My Catholic school students often wonder why God won’t give them what they ask for. I’m not immune from those questions, either. But being a parent helps shed light on the answer. My wife and I often make decisions about our kids as we scramble to find the manual sent from heaven on how to raise them; until we realize … there isn’t one. It’s “learn as you go.”

I’m happy I can draw parental wisdom from three sources: God, people much wiser than I, and 24 years of police work, watching many parental mistakes unfold before me, praying I don’t make the same. I’m sure I sometimes do.

We all want what’s best for our kids — for them to be happy, well-adjusted adults — in fact, for them to find success. Of course the proverbial quandary in our efforts to launch them into that arena depends on our definition of success. And I think, at times, we let our culture define what it means rather than our faith or our God.

My kids have lots of friends. It thrills me to see them playing with other kids. But I often ask myself: how much “popularity” do I truly want for them? In a recent article published in the Washington Post, psychology professor Joseph Allen speaks of this desire for our children’s popularity as a recipe for a “dead end.” He states that oftentimes, particularly as early teens, these “popular” kids are the “social strivers” who “consistently end up much worse off in adulthood than their ‘less cool’ friends.”

I questioned that at first until I looked up the study myself. In it, a large sampling of middle-school students was studied — kids who put a strong emphasis on obsessions with physical appearance and social status. Know what the study found? That they were 45 percent more likely to suffer from alcohol or drug addictions, or depression.

I thought about this in light of the recent suicide of the beloved Robin Williams. Depression is a serious and real disease that none of us can or should take lightly. It is as real as cancer. But I find a common theme in many of the lives of our “stars” who struggle with substance abuse; in fact, depression. One could say perhaps they’ve reached the summit of their parents’ strivings. They have it all: money, popularity, looks. Maybe popularity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

In my experience as a juvenile detective, I saw dozens of troubled teens — some popular, some not. Funny thing was that the “popularity” toward which their parents often steered them … well, it didn’t seem to fulfill them. And I recall many of the conversations I’ve had with parents in my office over the years, often preceded by comments like, “My kid is a good kid. He gets all ‘As” — or — “My child wouldn’t do that. She gets along with everyone.”

When did intelligence become synonymous with goodness, or popularity with virtue? When did being liked by everyone become the talisman for which we strive? When parents become more concerned with social status than virtue, is it any wonder our society starts to crumble?

I often compare my love for my kids to God’s love for me. What I conveniently forget is maybe that’s why I don’t get everything I want either. If I love my kids, perhaps I should be more concerned with the type of perfection of which Jesus speaks, rather than the culture; that idea of seeking what’s perfect, rather than what’s fleeting.

Popularity in itself isn’t bad. But if our drive to see our kids become “social climbers” supersedes our efforts to make them virtuous, I wonder if we’re setting them up for failure. We all want our kids to be happy. But if we think what pop culture offers will give them that, we might be fooling ourselves.

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Paul Stuligross teaches theology at Livonia Ladywood High School.