"Where aristocratic children once reveled in their privilege, meritocratic children now calculate their future—they plan and they scheme..."

"... through rituals of stage-managed self-presentation, in familiar rhythms of ambition, hope, and worry....  A person whose wealth and status depend on her human capital simply cannot afford to consult her own interests or passions in choosing her job. Instead, she must approach work as an opportunity to extract value from her human capital, especially if she wants an income sufficient to buy her children the type of schooling that secured her own eliteness. She must devote herself to a narrowly restricted class of high-paying jobs, concentrated in finance, management, law, and medicine. Whereas aristocrats once considered themselves a leisure class, meritocrats work with unprecedented intensity.... Elite managers were once 'organization men,' cocooned by lifelong employment in a corporate hierarchy that rewarded seniority above performance. Today, the higher a person climbs on the org chart, the harder she is expected to work....  Meritocracy traps entire generations inside demeaning fears and inauthentic ambitions: always hungry but never finding, or even knowing, the right food. The elite should not—they have no right to—expect sympathy from those who remain excluded from the privileges and benefits of high caste...."

From "How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition/Meritocracy prizes achievement above all else, making everyone—even the rich—miserable. Maybe there’s a way out" by Yale lawprof Daniel Markovits (The Atlantic).

If privilege in this new form sucks, it should be self-limiting. The "she" in this tale of woe can easily take the off-ramp by not having children. Why intensify the horrific grind that is your life by having children for whom you can see no other path than the same tortured life? If you don't have better spiritual values, leave the childrearing to others.

On the other hand, is the life of the elite really as bad as Markovits portrays it? I can't help relating his polemic to the lawsuit Asian-American students brought against Harvard. Does one's subjective perception of horror of the meritocracy depend on who is winning the competition?

Finally, the kids can always say no. In my day, we had the hippie movement. The worse the competition is, the easier it is for young people to see that what their parents have is not what they want for themselves.