When it comes to academic achievement, many parents in upper- and middle-class communities have gone overboard, hiring tutors for their preschool children and going to enormous lengths to secure a spot for their child in a prestigious college. Even though poor children face many hardships, teenagers in affluent families suffer emotional and moral problems at roughly the same rates. Students are overpressured to achieve and undervalued for aspects of their character. Schools can work to curb destructive forms of achievement pressure and help parents interact more constructively with their children around achievement. They can also make changes so that high achievement is only one of many ways of measuring how students value themselves.