Will Leitch in his article How to Raise a Boy for TheCut.com does a deep dive on how he was raised and if he can, or even should raise his boys the same way. A question on the tip of all our tongues.
"...this lesson of self-reliance is not only an illusion, it brings with it its own privilege. I can tell myself that any “success” I’ve had has been because of “hard work” and “perseverance,” but I’m kidding myself. I’m a middle-class white kid who was encouraged to go his own way, to be his own person, in a way nobody even bothered to question; being America’s default on the form meant I was never expected to stand in or up for anything other than myself...Then we watched him [son] bound into his school, my blond beautiful son with his nice clothes and devil-may-care attitude, happy, unaware, confident — bounding like the world was owed to him. I looked at my wife. We were both shivering."