You think they're not in debt slavery here? Think again.
Check out the YOY bankruptcy filings in the Northern and Eastern districts of Texas.
There is tremendous pressure here to consume.
Nice cars, big allowances, fancy pedicures: In Collin County, parents say the urge to spend stems from their children
03:17 PM CDT on Tuesday, August 16, 2005
By PAULA LAVIGNE / The Dallas Morning News
It's the end of the day at Plano West Senior High School, and teenagers are pouring into the parking lot.
Senior Jodi Payson drives a black Hummer H2. She carries a Louis Vuitton purse and a credit card with no limit.
Last year, Jodi was among the privileged class at Plano West that sets the unspoken benchmark that many other students – and therefore their parents – strive to attain.
Plano West stands out for its students' affluence and their academic achievements, but it is as representative as any Collin County school in that parents say they feel pressure, from their children and their surroundings, to meet the highest lifestyle standards.
Competition starts early. Parents try to outdo one another on birthday parties with limousine chauffeurs and costumed characters.
By the time they're teenagers, children can shop on their own, which takes the spending to a whole new level.
They want bigger toys, including cars, and they won't settle for the type of jalopy their parents drove when they were 16.
This area is one of the wealthiest in the country, and it is also among the youngest. About three in 10 residents of Collin County are younger than 18.
DallasNewsThey might be in debt up to their eyebrows, but their child will have a cellphone and a Blackberry and a luxury car, said Mia Mbroh, a parent educator for the national nonprofit counseling organization Practical Parent Education in Plano.
"They do it out of love, and they don't want their kids to be the odd man out," she said. "Adults want to fit in as much as children."
All for the kids
On a spring night in Frisco, Jenny and Jeff Proznik invite six of their 30-something neighbors for an informal dinner party.
As they crack jokes and pass around a few beers, they talk about their lifestyles and priorities. While they're not the type to be obsessed about Rolex watches and the latest line of Vera Wang cocktail dresses, they acknowledge that they fuel the Collin County-area consumerism.
"A lot of our spending is what you hear upstairs," Mike Pettis said, gesturing toward a playroom where 11 children were giggling and trying out one another's toys.
"We're breeders," Ms. Proznik said. "There's something in this water. You just get into the mind-set that it's all about the kids."
They all have their own playrooms, Mr. Proznik said.
"There's more toys up there in that room than I had in my entire life. And that's just going to keep multiplying," he said.
Childhood has changed, said Mike's wife, Nikki Pettis. She recalled a Christmas party where the women passed around pictures of themselves as children.
"We looked at the backgrounds. There was a chair in the room or a couch. There were no accessories," she said.
"You do more for your kids than your parents did for you," Ms. Proznik said. "My responsibility is to make [my daughter's] life easier and better than mine. That's my job."
The Prozniks say they won't give in to a child's demand to buy something merely because one of his or her friends has it, but they also want their son and daughter to fit in.
"I don't want it to be that my kid is the only one who doesn't have a scooter, and every other kid is zooming by on the street," Ms. Proznik said.
Surefire lure
Susan Tierney said she opened the first, and only, Seventeen*studio*spa*salon in Plano based on the demographics of west Plano and the close proximity to 13 high schools.
Her salon caters to girls from 9 to 19, and their mothers, with hairstyles, manicures, pedicures and other beauty services. It's where Kendall Compton celebrated her 11th birthday, flopped on an overstuffed couch with seven friends – all soaking their feet in preparation for a pedicure.
Mom Cindy Compton wouldn't say how much she spent. Prices range from $40 per person for hair and makeup to $300 per person for a spa package with lunch, balloons, cakes and goodie bags.
The party was a special treat because it would be Kendall's last with her friends in Plano, Ms. Compton said. She and her husband, a corporate executive with Pepsico Inc., were being transferred to Chicago.
"A slower pace of life will be refreshing," she said.
Plano is too materialistic and overwhelmed with commercialism, she said. "Kids here don't have a very good idea of what the real world is like."
Cynthia Garrison, an educator at Practical Parent, tends to agree.
There's no problem with a wealthy couple living in a $500,000 home and driving a BMW, she said. The problem comes when their children expect a BMW without earning it.
"That sets the child up for problems when he gets out into the real world and he gets his $50,000 or $60,000 a year job ... and he can't afford the half-million dollar home or BMW," she said.
