Sting's views underscore Spalthoff's second point — to allow children "to work and feel their accomplishments of a day's work, whether it's selling something or learning the value of a dollar."
Ross Perot Jr. got a lesson in work from his father, H. Ross Perot, founder Electronic Data Systems (EDS), the summer he spent shoveling holes for petunia bushes on EDS property. "Ross was digging away, at $0.25 a hole," his father told Fortune. "It was hotter than you can imagine, and Ross hit bedrock. He stuck with it — kept right on going."
Sherman, the author who interviewed wealthy parents, reported that one mother with assets in the tens of millions required her six-year-old to do his own laundry in exchange for activities and other privileges.
But as she found during her research, parents' commitment to their children's employment wavered if having a job interfered with other capabilities, especially in the face of competitive college admissions. None of the high-school age kids of parents she talked to worked for pay.
And as Spalthoff explains, sometimes the value of work is something parents inadvertently take away from their children with vacations and extracurriculars.