I’m a foster kid who went to Yale —and I think two-parent families are more important than college
Social critic Rob Henderson went to Yale for undergrad and earned a PhD at Cambridge, but he says we place too much emphasis on degrees and diplomas.
“We give education more importance than we should,” he writes in his new book, “Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class” (Gallery Books, February 20). “I had to … reach the summit of education to understand its limitations … I’ve come to understand that a warm and loving family is worth infinitely more than the money or accomplishments I hoped might compensate for them.”
Henderson, who has written for the Wall Street Journal and has a popular Substack newsletter, is best known for coining the term “luxury beliefs” — ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class while inflicting costs on the lower classes.
One example is residents of an apartment building with a 24-hour doorman on the Upper East Side advocating for abolishing the police, another is the idea that education is all that people need to succeed, and that home life is secondary.