Adult children who can't fend for themselves take a toll on some parents – all the way to bankruptcy court. Janna L. Countryman, standing Chapter 13 trustee for the Eastern District of Texas, said about 15 percent of the cases she sees involve parents still footing the bills for their adult children.
While the parents are asking the courts to forgive their own debt, they're buying food and making payments on new cars for college kids who don't have jobs, she said.
Parents of teens going off to college often want to know how to pull back, but they don't know how, said Mark Hundley, director of guidance and counseling at Plano Senior High School.
Students with parents who begin to let go and make their children responsible for their own purchases take pride in their resourcefulness and independence, he said.
"They become more responsible. They fend for themselves. They tend to be their own advocates," he said.
John Weeks' oldest son attends the University of Texas at Austin. The Plano dad agreed to pay for room and board, but he told his son to find a job if he wanted extra spending money. He plans to do the same for his younger son, a senior at Plano West.
"All the kids want is they want the box built for them," Mr. Weeks said. "Show them where it is, how big it is and where the boundaries are and what's in it for them."
'Too much' is relative
Parents diverge on the definition of reasonable spending.
LARA SOLT/DMN
Plano West Senior High students Jodi Payson (left) and Erin Bedell had stretch Hummer limo driver Tim Jespersen stop at Deep Ellum on prom night. A dad who gives his son an allowance of $200 a month believes he is just as rational as the mom who gives her daughter $20 a month.
Julia Gossard, a recent graduate of Plano West Senior High School, was given a $20-a-week allowance, money for gas and a new BMW M series sports car.
It might seem like a lot, but mother Dawn-L Gossard points out that her daughter was president of the speech and debate club, vice president of the French Club, a member of the National Honor Society, a volunteer at Children's Medical Center and received a $30,000 scholarship, which she will use to study corporate communications at Southern Methodist University.
"The impression you get about Plano West is that these kids get things and they don't deserve them. They do," she said.
About 92 percent of the students here sailed over Texas' standardized tests, compared with 73 percent statewide. Students aspire to tougher classes, with 43 percent taking advanced placement (or college level) tests in 2003, compared with 16.1 percent statewide.
Plano West has a reputation for having "bratty" kids, but Julia said just because she's from an affluent family doesn't mean that she falls into that stereotype.
She got her nice car because she met her parents' requirements: work more than 400 hours of community service, make the top 10 percent of her class, get into a good college and score high on the SAT.
"I had proven myself as a leader at Plano West, which is something hard to do. I don't think if I had not done all that, my parents would have bought me a car," she said.
Julia – like any American teenager – shops. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, she and three of her friends tooled off to The Shops at Willow Bend.
As they walked out of Jacqueline Jarrot, a high-end accessories store, Julia said, "Twelve hundred dollars? Twelve hundred dollars for a purse? Who would buy that?"
Later, over pizzas, the friends debated whether they envied their classmates whose parents went over the top.
Emily Tett spoke with defiance in her eyes when she insisted that she was not jealous and that, furthermore, she was proud to own a Ford Escape. She was incredulous when the group talked about a boy who was driving a new Hummer H2.
"What were their parents thinking?" Emily said.
"It's to say, 'I'm driving a big expensive car so you can enjoy its view,' " Nash Gammill said.
Jodi Payson, the girl who drives the black Hummer H2, said she's not trying to show off. She requested a Hummer because she wanted something safe for driving around her friends, whose lunch tabs she picks up from time to time. T-shirts and sweats are more her day-to-day style than $400 designer outfits.
"My parents didn't always have money, and I know what it's like not to have it," she said. "I know not to take things for granted."
Same wish, different scale
Jodi's $1 million house is worth almost four times as much as the home where classmate Abby Taylor lives on the easternmost boundaries of Plano West's territory.
Abby's mom, Sally Taylor, said she was thrilled that her daughter made drill team captain even though she came from a family of more modest means.
"Jane might be driving a new BMW that her parents gave her. Well, Abby's driving a new [Honda] Civic, and that's pretty wonderful in my opinion," she said.
Ms. Taylor said seeing the other mothers dressed to the nines at a drill team booster club meeting was intimidating at first.
"I'd think, 'Maybe your day was a tough day because you couldn't fit in a nail appointment between the hair and personal trainer,' " she said. Whereas she had to figure out how to get through an eight-hour workday and then finish housework.
"But once you find out that everyone has their kid's best interest at heart and wants to help out, you quickly get over that," she said. |
