Remember when rich parents had the integrity to donate buckets of cash to fancy universities so their mediocre kids could get a coveted spot?

Say what you want about Jared Kushner’s convicted felon father, Charles. At least he had enough scruples to write his $2.5 million check directly to Harvard University. He didn’t try to pass off Jared as a water polo champ.

Everyone knew what was up in that exchange. Daddy Kushner knew he was putting a down-payment on a diploma. Harvard knew, and as evidenced by more recent emails, they like how this game has long been played. And Jared knew.

Which brings us to what may be the most surprising thing in this college cheating scandal. Most of the beneficiaries of the busted rich parents allegedly had no idea they got a hefty assist getting into Yale or Stanford. Some of them actually believed their SAT scores magically rose 400 points or they jumped from a 17 ACT to a 35. There’s a telling exchange in the 200-plus-page affidavit detailing the investigation’s findings. “Cooperating Witness 1” is explaining how the cheating scheme works to a parent and says the student won’t have any idea they didn’t earn the inflated score.

“Which is great, that’s the way you want it. They feel good about themselves,” he said.

Well, there’s a millennial twist to a cheating scandal. You can protect your kid’s self-esteem as you bribe and cheat their way into college. Some of these students might have had a clue that they weren’t among the brightest and best in their exclusive high schools. But being surrounded by wealth has a way of making you feel like you’ve “earned” whatever you get.

The Privileged Action group tends to get really worked up about the Affirmative Action group. They don’t seem to get as upset about legacy kids, for whom simply being related to another person gets them bonus points. They also don’t get as upset about the spots reserved for athletes in sports dominated by white participants that require big money to play. It doesn’t even rankle the middle class that Early Decision students, whose families typically don’t have to worry about financial aid packages, have a far greater chance of acceptance than those who apply later in order to have competing financial aid offers. During the recent trial of Harvard’s admission system, one witness noted that early decision legacies get a 40-percentage-point boost in the chance of admission, compared with a 9-point boost for low-income students, according to the school’s own analysis.

Where’s the clamoring to get rid of legacy bonus points? For whatever reason, giving an unearned advantage to the children of rich families doesn’t provoke the same angst in America that Affirmative Action has.

The children who grow up in bubbles of privilege often don’t have anyone of authority in their lives to give them a reality check about how much of their “success” is a reflection of things they never earned in the first place. The schools they attend from preschool and the selective universities they end up in reinforce this message: You are special. Your hard work got you here. You are destined to do great things.

Imagine if during orientation, selective colleges and universities shared some perspective-setting data about how their school is overrepresented by those from the wealthiest families. Imagine if they showed how that wealth made the path to this college all that much easier for them. It’s hard to deliver that message to kids whose families also may be writing hefty tuition checks. But if higher education institutions were more honest and transparent about who gets in and why, perhaps these students would graduate with more realistic ideas about what their degrees mean. Colleges and universities should expose the limits of the supposed meritocracy their students believe they rode in on. Maybe they will become parents less inclined to game the system for their own kids.

It’s hard to teach integrity by the time students get to college. But you can still impart some humility.

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A few weeks ago, a woman posted a question in a large Facebook group of writers who are also mothers. She asked us to share our greatest fear related to our children. The responses might have shocked the generation of parents before us.

The top-cited concern was about a child getting shot, either in a school or otherwise. While the odds of being killed in a school shooting are extremely low, the images and stories of dead children massacred in their schools are seared in our minds. That’s traumatic for survivors, and anxiety-provoking for witnesses and children who live with that reality.

The second most common fear was that a child might commit suicide. The rate of teen suicide has been rising. The number of children hospitalized for thinking about or attempting suicide has doubled in less than a decade, according to a 2018 study published in the journal of Pediatrics.

Depression and anxiety among young people have skyrocketed. A new Pew Research Center study found that the vast majority of teens see these illnesses as major problems among their peers. Experts continue to debate the factors fueling the mental health crisis many young people are facing today.

Parents realize how serious these issues have become, as reflected in the suicide response and others that followed it, such as bullying. We don’t know for sure if smartphones and social media are direct causes of these problems, but we cast a suspicious eye on the technology in which our kids are immersed. The number of hours spent with screens daily can’t be healthy, and research suggests the same.

We didn’t grow up this way. Our parents likely worried most about risky behavior, like drug use, or car accidents. But parenting fears are tied to generations like the tide to the moon. Our fears are pulled by what we can’t control, the unfamiliar and omnipresent.

