Reply to How to Make Friends with Likeminded Moms, esp. Working Moms

Forum Index » General Parenting Discussion

Reply to "How to Make Friends with Likeminded Moms, esp. Working Moms"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I live in a super family friendly and close-knit neighborhood in Arlington. My best mom friends are my neighbors and they’re all smart and fun. The proximity to each other reminds me of college. We met initially at neighborhood playgrounds, the pool and just walking our kids when they were babies. Part of the reason North Arlington is so grossly expensive is not just the location but the peer group - for parents and kids. [/quote]

OP here. I am mostly listening and thinking about all the responses, but had to write back to this.

We have spent a few years in Westchester (outside NYC), currently in process of moving to the DC area. Several people specifically suggested we avoid Arlington because it would be Westchester 2.0 -- a suffocating bubble of privilege.

The total lack of self-awareness in this post is just astounding. You think you're all so amazing because you earned a ton of money and used it to segregate yourself and your kids from the rest of the world? And what about the vast majority of US families who can't afford to live in your neighborhood...maybe they should have worked harder? Avoided useless career paths like teaching or social work or whatever? Or is the attitude more like don't know/don't care/don't want to waste time thinking about other people?

Maybe that's my real problem...being surrounded by "smart" and "fun" ladies who are supremely unbothered by the fact that we're dropping $$$$ on dinners and vacations and houses, hoarding opportunities for our kids, living in an area where all the rich (mostly white/Asian) people go to one school and 15 minutes down the road all the Black and Brown kids go to another, vastly underfunded school, and turning away from these glaring inequalities as though they are not our problem.

Before you ask, I don't accost strangers with this kind of conversation on the playground...but after several years of hanging out with privileged parents in Westchester, I'm pretty confident that they just DGAF about the hypocrisy and moral issues inherent in our way of life.

So, I don't think Arlington is for me, but if anyone wants to recommend a place to live where I can meet other people who did the whole Ivy degree, big career, American Dream thing, but ultimately were not comfortable turning their backs on how our society screws over the majority of its innocent kids and families, and are trying to find a balance between living a nice life with their kids, doing the dinners and houses and vacations, but also living a just life and making this world a better place, I'm all ears.[/quote]

Ding ding ding, here's the problem. Yes Arlington is not for you. If you want to more closely calibrate your personally acceptable level of gentrification and exposure to poverty, violence, and trauma, and live in a place where people fret about these things to each other (but seldom take any significant action, let's be real) then yes Takoma or Bloomingdale or somewhere. There are lots of people playing at "equity" on the PTA while living in million-dollar row houses.

Perhaps you would be better served by getting a job where you can engage with these issues. This kind of fretting, broad-based policy anxiety is common among parents who spend a lot of time isolated with little kids. It's boring and that makes people think anxious thoughts but they don't have enough truly free time to take any satisfying action.

If you're trying to talk about this stuff with people, it's likely to put most of them off being friends with you. It seems like you are anxious and conflicted and not at peace with your own choices, which is no fun. If you're going to try to shake up your school system, that'll make most people uncomfortable-- they live there because they like it. If you're going to constantly run your mouth with various buzzwords and not actually do anything, that'll put people off in a different way. I do really try to make change at my level, but I have no patience with people who talk, talk, talk about the big picture and the articles they have read, and lack the functional and social skills to actually implement ideas.

If you don't want to spend your money on nice stuff, you don't have to. You can just give it away instead, or whatever. Nobody's making you live this way. You're doing it because you want to.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics