$2000 a year isn't a lot. Let see I take my son to music lessons ($32 a pop) and Aikido (cheep at $80 per month -- he attends ~2 twice a week). And that adds up quickly. And that is over the $2K a year even saying he doesn't goes to music lesson every week. And that doesn't include summer camps, or the amount I donate to the schools.
And he doesn't do a lot of activites compared to a lot of kids I know. A lot of kids do a lot more, or do a lot more expensive things. Yes, I know a lot of parents can't afford even that.
ITA. Clearly many parents can't spare $2,000 on extracurriculars for their kids. However, each instrumental music lesson costs between $30 to $60, which with weekly lessons would total $1,560 to $3,120 for one instrument for a single child each year.
Arguably, the kids who get music lessons are privileged but I would also say that it is a fairly typical middle-class expenditure as well. Are there any teens on this board with note-worthy musical competence/achievement whose parents haven't spent thousands on music lessons? Arguably, this is possible if the parents happen to have the expertise themselves but that would still be privilege although in a different form.
I am not an expert but I have saved quite a bit of money teaching my kids instrumental music at the earlier stages. As for math, I haven't spent more than a couple of hundred dollars total for my DS11 and DD11 combined and that was for a few AOPS textbooks and a couple of months of ALEKS subscriptions. There have been many instances in the past when other parents have demonstrated shock upon hearing that my kids did not have another music teacher or have never enrolled in Kumon or other math tutoring centers, etc. However, I am the first to admit that my kids are privileged so therefore would fall under the "pampered, primed" category as discussed by other posters although I am not sure that I can claim "hot-housed" since it's unnecessary as my kids tend auto-didactic so I will have to stick with the more accurate "privileged" terminology.
Anyhow, that was a convoluted way of pointing out that it may not be a question of outside expenditures but parental expertise and time commitment go a long way. Are the kids less privileged just because the checkbook is unnecessary in some instances?
