No One Is Self-Made – What Fatherhood Taught Me About the American Dream

This is also what I observed when I compared my life with my younger brother&#x27;s life.<p>While growing up, I was surrounded by a peer group of high achievers. I had a generally stable home environment and my reading, math and writing abilities were better than class average.<p>My younger brother on the other hand never had that peer group. His best friends were bullies and destined to be jocks. He was never into reading, math and writing. This shows in his grades.<p>What really helped my brother not get sucked into the usual teen bullshit is a good home environment and constant reminder that other kids are not necessarily doing the right thing.<p>Peer group and family background are pretty much the strongest indicators of future success in life. Also, they are a great indicator of a potential mate. I pretty much use this as a yardstick while dating these days.

Parenting is a huge job, you have to give this new person everything they need to survive life. This is pretty much all inclusive from tutoring, personal growth, overcoming issues, being successful in relationships, creating the scenarios their first accomplishments come under they feel are their own but really you set them up to be successful and gave them something that they could really chew on successfully setting them up for their next success, and their next success and so on.

The graph demonstrating the different levels in education was interesting. At first I thought there most be some mistake, because one field was high school education or less and the other was college education or more, but the two lines didn&#x27;t add up to 100%. I realized that the cause for this is people who started college but did not graduate. Because the bachelors degree or greater line stayed the same this must mean that less people have started college. I&#x27;m not entirely convinced that this is the case.