Parenthood: The negation of ideology

Tell us you make Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and all will be forgiven.

Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is awesome on a Fall Sunday afternoon watching football. Mix it up with a bit of garlic powder and Mrs. Dash™ seasoning... amazing

When I read the book, I thought, "He's writing this book about me!"

Here are some true confessions of someone who identifies with Crunchy Cons:

1. Sometimes we shop at Walmart. Okay almost every week. But not for milk, meat, and cod liver capsules...
2. We've toured houses in the burbs and toured their respective schools. So far, we always pack it back to the urbs and to our old one bathroom home and keep on homeschooling. But I do have to wonder what will happen the day we find a cheap, bright, McMansion with a Rainbow Playsystem, and a jacuzzi tub with a coffee shop withing walking distance... IN OUR PRICE RANGE. Will I cave to the vacuous expanse of cheery homes made of hardiplank siding?
3. We don't have TV, BUT I watch all my favorite shows online and my five year old has a list of websites where he can watch livestreaming cartoons. Why don't we have TV again???
4. We are evangelical converts to orthodoxy, but every summer we make the rounds to all kinds of other Christian churches. Why the summer? Because our church doesn't have nursery or Sunday school in the summer, because we miss some parts of evangelicalism, and we like the insides of Catholic churches too!
5. I sometimes fantasize what it would be like if I didn't care so darn much about stuff most people just take for granted. Like what if I just ate pesticide laden, GMO corn and didn't think anything about it? Or what if I just sent my kids down to the local public school. Wht if we just had cable TV and my kids watched whatever they felt like. What if I got a job and put my infant in daycare? What if I quit breastfeeding and just gave into convenient formula?

I tried it. I did. I had my kids in school. I had grandma watch the one who wasn't. I packed up my "mommy persona" and shoved it in the closet and went to law school. We got TV. We ate all kinds of junky food. And I lasted 6 months. My husband and I took a two week trip to Europe where I decided that all I really wanted out of life was to live a beautiful life with my family. That was what was most important. And I haven't looked back. Even if I'm not a perfect Crunchy Con. Life is a lot better than it was. And as my middle one said in the law school days, "Mommy, you're going to stay here all day? Every day? You're not going away anymore?" Yep, kiddo. I'm here to stay.

Nate, your post brought to mind nostalgia for our life in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. It was so crunchy, in the way you mention, but for us, ultimately unsustainable. We just couldn't afford it on my salary. I don't know how on earth we'd make it there now with three kids. Even some old friends, native NYers, who swore they'd never, ever leave recently packed up and headed to Jersey.

It's housing costs, plain and simple. Because here's the thing: when we moved to Dallas, we thought we'd be rich by comparison to NYC. But we didn't count on how much money we saved in NY by not having to own cars (and pay insurance bills, and maintenance bills, and gas bills); you can't live in Dallas without cars. We had to have two. We could afford to buy a house here, but there are all kinds of expenses that we just didn't have in NYC.

But we can afford housing here. And children.

I don't think there inevitably has to be a trade-off between a good walking neighborhood with mom and pop shops like they have in Bklyn, and affordability. But has anybody found an alternative?

P.S. (while it is dinner break)

Reading Rod's comparision of church life with marriage in thread "On beaching about church" i wanted to make a long post, saying that it was exactly mine idea (to those who ask me if i am baptised i jokingly answer that by now i am in platonic love with church and don't hasten with marriage; jokes apart - it is too hard to accept absolutely everything in church, not checking it with reason not searching for special feelings, although i admire and envy those who can, (as one orthodox girl said to other who were boasting with positive qualities of their husbands- she said - i love my husband because he is mine.fullstop.) and while i feel in myself that irresistable desire -to critisize or search pleasant comforting feelings- i feel not prepared for that 'marriage', although it is very bad of course.
And when i decided to write a lot on the theme of being critical to church i found out with horror that access is denied. All other threads are open to comment and work well but not this! I believe that clicking on links in blog, is a good thing because it somehow adds money to Rod, but now, i thought, even if owners don't see anything bad in it, it is divine intent that prohibits me to enter and to make selfish comments on everything! And to be honest it was not for the first time. I was afraid and ready to repent, but suddenly noticed that the word in the title includes the word bi*сh! Obviously administrators of our network made an adjustment not to display any link that contains a cursing word, even if it is just part of the word:):) That was a great relief:) But anyway i must learn to restrain.

Here's a vote for the other side of Pennsylvania. For the northeast, Philadelphia's housing costs are pretty reasonable. We were able to buy a house in a walkable neighborhood close to the train station. This ain't Brooklyn either, but rather pleasant for city living. We still operate one car, however we don't use it every day.

