different types of privilege; both are a spectrum that can meet many intersections of experience along the way. I’m writing in the context of persistent childhood adversity and toxic stress that can determine someone’s ACE score — and potentially result in debilitating disorders including complex-PTSD — which can heavily influence many factors related to a person’s quality of life and life expectancy.