i'm all for getting rid of the concept of spoiling a child as to mean 'giving a child anything good that they do not strictly require to be alive' however what would you call the kind of person who never faced a single consequence as a child and grew up to be an entitled adult? i suppose you'd call them that sentence right there, but i think its more than the definition of 'spoiled' has gotten watered down to mean something it isn't.
Before I answer that question, I think it's important to be really clear what we mean when we talk about "consequences".
Because here's the thing: "consequences" usually means "the results of previous events", but when adults use the word "consequences" in relation to children, much of the time what they actually mean is "a negative experience inflicted deliberately by an authority figure in response to perceived wrongdoing". A more accurate term for that would be "punishments", but adults like to cloak our nastier invocations of power over children in euphemisms.
If we want to get technical about actual consequences, we can break that down further into "logical consequences" and "natural consequences"; those are terms that have been written about both in the realm of parenting and in broader studies of social order. Logical consequences are outcomes that are clearly related to someone's conduct, but still require deliberate exercise of authority to implement. Natural consequences are things that just happen as a direct result of what someone does.
A group of kindergarten kids are building towers with wooden blocks. Alice throws a block at her classmate Bob and hits him in the head.
Punishment: Alice doesn't get to go outside for playtime later that day. This has basically nothing to do with what happened. The basic lesson is "don't do this thing because someone with the power to make your life worse said so".
Logical consequence: Alice isn't allowed to use the blocks for a while. The connection to the problematic act is clear: "you used this thing to hurt someone, so we don't trust you with the thing".
Natural consequence: Bob doesn't want to play with Alice anymore. No one had to make this happen; it just happened because getting hit in the head by a wooden block is unpleasant, and makes you not want to be around the person who hit you. Bob isn't an authority figure invoking any kind of power over Alice, he's just a fellow kid who has the right to choose his own friends.
So, to bring us back around to your original question: if someone goes their entire life and never experiences punishment, I'm genuinely 100% all for that. Punishments serve mostly to reinforce social orders and power structures. If they're successful in changing behaviour - which they're often not! - it's through fear, not by helping people to internalise principles that make them better members of the community. My bro Michel Foucault and I both say fuck that noise.
On the other hand, if someone goes their entire life without experiencing a logical or natural consequence? That's more likely to be a problem, because it's consequences that actually teach us something. It's important to learn that if you hurt someone they won't want to be around you anymore. It's important to learn that breaking people's trust means you might not be trusted again.
The thing is, being insulated from consequences is not something that can just happen. That takes effort from people around you constantly working to prevent anything bad happening to you as a result of your actions. On some level, we do that to children all the time! Alice and Bob from earlier? What are the odds their teacher not only enforces a punishment on Alice, but also then directly intervenes to avert the natural consequence by forcing Bob to accept an apology and be friends again?
There are certainly parents who take this to an extreme. The ones who'll pay $5000 an hour for a lawyer to make sure their teenage kid gets half an hour of community service for setting a bus on fire or some shit. Thing is, odds are those parents are actually punishing that kid severely in private, which is why calling the kid "spoiled" is still kinda fucked up in my book. It's not that nothing bad ever happened to them, or that they never wanted anything they didn't get; it's just that all the bad things that ever happened to them were arbitrary, punitive, and totally useless for learning how to live as an equal member of a society. All they ever learned about was power - that with enough power, you can avoid consequences and inflict punishments as you please. And the moment no one is holding power over them anymore, the rest of us are all fucked.
A lot of parents seem to believe that no punishment makes serial killers, which is weapons grade bullshit. All punishment and no consequences, however, is what makes an Elon Musk.
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