2008-04-12

One value that I'd like to pass on to my children is that I'd like them to notice and appreciate differences with others, but not necessarily judge them. My analogy for this is that If the world were made up for red people and blue people, I'd like them to notice that red people and blue people looked different, that red people and blue people might act different because of perhaps being raised in a red culture or a blue culture. I'd like them to understand red and blue cultures. I'd like them also not to think that being red or being blue was superior to the other. I'd like them to know that being red or blue would not preclude a person from being their friend, or mate or co-worker or whatever. My analogy makes it sound like this is all about race, but it isn't. Race is just the obvious marker, as it is easy to see that people all have different color skin (even within family groups, but that isn't necessarily a marker of race). But I'd also like to get them to see this as it relates to class issues.

Class and economic status are the things that I think people are even more uncomfortable talking about than they are of race. And I think that it isn't so much that I want Amy and Emily to identify particular rich or poor people or even to evaluate how a particular person stands up to them with regards to money, but I do want them to realize that there are people both better and worse off than them. I want them to do what they can to level out the economic playing field. And I want them to think about their resources and how they use them--not just money but all their resources.

Central to where I'm going here (I do have a point) you need to realize that while our family unit is not poor, we are not wealthy either. According to the 2006 census estimates for our city, we fall slightly above the mean income (which is as I understand it an "average") and well above the median income (the middle). I suppose this makes us upper middle class. We own our own home and again according the census, we paid slightly above the median. At the time we bought the house, both husband and I were working, our income was way higher than it is now and we were told we could afford a house 50K more than we paid (by the bank--and looking at it now they probably wanted us in debt to our eyeballs). We chose our house specifically because we did not want to buy as big of a house as we could afford--we wanted a cushion because we wanted children and thought that perhaps one of us might not want to work outside the home afterwords. It turned out to be a good move because I quit my horrible job 13 months after we moved in. Had we purchased a bigger house, I would not have been able to quit that job until I had found a new one. I would probably not have been able to stay home full-time.
And, I like my house. Yes, it is a late 1950s split-level. Yes, the living room carpet has about had it (not replacing til children are a few years older). Yes, I do wish that the dining room floor was real hardwood (instead of same ugly living room carpet). And if I had a few extra thousand dollars, I have a list of projects that would eat it up. Plus, I hate cleaning. I do it of course, but I'd rather read, knit, sew, play with the kids, etc. And there is no designated kids play area, the girls play all over the house. So many times my house looks like a toy store exploded in the living room. And even when the toys are put away, I'd have to vacuum every single day to keep the carpets tiny paper free.

OK, so why am I writing so much about this? Well, yesterday we went on a playdate. I knew the house was in a nice neighborhood, because I run past the street. What I was totally unprepared for was just how different our houses would be. Theirs was probably 10 years old (maybe less) wood floors interspersed with lovely carpet, it was certainly bigger than ours and most markedly it was cleaner. All the toys were confined to a room in the finished basement, if I didn't know a child lived there, I never would have suspected it from the entry way. Amy and Emily of course were enchanted. Their playmate has her own room (she's an only child and Amy and Emily could have their own rooms if one of them was on a different level of the house) which was straight out of pottery barn kids. She had different toys (which she announced that she never had to pick up--a lie! her mom told me she picks them up, although not every day)and the snacks were great. So when they told me they liked her house better than ours--well all my insecurities were brought to the surface and my hopes for instilling a sense of economic justice were dashed and trampled on.
I don't fault them for living like this. Her husband works hard for a corporation you'd recognize by at least one thing it produces and thus probably makes more money than an English professor. No, I was jealous.
I was jealous of the toy-free living room, the nice carpet, the wood floors. I was jealous of how nice their house looked. And mostly, I was jealous for how clean it was.
And I hate this in me, particularly because I instantly started trying to find places where their lives did not "measure up" to mine.

Amy and Emily certainly observed that their house is red and ours blue (to hearken my earlier analogy), and all of us noticed many differences. Now the trick is to somehow convey to them both in words and actions that red is not better nor is it worse than blue. And yet I can't say--You know Amy and Emily, we could have a house like theirs, but we choose to spend our resources differently (and somehow I'd have to keep a straight face because one of those resources is me and my cleaning). Partially because kids never listen to lectures, but at the same time, doesn't that sound like I'm saying blue is better than red? Plus, I think when I say these things that I'm just rationalizing, somehow trying to make my life equal to theirs.
I don't know, I don't have any answers here. I'm still sorting through my own feelings about this and how to deal with what I know will be more and more instances of economic disparity (on both sides). I know eventually Amy and Emily will have peer issues that will make them notice how we choose to spend money, and I hope I'll be past the jealousy to deal with those.

I guess this doesn't really belong at the end--it isn't a snappy ending or anything, but I did decide that I'm ok with the cleanliness thing. My house is as clean as Dr. Mom's house--I'm not a slob. I could be cleaner, but I'll never be neat as a pin clean. I'm ok with that--but I may have to clean the bathrooms and vacuum tonight.

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