Simplistically, I suspect it is because they lack sufficient time. The sheer quantity of information and habits children must process to climb up the rungs of

Simplistically, I suspect it is because they lack sufficient time. The sheer quantity of information and habits children must process to climb up the rungs of success in the developed world is quite large. I don't mean just academics, but also soft-skills areas like networking, leadership, interpersonal communications, etc. More interestingly, the sheer amount of information to evaluate and reject is also quite large. Read any Ask Reddit thread about what is common knowledge in a particular industry but isn't well-known publicly. Much of this information is passed along in many well-to-do families, but not as much in less-well-off families. Yet all of this information is either passed off as inaccurate common knowledge (you save more money per fluid ounce buying the biggest cup of Coke you can; truth: you shouldn't drink any sugar water of any kind, in any common American quantities, full stop), or is simply not known at all (insurance company tells you to use X body shop for repairs after an accident they're paying for, but fewer working class than middle-class people know you can tell them you're choosing Y body shop instead). It takes a massive amount of parental involvement time to convey this mountain of information and inculcate these habits of thought into children, starting at infancy with baby sign language to impress an early predilection to communicate thoughts, all the way through adulthood with assessing people's character and financial affairs. Since these are young developing minds, repetition is the mother skill you will turn to time and again, so many lessons are taught many times over, increasing the time commitment. If you're already time-trapped trying to hold down enough work to pay for exorbitant American urban/suburban real estate, healthcare, and education (among other expense categories), then you won't have the time to convey all this information that is definitely not taught in schools in America. Of course the issue is way more complex and nuanced than just what I've touched upon, but I see tons of parents in America spending way too little time with their children.