Different times have different opportunities, and it's to be expected that it won't be obvious to us as parents of smallish children what the opportunities will be for them - maybe they've been born in just the right time and place for something, but we're unaware of it. (Sometimes one can guess. DS the other day said something the other day about wanting to design tiny machines to do things inside people's bodies to help make them well. I don't know whether he'll be a nano-machines-for-health pioneer, but I do think it quite likely that there are people around his age now who will be, and I do think his emerging skillset might suit him well for that role, so I let him know that I thought this was a very promising avenue to think about following!) I think you're right that we have to try hard not to limit our children's views of what's possible, but since they naturally care what we think it's hard!
I also think that it's really common for children of parents who have been through hard economic times, and come out the other side, to grow up automatically valuing material success more than most people do - sometimes even more than the parents who went through the experience. It's scary as a child to know that your parents are, or were at one point, struggling financially. It's much easier to deprioritise wealth if you've never known anything other than a financially steady (even if not wealthy) existence.
