The expectations we have created, the future our children see, and the conversation we need to have.
Every parent wants the same thing: for their children to have an easier life than they did.
We work hard, save, sacrifice, and worry because we want to remove obstacles from our children's path. We want them to get married with confidence, build families, buy homes, and look toward the future with excitement rather than fear.
But an uncomfortable question is beginning to emerge: are we actually doing the opposite?
The Cost of Normal
Across our communities, the cost of living continues to climb — and so do our expectations. Summer homes, holiday travel, luxury vehicles, elaborate semachot, designer clothing. These have become so normalized that many families no longer see them as luxuries at all. They are simply what life looks like.
There is nothing wrong with financial success. We should want our children to thrive. But the question is no longer whether success is good. The question is whether the definition of success has become so expensive that many young people feel they can never realistically attain it.
At the same time, the ground beneath us is shifting. Family businesses that once supported two or three families now strain to support five or six. Retail is shrinking. Wholesale is under pressure. Real estate is more challenging. Artificial intelligence is disrupting entire industries. Yet our expectations continue to move in only one direction: upward.
What Our Children Are Feeling
Talk to enough teenagers and young adults and a pattern emerges. Many are not excited about the future. They are intimidated by it.
They see the cost of housing, the cost of raising a family, and the lifestyle that surrounds them. Instead of asking how quickly they can get started, some are quietly asking whether they will ever catch up. Some delay marriage. Some delay having children. Others wonder quietly whether the life they are expected to build is still within reach.
"The problem is not that our children are aiming too low. The problem is that we may have moved the finish line so far that many are afraid to start the race."
What Success Actually Looks Like
Before we define success for our children, it may be worth asking what success actually means.
It is not only about money. A successful life is a full one — a strong marriage, a home filled with presence not just things, children who feel seen and supported, not just provided for. It is the discipline to take care of yourself, to keep learning, to give back to your community. It is showing up for aging parents, for friends in hard moments, for a community that needs you.
None of that requires a summer home. It requires time, intention, and the willingness to be there.
Permission to Build Slowly
There is something else our children need to hear.
Not everyone starts in the same place. Not everyone reaches the same destination. And that's okay.
We are raising a generation in a world built on instant gratification. Everything is available now — on demand, overnight, one click away. They absorbed that completely. So when they look at where their parents are today, they feel they need to get there tomorrow.
They don't see the 20 or 30 years it took to build what they're looking at. They see the finish line and feel they're already behind.
They aren't.
Most of us spent decades getting to where we are. We made mistakes, started over, built slowly and imperfectly. That is not failure — that is how a life gets built.
More importantly, a successful life does not require matching everything you see around you. Success is not measured by the size of a home, the car in the driveway, or the vacations on social media. It is measured by the strength of your relationships, your character, your contribution to others, and the life you build over time.
If we can give our children two things — a broader definition of what a good life looks like, and the permission to take the time to build it — we may be giving them something more valuable than anything money can buy.
Because the greatest gift we can give our children is not a lifestyle. It is a future they believe they can afford to build.
— Awareness, a Project Connect Series · www.projectconnect18.com · info@projectconnect18.com