It's a shame that decent, walkable neighborhoods are the exception rather than the norm. Perhaps the inevitable crisis in energy supplies coming soon will change the way we as a society arrange our public space.

Rod, we used to homeschool our son in Brooklyn at the same time that your family did (late 90s, early 00s) and were members of NYCHEA as well. We reluctantly abandoned homeschooling because our son, an only child (we are unable to have more children) was basically not getting enough "friend time." He's extremely gregarious and wanted to be with other kids all day, which was pretty impossible while homeschooling due to the complexities of everybody being spread out over the city and having different daily schedules.

When we moved upstate we didn't feel at home with the homeschooling community up here for various reasons, and that sealed another nail in the homeschooling coffin.

We then put our son into a nearby, non-curriculum, private "free school," which meant my son basically got to play all day with other free-spirited kids. He spent his time running around the woods building forts all day and playing "cowboys and Indians" type games, imagination and character-building activities I wholeheartedly endorsed. I think that kids these days are pushed too fast into a competitive, rushed, overly-supervised lifestyle so this school was perfect at first. In the evenings I supplemented with the basics: reading, writing, math and history. Although left-leaning, the parents at this school shared our philosophies about many things pertaining to the crunchy (minus the con) lifestyle.

That worked out great for about 3 years until my son reached middle-school age, when a lot of the kids in his admittedly "hippie school" began experimenting with marijuana. There was a lot of peer pressure on my son to conform and when he didn't join his friends in their new pursuits, which included unsupervised sleepovers and parties, he found himself somewhat ostracized. I knew we'd have to deal with this type of thing in high school but age 10 seemed a bit too young for our kid to have to worry about just saying no.

So now we are starting him in a small, "progressive" private school come Septemember, which will entail a two-hour round trip commute each day on my part to get him there. Not very crunchy at all given our green proclivities.

I am a stay-at-home mom back in college part time for a nursing degree (second career as I was a journalist in NYC before I had my son) so this will fit into my schedule okay but I'm not happy about his school being so far from our home, as we liked being local in terms of work, church, school etc.

Due to the extra financial burden of paying for this school, we have also had to drop our membership in the local CSA farm we belonged to for several years. No more weekly veggie pick-ups and work hours spent in the lovely fields.

So yes, I can completely relate to the compromises one is sometimes forced to make due to circumstance. We do our best, that is all.

I guess #3 isn't a plan. I don't know what to do about it. Keep them away from stores, I guess. It's easier to do when they're in school because they don't go shopping with me.

We also struggle between the ideal crunchy life of our dreams and reality.

I homeschool our four children in a small 1200 sq.ft. house on the corner of a busy street, when I'd rather be out on acreage and raising chickens so the kids could go out and get the eggs in the morning. But, we're in a beautiful smallish town, across from a historic winery and hotel. We walk to the farmers market on Saturdays, but I have to buy certain things in bulk at places like Costco, and even heaven forbid, Walmart. I used to insist on organic everything, now I buy organic whenever I can afford it. I do try to have raw milk for the kids, eventhough it costs and arm and a leg.

We have one rather old minivan, and my husband takes public transportation and carpools to work. We have no savings for retirement or college educations, but feel the trade off is worth it. Sometimes you just do the best you can. I've finally realized I cannot save the earth and western civilization on my own.

Aretemom

I've seen a few people now say that it's harder to stay crunchy if you have kids. We find it's the opposite. Especially where cars are concerned: Now that many places (including the area we live in) require kids to ride in car seats up to age 7, having 3 or more under 7 means you have two transportation choices: a van that can accommodate 3 or more car seats, or, public transit. There is no way we could come up with the money to buy and operate a van, even a used one, so for us, a large family and driving are mutually exclusive choices. And around the house, it's surprising how much help even a very young child can be, especially with vegetable garden chores. Sure, babies are a lot of work - but by age two, they start to become active and productive members of the family team. I spend a lot less time on vegetable gardening and canning chores now than I did in the years before there were pudgy little hands helping me with everything from picking in the garden to trimming the vegetables.

I've seen a few people now say that it's harder to stay crunchy if you have kids. We find it's the opposite.

I think having kids makes it harder in *some* ways. (I don't seem to find them as efficient as you do at canning, for example, lol!) But I will say that my *awareness* of crunchy issues and my *motivation* to be crunchy has increased exponentially since I've had kids. Before kids I just didn't think as much about these things. To take the food example: Before kids, I liked the idea of organic, but I didn't go out of my way to find organic foods. However, when I started making baby food to put into my precious little girl's tiny body, I got a whole lot more serious about it. Simply being in the organic-buying demographic then made me more aware of the spectrum of sustainable agriculture issues and changed my buying habits quite dramatically. I've experienced a similar progression on issues like using cloth diapers, fair trade issues, etc. The things that seem harder are gas use, convenience items, and some consumption issues (kids wanting cheap plastic toys, etc.) I'll admit that the homeschooling helps a bit with the consumer culture stuff -- my kids tend to want less than kids who go to school or watch lots of commercial TV.

