The Friends My Parents Never Had

Read time: 3½ minutes

Welcome to issue #038 of Unicorn Parents. Each week, I share practical insights and reflections to help you build a profitable business without missing the magic at home. If you’re serious about winning at work while raising great kids, you’ve come to the right place. This is a community built for ambitious parents who want both.

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Every parent wants their children to have good friends and avoid bad ones. But few of us stop to ask what we’re actually teaching them about friendship itself.

I grew up inside that instinct.

My parents didn’t just warn us about bad friends.
They didn’t really have friends.

They were immigrants. Suspicious by necessity.

They distrusted non-Korean speakers because of language and cultural distance.
Ironically, they distrusted Korean speakers too because they knew it was a dog-eat-dog world, and you couldn’t afford to be naïve.

Trust no one.
Rely on family.
Keep your circle tight.

Nothing was above family.

That internal orientation wasn’t wrong. In many ways, it was how we survived. As immigrants, we were taught (and forced) to lean inward. Family wasn’t just emotional support; it was economic insurance. Social safety net. Identity.

But it came with a cost.

Because when parents don’t model friendship, children don’t just lack friends.
They lack a framework for friendship.

I didn’t grow up seeing adults argue and reconcile.
Or disappoint each other and stay.
Or show up imperfectly over time.

So friendship felt… optional. Secondary. Slightly dangerous.

And that shaped how I approached relationships for years.

Which brings me back to the contrarian truth I’ve been sitting with:

Not all loneliness is a problem to be solved. But not all self-reliance is healthy either.

We often frame friendship as something children must find.
But in reality, it’s something they must learn.

And most of that learning doesn’t come from lectures.

It comes from watching us.

The way we host people.
The way we speak about friends when they’re not around.
The way we endure friction instead of cutting ties.
The way we ask for help — or refuse to.

Here’s what I’m slowly realizing:

One of the greatest assets we can pass on to our children isn’t just knowledge or values.

It’s friendship.

Not just how to make good friends, which we teach by example, but who our friends are.

Our friends become our children’s mentors.
Their aunties and uncles.
Their quiet counselors.
Their mirrors of adulthood.

This is the village everyone talks about, but rarely builds intentionally.

And we’re losing it.

As social media and technology isolate us, we’re not just losing community.
We’re losing the art of friendship.

The kind that includes conflict.
Misunderstanding.
Repair.
History.

Friendship isn’t sunshine all the time.

It’s valleys and mountains crossed together.

It’s iron sharpening iron, especially when we’re young.

And here’s the part that might feel uncomfortable for high-achieving parents:

Friendship is not just a moral good.

It’s an entrepreneurial and life asset.

They say Donald Trump’s greatest inheritance wasn’t money. It was his father’s Rolodex of real estate friends. People who took calls. Opened doors. Extended trust.

Whether you admire him or not, the lesson stands:

Networks don’t start at 22.
They’re inherited long before that.

When we model healthy, durable friendships, we’re not just giving our children emotional resilience.

We’re giving them social capital.

So maybe the real question isn’t just:

“Am I protecting my child from bad friends?”

But also:

“Am I showing them what good friendship actually looks like?”

Because our kids won’t just choose friends based on rules.

They’ll choose based on what felt normal at our dinner table.

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A Thought I’d Love Your Input On

I’ve been wondering what it would look like for our kids to actually see the friendships we form online.

So one idea I’ve been toying with:

A “bring your kiddos to Zoom” session for Unicorn Parents.

Not a lesson.
Not a lecture.
Just a chance for our kids to briefly see the people we learn alongside—the friends, acquaintances, and adults who make up this community.

To put faces to names.
To normalize adult friendship.
To let them see how conversations happen, how respect looks, how curiosity and disagreement coexist.

Maybe it’s meaningful.
Maybe it’s awkward.
Maybe it’s unnecessary.

I honestly don’t know yet.

But given everything we just talked about—friendship as something learned, modeled, and inherited—it felt worth asking.

So I’m curious:

Would something like that feel valuable to you?
Or does it cross a line you’d rather keep private?

Hit reply and tell me what you think.
As always, I read every response.

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