Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
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I would be unhappy if my children were not in the top group in each subject.

Why?

I'm seriously puzzled by that statement; after all, my daughter is an indifferent athlete (and that might be generous), so I would hardly be "upset" if she didn't make the varsity team.

It wouldn't really be an appropriate placement, after all, once one sets aside the prestige.

It's not that I haven't run into this line of thinking-- but that I don't understand it very well. I've always assumed that parents in our town with this set of beliefs were using their kids and their accomplishments as a kind of status/self-image booster, but maybe I'm wrong about that.

I'm pretty sure that isn't Bostonian's rationale, so now I'm curious.

The life prospects of people are unrelated to their athletic ability, unless their ability is in the far right tail, so having a very athletically talented child can be viewed as winning the lottery. People are not saddened by not winning the lottery. The same is not true of academic ability -- it makes a difference whether you are the 25th or 75th percentile. I chose a wife using an indirect IQ filter (doctors passed) to increase the chances of having smart kids. Few people would state things so baldly, but I think this reasoning partly explains the high degree of assortative mating by education seen today. We moved to our town, as other parents did, for the Good Schools. So having kids with merely average IQ would mean things are not going according to Plan (which is part of life, of course).