Mom of Tweens: Doesn't everybody love the suburbs?

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  Posted by HotCrossBuns Fri Oct 24, 2008 6:00pm PDT

  Jezabel, I'd say you need to pack up and move! Never in any of my suburban homes have I run into what you're describing. Yikes, 5th ring of he11 sounds about on the nose. I'd find myself a cabin in the woods and become a hermit if life were anything like that here. Crikey!

  PS...I might have to agree with you about the PTO, though. hehehehe.

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  Posted by cindy Mon Oct 27, 2008 6:25am PDT

  We live in a small rural town, but in an apartment. Everyone comments that we need to buy a house. I hate that. It is like foreign to people to live in an apartment in the rural area. I refuse to drive a mini van. ick, makes me want to throw up. We only have one child, a little boy. I never wanted to be the steriotyped mom, I want to be a great one, but be myself.

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  Posted by gracious432003 Tue Oct 28, 2008 5:52am PDT

  I wouldn't like to live in a suburb because there is too much travel time. But I really loved living in the middle of a mid-sized Indiana town with the house and yard and small garden and the wild wooly rascals that my sons grew up with.

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  Posted by hrtbroken Tue Oct 28, 2008 11:16am PDT

  to DJ and Christa..I am so glad you put it to NONE that way. The author was asking a question and gave us a glimpse into a life I DEFINETELY WANT!!!! I grew up in the city, in a bad neighborhood..everyone in your family always at your house, kids playing on the street because they do not have parks to play in. I am 31 years old and I cannot wait to live that suburban life, but it is my choice...I am not sure why you got so defensive NONE...she was not telling you that you have to live this way! Get a grip!

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  Posted by Anonymous Tue Nov 4, 2008 6:49pm PST

  "Maybe it's not for everybody, but the suburbs are for me. I love living here. I mean, doesn't everybody?"

  An illogical, ignorant statement.

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  Posted by No Tue Nov 4, 2008 7:56pm PST

  You know, I love having a family--a partner and two kids I raise passionately--but that has nothing to do with being chronically unemployed, which is what "working from home around the kids' schedules" translates as. This is exactly the kind of dependence on a man in ones life to earn the living and provide access to health insurance that keeps women--including you--under the thumb. Did your parents send you to college so you could take notes on cub scout meetings and soccer practices, all while keeping up your hair? Or worse, didn't you go to college, opting instead to busy yourself at home? The worst thing about the "unemployed by choice" is that you create the suggestion that moms with real jobs aren't keeping a good house or properly raising their children, and it's so untrue--with the advent of modern appliances, shared housework, etc. two working adults can take care of their home and children without someone slacking and not earning a living. And by the way, it's "peeps," not "peops."

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  Posted by Mondegreen Tue Nov 4, 2008 8:36pm PST

  Did you not notice the contradiction? "Maybe it's not for everybody, but the suburbs are for me. I love living here. I mean, doesn't everybody?"

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  Posted by No Wed Nov 5, 2008 11:17am PST

  After watching the Obama win last night and being able to finally look at my mixed race 11-year old daughter and say for the first time that it's true, it's real--someone who is not a white male can be the POTUS; maybe honey, someday, it will be you...I realized with greater clarity what is no dangerously naive about your "position" and that of your millions of turncoat cohorts. Most women do want a husband (or wife), kids, and a house. The difference between those women and you is we also want to be fully realized human beings including vocation. The women who struggled and fought and even died for you did not die so that you could have a "choice," that's a common staple in housewife lore. Women don't need choice, they need credibility. Look at blacks following the civil rights movement--we understandably don't hear anyone saying that the civil rights movement was to give blacks a "choice," they could hold their own in society with whites, or, remain marginalized, undereducated, and denied justice and opportunities in a systemic way. No. Rights for blacks and women (as well as other races and gays) are about the fight for equality and credibility, not the right to stay home and bake cookies and fix your hair while your husband earns a living for you. For the record, I fix my hair in the morning before work and bake cookies when I want to after dinner or on weekends.

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  Posted by hineata Wed Nov 5, 2008 12:59pm PST

  Wow, educated mom, what is your problem? I was a SAHM, who supplemented the income of our household by taking in the children of other people too lazy to raise them themselves, and I can tell you, as someone with both a college- and post-grad education, that it was both the hardest and the most rewarding work I could possibly have done. It bothers me that you would choose to throw your child over just to prove a point, ie that somehow you and your husband can adequately raise a child while not bothering to look after it, that your jobs are more important than you family. And I am also the mother of bi-racial children, by the way. I hope that they will learn that sacrifice for others (and it is a sacrifice, putting others before yourself and choosing to look after your own family) is in the end more important in life than meeting one's own selfish needs. Civilisations have, after all, been made on the back of sacrifice. I am not a turncoat, just a realist. Our children need us more than 'the man'.

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  Posted by No Wed Nov 5, 2008 9:01pm PST

  I didn't say it wasn't hard and rewarding, and no one would call us lazy--we don't even have a television and therefore don't park them in front of it, ignore them, or neglect them--we're very focused parents. I don't know what you mean by "throw your child over," and think about it--men go to work every day while simultaneously having children and no one would say they "threw them over." I do look after my family, my children aren't babies being "raised" by someone else, they're in school all day while we are working and while I think there's nothing more important than taking care of them, we just apparently disagree about what that looks like. Have you ever accused a man of letting his kids down "to meet his own selfish needs" by going to work? No! We call them husbands. At any rate, I'm sorry if I offended you but the writer's glib article didn't sound like you at all, and it offended me (the article).

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