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13 days agoNot universally true. In many cultures, children are owed very little by their parents and are seen as a workforce and economic component of the family. The more kids, the more farm hands, the more secure the family is. Happy to direct you to some reading and sources.
Thinking parents “owe” their kids is a privileged perspective based on material wealth and access, compared to the rest of the world; also in terms of the culture and society you lucked into that allows you agency to live a free life.
I’m not sure if this is helpful, but I have a friend who has worked for rich people of various wealth brackets (multi-millionaires, multi-centmillionaires, and a billionaire). Their personal lifestyle don’t seem to vary much, once you hit a certain wealth level, like multi-millionaire, you can pretty much get whatever you want,
But three things stand out:
There’s a class system among the rich, those in the upper brackets of this system seem to like to follow an annual globe trotting itinerary/migratory pattern with their peers (i.e. they all show up to Monaco with their yachts for the Grand Prix). They can almost insulate themselves from the world, like a roving gated community
The amount of wealth and access, even at just a multi-millionaire level, seems to break the human mind. Like toddler who acts on impulse knowing whatever mess that comes will be cleaned up for them. The capability and size of your personal staff to mitigate the effects of your actions, or at least to maintain a positive public image, matters a lot in this regard. The staff might be crucial characters in your story.
How you made your money (finance, business, celebrity) and whether you allow average people in your life who can honestly reflect reality back to you seems to heavily influence the degree to which the eccentrics takes hold of your personality. Are you the “I want my favorite chair & desk to travel with me anywhere I go”, or “I want to snorkel here, idc if there are no fish, figure out how to bring the fish to me”, OR “I want to eat the most perfect beef and pay a team of scientists to figure out that by feeding a cow pretty much only almonds on my private doomsday island compound, guarded with armed security force that could make some small nations blush, I can have the tastiest burger in human history.” (All real examples)