Maclin Horton, thank you very much, it was nothing special indeed. You'd better change it in more literate way and correct mistakes

"homeschooling is teaching your own kids at home, or more accurately, at home and in the wider community"

Naturalmom, we have no such practice here. It is very interesting, but it must require a big luck to live near good educated community which includes good teachers of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology etc. and also one parent free of work. To organise and control separate studies for more than 3 children must be a very hard work, imho, isn't it?

Here we have one novelty in education for children of believers -that is Orthodox Gymnasiums, i've recently learned about one of them- children are taken there early in the morning and return home only after 9 p.m. And all that time they study, study, study, with several breaks for meals (they have a type of farm near school) and physical exercises. Apart from ordinary school lessons such as mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, literature, english or french etc. , they study catechism, history of religions, church singing, and 4(!) ancient languages -Greek, Latin, Ancient Slavonic and Sanscrit. On one hand -poor children to study so much, but on the other they would easily pass any entering exam at colledge or university, as proverb says- hard in study - easy in battle.

(Remembering schooling of me and my brother, it was not at home, and i can say that our school education helped us a lot in life, although we both studied worse than average, it taught us to be more disciplined, to get up very early, to be afraid not to prepare lessons. When child is taught at home and didn't prepare lesson he knows that mother will be angry but that isn't so scary as when some other persons (teachers) are angry when pupil is not prepared. Some pupils at our school had a tradition to give to parents their homework to check before giving it to teachers, or even doing homework together with parents, parents explained to them what they didn't understand in class, so it was partly a home schooling and partly a school schooling- the golden mean, imho. (Our mother hadn't time to check homework, but she always aked if it was prepared, and we had to do it all before going to bed or at least pretend that it was done:) And she also didn't allow us to turn on TV without permission, appr. before the age of 10-11 -we looked throgh schedule and asked if we can watch this or that movie or programm, but that was not so much for moral reasons, she thought that watching it for more than an hour is bad for child's health - precisely for eyes which are tired from study. She said: Do you want to wear glasses?))

We have two kids in public high school and one in college, and have tried a plethora of school situations - home school, private school, and public. I'm not convinced one school situation is "crunchier" than another. As the commenters have shown, each has its ups and downs, and every family has to find their own particular balance.

That said, I've found that everyone here is happier when we live in a more "European" way. First and foremost, that means cooking. Unfortunately we don't live within walking distance of a daily market. We do try to shop for as much fresh food as possible, from a local store that's *not* a chain (and also has relatively low prices.)

Housing is a problem for many, but it's a buyer's market now. One thing I would say to anyone buying a house for the first time is *buy one with a mortgage you can pay on one income.* I can't stress this enough. Even if you have no children and two incomes, but want children someday, *get a cheaper house.* Don't be fooled by realtors and lenders, who will try to sell you the moon and stars for that commission.

Corollary to that: if you have no kids and two incomes, spend the larger and *bank the smaller.* If you can't live on the larger income, then you're spending too much.

Finding lower-cost housing takes a lot of time and market knowledge. There really are lower-cost houses out there, in many cities, but it will mean some compromise: more sweat-equity required; not the best neighborhood; smaller. Where I live, you can find an 1800 sf ranch house, three bedrooms, two baths, for under $200,000 - not in the best school districts, but not in the worst either. A family can get by for a long time on 3 BDRs and 2 BAs, especially if they're not accumulating mostly-useless commercial kitsch.

I hate shopping at the big box stores, but we do for some items - because sometimes you just have to cut corners. We will buy clothes at the "big boxes" but not shoes. I insist on good-quality, long-lasting, sensible shoes. For instance, one kid has a pair of hiking boots that he wears everywhere - which he bought 3-4 years ago, and which we have repaired, because they're actually designed to be repaired, and they're worth it.

We have done this from the beginning of our marriage, when both of us were working full-time. It has enabled me to stay home (with some occasional part-time work) for 20 years.

Very true, amazona, very true.

Natalie: Could you comment a bit more on what led you and Julie to decide against homeschooling Matthew? We are debating homeschool vs. private school for our 7 yo. We homeschooled last year and it was a real struggle in a lot of ways, but I am not excited about our private school choices here, unfortunately.

Not a lot to say, really. It has to do with a complicated learning disability, a part of which makes Matthew respond very well to a structured classroom setting, but which makes educating him at home extremely frustrating because he can't pay attention like he should.