When I was growing up there was a lot of talk about self-worth, or self-esteem. It was the pop-psychological buzzword of the 1970s. Books were written on how to raise children with a healthy sense of self-worth because low self-worth was thought to be the root of almost every problem. Violent criminals had low self-worth. Moral degenerates had low self-worth. Losers had low self-worth. Self-worth seemed to explain everything.
It was defined as the feeling that you had value. Parents were told they had to make their children feel wanted and cherished so they would grow up believing they were valuable. Conversely, emotional neglect was said to lead inevitably to a lifetime of pain and unhappiness.
My parents were very preoccupied by this. At least my mother was. An avid reader of pop psychology, she seemed convinced that her own struggles stemmed from a lack of self-worth. Her parents had come of age during the Depression. Their priorities were making money and climbing the social ladder. They succeeded. My mother grew up with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth, so material deprivation could hardly explain her unhappiness.
The discovery that her problems were rooted in low self-worth was a revelation. The emotional neglect, ignorance, and occasional cruelty of her parents suddenly became the obvious culprit.
I sometimes wonder whether previous generations blamed their parents for their personal shortcomings. I suspect that before the earned affluence of the postwar era, most families were too busy trying to put food on the table to spend much time analyzing their emotional wounds.
They didn't turn out so badly.
Which raises the question: is self-worth really a thing, or is it just another piece of pop-psychological mythology?
I think self-worth is largely a fiction. A convenient explanation that transformed unhappiness into grievance and gave people somewhere to hang the blame for lives that had not turned out as they hoped.
That is not to say that a structured and supportive family life is unimportant. Of course it matters. It is to a child what water, sunlight, and fertile soil are to a plant. But it is not destiny.
History is filled with people who emerged from deprivation, neglect, and dysfunction to accomplish remarkable things and live extremely fulfilling lives.
Worth works psychologically much as it does economically. You may believe something has value, but unless someone else is willing to pay for it, that value remains purely theoretical. There is no such thing as self-worth. Worth is actually determined by others.
And that's a good thing, because it means worth is not intrinsic—it is earned.
To have value, you must be useful. Productive. Capable of contributing something that others need or want.
This is where family life matters. A supportive upbringing does not instill worth; it cultivates empowerment, independence, and resilience. A child who learns to navigate the world, solve problems, and recover from setbacks develops the capacity to become useful and productive. And from that, a sense of worth naturally follows.
One of the great lies modern parents have told their children is that they are perfect just as they are. And related to that is the idea that love means smothering their children with attention and affirmation.
The result is often not confidence but helplessness.
Children do not become strong because they are told they are valued. They become valued because they are taught how to become strong.
