For several decades, the United States has
undervalued the impact of stay at home moms. Partially due to the enormous welfare state that has been supporting moms and their children, people in the US devalue a mom that is home to raise her children.

The drawback to this is so many women must work if the father, or sometimes fathers, are not actively involved in helping raise their children.

The ideal is for a child to have two loving parents with the financial ability to have one parent home for most of the childs young life.

You and Brian are doing a tremendous job raising a new citizen of the world and hopefully, someday, a wonderful husband & father to pass on your teachings.

I have whittled down my Facebook community extensively within the last two years. Additionally, I make frequent use of the ‘ignore’ option. I have about 20% of my friends blocked from my news feed. It’s not because I am intolerant of difference. I just choose not to read xenophobic, pessimistic, or foul posts on a daily basis. I cannot change other people. I have lost the zeal I had as an undergraduate to ‘educate’ people. (This is probably a good thing! I am still learning and growing as a person, too.)

Lately, I have grown tired of living a media-saturated lifestyle. It zaps energy and impedes critical thinking. We just had mid-term elections and the rising populism is almost as bad as the Bush-era nationalism. I thrive on my relationships with those who also eschew CNN and Fox News. Our conversations aren’t dictated by TimeWarner. Our opinions weren’t purchased by corporate think tanks. That being said, we are so far from mainstream that we have to ‘pass’ in mixed company. W.E.B. DuBois wrote about ‘the veil’… often I feel I live behind a two-way mirror and wish I could invite others to the ‘other side’.

Cheers,
Jenn