Jennifer Breheny Wallace

It's not that people in high achieving communities have bad values.

It's that our extrinsic values are constantly being activated.

So one of the things that I really do in my own house is focus on the intrinsic values.

on balancing the seesaw that is necessary to do for mental health.

Oh, absolutely.

And I think it makes you lonely because you have less time to invest in your friendships.

You have less time that you feel like is your time.

So you lack the sense of agency, all of these needs.

go unmet.

And that is what can lead to these negative health outcomes.

And I'll tell you what's interesting.

When you think about kids, there's something I talk in the book called the encore effect, which is the idea that there is this special... Now, trust me, I know this is a 1% problem, but that there is this sense for young people that they need to replicate

their parents' lifestyle, if not do even better than their own parents did.

But we are in a different economic reality where that's nearly impossible.

And that does put a specific strain on young people who are growing up in this achievement culture.

I am not saying that we should care about these young people with all the resources more than we should care about

kids living in poverty.

But as one researcher put it to me, we're not putting pain on a scale.

A young person who grows up in any environment is subject to that environment.

So they don't have a choice.