The $65 Million Mom

If you haven’t been scouring gossip sites or reading Us Weekly, let me fill you in on a little something.

Looking beautiful, having no discernible talent and tweeting all day can earn your family $65 million a year. As long as you have a smart, savvy mother driving the bus.

Yes, if you didn’t see the news, our favorite reality family, the Kardashians, raked in $64,949,767 more than the average family makes in a year – or according to The Hollywood Reporter, more than Tom Cruise, Sandra Bullock and Angelina Jolie pulled in all together in 2010.

It’s not surprising – one sex tape has begat four reality shows, countless celebrity endorsements, and now Kardashian bottled water, room keys and slot machines at the Mirage in Las Vegas (my fingers could barely type that without turning around and flipping me off).

Behind every Kardashian-shaped Silly Bandz or Kardashian-inspired perfume, which I can only imagine smells of lilac and desperation, is family matriarch, Kris Jenner. Love her or hate her, Jenner isn’t dumb.

She knows fame is fleeting and has figured out a way to push it to its limit. “My job was trying to take my kids’ 15 minutes and turn it into 30,” she said in the interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

But more significant than the fame mongering is her dedication to her children. Jenner manages her kids’ careers with an iron fist so they can take advantage of opportunities without being taken advantage of by others.

If we as parents channeled the same amount of energy Jenner exerts to making her kids famous toward helping our children fulfill their own destinies, the world might look a bit different.

Our efforts wouldn’t be aimed at getting our daughter’s pixelated breasts plastered all over E! or landing $250,000 personal appearances at night clubs. Instead our focus would be helping kids understand an “A” is the result of hard work, not an entitlement, so maybe there won’t be blogs by teachers on how whiny kids are today.

Or if we show our daughters how instead of the Kardashians, they should look at Dr. Temple Grandin or Sally Ride as examples of success, maybe in a few years, we can do better than only 21% of high school seniors performing at the Proficient level in science.

While I could write an entire blog about the issues I have with Jenner and the rest of the Kardashians, she does push me to look at how I can help my own children succeed. My girls don’t need to be famous or wealthy, but they do need to work toward their dreams. It’s up to me to provide a solid foundation, even if the E! cameras aren’t following me.

By Nicole Plegge, Lifestyle Blogger for SmartParenting