Just a thought I had, like what can a ten year old do(besides mass murder & accidents) that messes up their life so badly that it is unrecoverable?
It has to be something that is self inflicted and not something that is the cause of others around them.
If, when you’re born, you don’t choose to be rich, that messes you up forever.
If you’re not born rich you can become rich (or “comfortable”) later in life. It doesn’t mess you up forever.
I think the changes of that happening are statistically neglible, though (comfortable maaaaybe if you’re really lucky but becoming rich is probably a one digit change, if that).
Socioeconomic mobility over a lifetime in the U.S. has always been dramatically overstated, but in the past 20 years its gradually gotten worse
“In the US only 32% of respondents agreed with the statement that forces beyond their personal control determine their success.”
"According to a 2012 Pew Economic Mobility Project study[24] 43% of children born into the bottom quintile (bottom 20%) remain in that bottom quintile as adults. Similarly, 40% of children raised in the top quintile (top 20%) will remain there as adults. Looking at larger moves, only 4% of those raised in the bottom quintile moved up to the top quintile as adults. Around twice as many (8%) of children born into the top quintile fell to the bottom.[24] 37% of children born into the top quintile will fall below the middle. These findings have led researchers to conclude that “opportunity structures create and determine future generations’ chances for success. Hence, our lot in life is at least partially determined by where we grow up, and this is partially determined by where our parents grew up, and so on.” -Per Wikipedia
2012 was 12 years ago, mind you.
Also found this 2021 Guardian Article that claims
“What about rising from rags to riches? In the US, 8% of children raised in the bottom 20% of the income distribution are able to climb to the top 20% as adults, while the figure in Denmark is nearly double at 15%. Equality of opportunity is also much less viable in the US than in other OECD countries…”
It takes work, and if people don’t want to put in the work then they will never get there.
No, sorry, we actually just sold out of upward mobility. Our next shipment comes in never though, maybe you can come back then?
Despite declining social mobility, mke_geek makes a fair point, being born poor isn’t absolutely guaranteed to mean that you won’t be able to have a meaningful or fullfilling life. I’m sure that many people who are born in remote villages with a subsistence lifestyle, that we would view as living in poverty, are happier than many people who are born in “first world” countries.
Anyway, OP is asking about choices, not situations that are inflicted upon them.
Oh gee, I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll go tell the African children. /s
Just eyeballing the life stories I know, and looking at the actual statistics on social mobility, if you do everything right you can expect to climb up like a single rung of the socioeconomic ladder. On average. There’s a great deal of luck involved there, even, and it’s possible to do everything right and go down the ladder if, for example, something unexpected cripples you.
And you become a successful businesswoman carrying a chocolate bar with her at all times because of your childhood fear of starvation. Sure, that doesn’t sound messed up at all.
I was watching a Netflix documtary about killers, the guy said he was on drugs by age 9…so pretty sure that messed up his life before the murder. It is debatable on if surroundings or self choices are why you try drugs I guess.
Agreed. Also Nancy Reagan told me not to, and I was not in a position to argue.
Any significant injury that results in paralysis would be a potential candidate. These become possible as soon as you become old enough to climb things like trees.
A kid in my class put his arm inside a… I don’t remember if it was a lion or tiger cage back on the 70s before safety was a thing. Being armless isn’t the end, but I bet he regretted that decision.
Playing with fireworks, firearms, or chemicals can be a solid way for anyone of any age to ruin their life.
But doesn’t that count as an accident? Kids who play with fireworks don’t cram a steel can full of black powder imagining how cool it would be to loose your fingers and eyes.
Maybe kids are too short sighted to see the risk, but who says they don’t do that? Among the stupid things I did as a kid was try to turn any tube into a gun/cannon/firework mortar, and hold it in my hands to aim and launch. We even had the benefit of my grandfather losing a couple fingers as a cautionary tale, that we completely ignored. If something happened, could you really call that an accident?
Or the time we were playing with fireworks …. In a barn full of dry hay? I don’t know how my grandfather let us live after that one
…… but there’s a threshold of stupidity where you really can’t call it an accident. I’m happy to have survived in one piece all too many bouts of stupidity but the adult me wouldn’t call it an accident if something happened
Hmm. I guess there is a category that isn’t entirely premeditated and intentional, nor is it a freak accident either. It’s sort of like an accident, but it’s caused be reckless stupidity, as opposed to something beyond your control.
As people have noticed, there are lots of reckless decisions that can ruin your life. I guess that fits the description of what OP was looking for.
Being conceived by shitty people is more than enough to have a life arguably ruined permanently before it even began.
So much can happen to ruin a person’s life at any stage, even pre-conception.
OP is asking about wrong/bad/poor choices etc, the last sentence of their post specifically says it’s not about situations that are inflicted upon them.
You’re right; those were poor choices by the parents.
Really, the question is more about “When do we stop attributing bad choices to the parent and start attributing them to the child?”
Because babies and toddlers can make lots of stupid decisions.
I would argue that babies and toddlers wouldn’t be held accountable for their bad choices, even though they could foreseeably be life changing for the worst, if they stuck their hand in a blender for example. Although you could argue that in this case a parent/carer should not leave a young child near a dangerous object.
Most people would agree that a person that is fully accountable when they are considered an adult, we usually apply the arbitrary age of 18, although I do find it strange that a person that is 17 years, 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds old is a child and one second later they’re magically an adult.
There is definitely a grey area in the early teens or possibly even younger where you can definitely make a decision that ruins your life. An example that comes to mind is when two ten year old boys stole a toddler, then tortured, sexually assaulted and murdered him. They were judged as having the ability to act with criminal intent, found guilty and sentenced to prison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger?wprov=sfla1
