Privilege

[I'm writing this on December 27, but back-dating it to shortly after my and Marie's return from Paris. I hope this won't be too confusing. I also hope that I can finally wrap up this string of post-Paris essays before the New Year … and maybe tonight!] 

The evening of Day 12, while Marie and I were having dinner at the Brasserie Balzar, we started talking about boarding school. I no longer remember why. I explained why I think boarding school is a good idea. (As I referenced in the post for that day, see for example this post and maybe this one.) And then Marie told me that my children were very "privileged."

Can I be forgiven for interpreting this word as an attack? Later on Marie said she didn't mean it that way (not as an apology, to be clear, but as a dismissal that everything I'd said for the last half hour was beside the point!). But it feels to me like people use this word a lot these days, and the subtext is always that that privilege is something to feel guilty about, that privilege more or less automatically entails oppression of others. Also, I find that when I discuss boarding schools with anyone, the attitude I face is always that boarding schools are for "rich people"—this means people richer than the person I am talking to (regardless how rich that person might be). No one ever imagines that boarding school might be an option for their children. It is somehow only for Those Others. Of course, by this point in my life I have discovered any number of topics that other me, that make the person I am talking to regard me as fundamentally alien. But few of them—I mean, few of the topics I am still willing to discuss at all—work faster than a discussion of boarding school.

So yes, I took it as an accusation that Wife and I were rich snobs. I know that Marie feels very conflicted about having turned her back on a lucrative career, now that she's involved with me. (Mostly I haven't written about this, but consider for example this post here. Also, I'm pretty sure that her former career would have paid her better than mine ever paid, for what it is worth.) And I could have sworn that I heard echoes of that conflict and that resentment in her choice of the word "privileged."

So I challenged it. "Privileged"? Really? 

• Yes, we owned a house; but it was always a shambles. The clutter was embarrassing enough that the boys never brought their friends over to play, choosing instead to play at the friends' houses (wherever those might be). 
• We never went on family vacations, unless the vacation was paired with a practical purpose. (Once when I was out of work we went to San Diego for vacation. We took the boys to Legoland. And I slipped across the border to buy a bunch of Wife's medications at Mexican prices, since we had no insurance that could pay the American prices for us.)
• I drove my car until it was 31 years old and I literally could no longer find parts for it.
• Wife's chronic illnesses deprived us of her earning power, so we did all of this on one income. (Also those illnesses left her feeling vengeful and impotent, as an added plus.)
• And there were regular financial crises that bubbled up seemingly out of nowhere, with remarkable regularity.

So sure. Go ahead. Tell me about our "privilege." Tell me how we were regular members of the noblesse.

The only unusual big expenses were enrolling both boys in People-to-People (P2P) (see for example this post here), and paying for private school (including boarding school).

So I told Marie that the only "privilege" that our boys enjoyed was a moral privilege, that Wife and I were willing to sacrifice our own immediate enjoyment for their sake. I didn't quote Vivek Ramaswamy to her, but privately I was thinking of this message:

It turns out Marie almost agreed with me.

More exactly, she said that—compared to her own experience—any child whose father lived until the child was adult was "privileged." If, on top of that, the parents actually thought about what would be good for the child (and not just what would flatter the parents' egos), then the child was doubly-privileged. Viewed that way, the discussion says a lot more about her life than about Son 1 or Son 2. But it also defanged my defenses.