By now, it seems every parent on the planet has been warned about the “Momo Challenge.” Even Kim Kardashian warned her 129 million followers on Instagram about it. An image of a sculpture called “Mother Bird,” created by Japanese artist Keisuke Aisawa, was hijacked into creepy internet lore. The bulging-eyed, birdlike female face allegedly appeared in YouTube videos targeting children or WhatsApp messages and encouraged kids to hurt themselves and others, culminating in -- what else? -- suicide.

Numerous media organizations, schools and law enforcement agencies warned the public about it, although scant evidence showed that children were actually falling for the so-called challenge. It was later described as a “hoax,” although that’s not quite accurate, either. Some people likely did see this unsettling image, perhaps delivering a frightening message.

Momo tapped into something primal for parents. Momo is knowing you can’t control everything your children will ever see or experience on the internet. Momo is the plethora of terrible content, shady corporate practices and dangerous people as close as the phone in your child’s hand. Momo is knowing that the current levels of screen time are affecting our kids in ways we don’t entirely understand or even know. Momo is the outsized consequences and ruined futures for stupid mistakes on social media. Momo is the cyberbully we can’t see, and schools can’t control. Momo is feeling outmatched and outnumbered by technology’s pull and unable to protect our kids the way we want to. Momo is the report about a 9-year-old boy in Colorado dying by suicide after being bullied by classmates.

I talked to a father about what he had heard about the Momo challenge. He said he knew it wasn’t a real threat. “All these kids use all these different apps now,” he said. He named a popular messaging one that can be used to chat anonymously in large groups. “That’s the one that’s scary,” he said.

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Jill Gaither’s daughter came home sobbing because of an accident only a girl could experience.

Her period started unexpectedly at school and leaked through her pants.

Her mother had given her supplies to deal with such situations. Why didn’t she take what she needed out of her locker?

“Then I have to pull it out in front of everyone,” her daughter said. “There are boys standing by my locker.”

“Oh yeah, that’s seventh grade,” Gaither thought. She asked why her daughter didn’t go to the nurse. It’s embarrassing to go the school nurse and admit something like this, her daughter explained. Duh.

Gaither wondered why the school, in Ladue, didn’t have tampons and pads available for girls in the bathroom. She told her daughter that she was going to look into it.

“She, of course, is mortified because she might be associated with periods, but I was undeterred,” Gaither said. She put together a wish list of supplies that could be purchased for the bathrooms. Then, she emailed her friends who also had middle-school-aged daughters and asked them to purchase what they could from the list. When she had collected enough items, she approached Ladue Middle School.

There was some initial pushback. The school already provides supplies at no cost at the nurse’s office. There are also coin-operated machines in the bathrooms to purchase hygiene products.

Gaither responded that no kid carries quarters on them anymore, and the supplies the machine dispenses are unfamiliar and uncomfortable for teen girls. Also, boys don’t have to trek to the nurse’s office to ask for toilet paper after they use the bathroom. Why make it burdensome for a girl to deal with her bodily functions?

At first, the school put a sign in the bathroom saying there were teen-oriented products available in the nurse’s office. After a few months, they eventually put the tampons and pads in baskets in the bathrooms, like Gaither originally wanted.

“They were worried it would be a disaster with maxi pads stuck on lockers,” Gaither said. Another concern was that students might just take free supplies home instead of using them at school, to which Gaither responded: If they need them that badly, then please, let them take them home.

None of the concerns materialized. Many girls have used the free products available in the bathroom. Gaither attended a parent association meeting and asked if they would be willing to fund the project. They agreed to budget $100 a month to stock the four bathrooms at the middle school.

Much of the attention in the media recently has focused on the negative consequences of “period poverty,” where girls don’t have access to, or can’t afford, sanitary supplies. In some parts of the world, girls drop out of school when they begin to menstruate due to the lack of supplies. The documentary short film “Period. End of Sentence” told the story of bringing a machine that makes sanitary pads to a small village in India and how it changed the lives of the women there. A group of girls at a North Hollywood school raised funds to buy the machine and paid for the film production.

“Ladue is a pretty affluent area,” Gaithers said, and increasing access and availability to products even there helped many girls. She heard about girls who don't have anyone to talk to or to help them once they get their period. Her goal is to “normalize this normal thing and not make it this shameful thing,” and to spread the idea to other schools.

She has a meeting later this month with a teacher who reached out to her because a Ladue student wants to spearhead the same effort at underserved schools in the area. Other cities and states have already taken up the issue of free menstrual supplies in schools as one of basic equality and dignity. It’s disruptive and stigmatizing to send girls to the nurse to access basic hygiene supplies. It’s embarrassing to deal with stains from accidents. And it’s unconscionable that schools would force impoverished families to choose between buying a child’s food or buying period supplies every month.

Using a tampon is just as much a “luxury” as using the bathroom soap to wash your hands.

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