Are your kids’ dreams worth $4,000?

The headlines surrounding Lori Loughlin’s high profile arrest for her role in a nationwide college admissions scheme are impossible to ignore. Details are salacious and, for “normal Joe’s” like me, the estimates of the family’s bribes to ensure admission for their two daughters to the University of Southern California are jaw-dropping.

By most reports, Loughlin and her husband paid more than half a million dollars for their girls to be USC Trojans – that’s just crazy, right?

But, wait…when you do some quick math, add some context and look in the mirror, I wonder if the chorus of flabbergasted parents, like me, would turn down our outrage-filled volume toward the now-evicted Full House star.

Aunt Becky’s math problem is simple:

The Loughlin/Mossimo household has an estimated net worth of $88 million. The payments for the alleged scheme, reportedly $500,000, would have eaten up a grand total of 0.6% of that value.

Aunt Becky math applied to the “normal Joe”:

According to Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, the average American family’s net worth is $692,100. If “Joe” wanted to participate in a similar fraud using the same personal equity of the Loughlin/Mossimo household, he’d be shelling out $3,932.

While $4,000 is nothing to scoff at, the figure does not seem as incomprehensible – comparable to that of a rundown used car or, likely, “Joe’s” wife’s engagement ring.

Hmm.

But, you might say, the Lori Loughlin loathing has nothing to do with the money. After all, it’s no surprise that these celebrities throw around $1,000 like I do a $5 bill. The real issue, some say, is the message that you can butt into line (or skip the line altogether) if you have the means to do so.

In that context, I’m reminded of an article I wrote a few years ago after watching my kids’ dejected faces as others paid a premium to cut lines during a family outing to Universal Studios.

Last weekend I was reminded of a phenomenon that had bothered me a few months ago – the concept of paying for the right to cut in line.  The Universal Studios “Fast-Pass” brought me right back to the scorn I felt for the “Santa’s Helper” line at my local mall during the Christmas season.

My wife thinks I’m crazy for getting worked up about something like this.  She justifiably files my complaints for this inequity between my jealousies for those with more money and families having fewer children.  I’m guilty – in part.

I’ll acknowledge that I might be jealous of those paying to budge in line.  I would consider doing the same if calculating the price of doing so did not require a calculator.

Re-reading the excerpt, I can’t ignore my own hypocrisy related to the Loughlin allegations.

I try to reassure myself – I’d pay-to-budge at a theme park, but never with something as monumental as college admission, right?

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If my oldest, Yosef, worked his tail off and was falling just short of his lifelong ambition to attend Harvard and, for $4k I could guaranty his admission, would I pay up?

95% of me wants to quickly laugh off the idea – no way!

I can’t, though, ignore the 5% that would make me forever wonder if bending the rules in the name of my child’s dream would be, just this once, morally permissible.

Feel free to question my moral compass but know that my honesty and self-reflection are sincere.

In my “normal Joe” life, when I can, I do everything in my power to pave the path for my kids’ dreams – in school, in civic opportunities and on their various fields of play.

Hell, I write sizable checks (at least for me) so that Lynden, my 11 year-old, can play club soccer. And, while my checks don’t blatantly influence whether he is selected for the team, the ability to do so as blatantly pre-determines the group of players he needs to beat out to participate.

Maybe the parenting outrage for Lori Loughlin is missing one thing: the playing fields are not level.

Not in academics.

Not in sports.

Not in S.T.E.M competitions.

And, unfortunately, not in life.

Leveling the field takes years, even decades and generations, of hard work and dogged determination. It can be done, just not overnight and certainty not by pointing at celebrities as perpetrators of social injustice.

This does not mean, though, cheating is okay.

It does, however, mean that parents are naive to ignore that most decks are stacked and, additionally, to recognize our own hypocrisy when we are the ones dealing the cards.