"Choose your parents carefully" has got to be one of the most pessimistic and cynical perspectives in existence.
Instead, you could say "treat your children well", which is basically the same thing, except a lot less selfish.
Instead, you could say "treat your children well", which is basically the same thing, except a lot less selfish.
The point the author was making was that Bill Gates' parents were extremely wealthy and also very influential, which gave Gates a uniquely preparatory childhood, the means to make pretty much whatever risks he wanted, and easy access to capital (and the people behind it).
Not everyone has that kind of influence and money to pass down to their children.
His father was a prominent lawyer by the mid 1970s, yes. They were an upper class family, that is well known. As far as I'm aware, having read a lot about Bill Gates over the years, there isn't much evidence to stipulate just how wealthy they were. If his father earned a higher level lawyer salary in the 1960s, it does not necessarily mean great wealth had been accumulated. I'd argue it would be extremely unlikely at that point in time, as his father would have been merely 40 years old in 1965 when Gates was 10. Try accumulating "extreme" amounts of wealth in just a few years as a lawyer, it's nearly impossible.
By the time Gates was 25, he was already richer than both of his parents combined.
Anyways, influence is as important as wealth:
Mary Maxwell was a board member of First Interstate Bank and Pacific Northwest Bell. She was also on the national board of United Way, along with John Opel, the chief executive officer of IBM who approved the inclusion of MS/DOS with the original IBM PC.
[1] http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate
This is not an argument against treating your children well, but the reality is that having parents who are well-off and educated buffers you against all kinds of mistakes and issues that would sink other kids. Moderating (not eliminating, which is neither possible nor desirable) social inequality is important precisely because we can say with as much certainty as we can say anything that there are kids out there today as talented and driven as Bill Gates who don't have anything like the resilient support system that he had, and without it they are likely going to be a drag on society rather than contributors to it.