Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Sophisticated Behavior and Genuine Sophistication

I’ve always liked Walter Cronkite. That’s why I was one of the first people in line to purchase his autobiography shortly after he passed away.

It’s a great book and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in reading about politics from an evenhanded perspective. There was just one quote that made me wince—even though I am certain that it was not intended to be controversial. In fact, it was almost a throwaway line.

The sentence was intended to set up some astute observations about President Nixon. It read, “Nixon’s social awkwardness, possibly induced by his impoverished childhood, was in sharp contrast to the sophistication of the Kennedys.”

I’ve only lived on the east coast for a few years. However, that has been long enough to encounter the “east coast snobbiness” to which many of my west coast colleagues refer. All too often people of means in this part of the world associate a lack of material means with a lack of breeding and social skills. At the same time they confuse material wealth with sophistication.

I’ve always linked sophistication with knowledge and enlightenment. Consequently the material assets that a person does or does not possess are inconsequential as to whether or not he or she is sophisticated. The dictionary seems to agree with me via its use of words like “knowledgeable” and “advanced” to help define the word.

I’ve met a lot of sophisticated people while living in New York—people who have worked to become educated and enlightened, people who apply everything they’ve learned in wise, meaningful ways. Many of these people have come from “impoverished childhoods.”

The seventy-eight-year-old woman who lives on the third floor of my building is such a person. She was born and raised in our area of Brooklyn years before it became gentrified. And she taught at one of our local schools for many years.

Every time I encounter this woman in the laundry room or at the mailboxes, she always has something profound to say. In fact, after each encounter I usually remark to my children, “I want to be exactly like Lorraine when I grow up.”

In Lorraine’s wildest dreams she would never have hobnobbed with the likes of the sophisticated Kennedys, and as far as I am concerned, that was their loss, not hers.

I’ll be so glad when the human race becomes enlightened enough to distinguish the difference between sophisticated social behavior and true sophistication. I’ll also be glad when all people realize that every childhood, whether impoverished or not, has the potential to produce positive or negative results—depending on how the person who has lived it utilizes it.

Now that would be sophisticated indeed.