Near good schools? Give me a break! There are not very many good schools anywhere, period. The unchaining of the housewife has been answered by a new chaining, her freedoms come at horrorific costs to family, to quality of life, to society. With the new Republican efforts to destroy the middle class by putting low wage worker's products into competition with the regulatory state stasis we are well on our way to serfdom.

Good post Eric.

When I and my mate start a family, if the price for having someone at home when the kids get off the school bus is that the bus is from District Y instead of X, so be it.

The question is, will your mate accept a housewife role or will the two of you be prepared to accept a career that allows you the freedoms to be home to interact with and raise the kids.

And more power to you. The things that seem reasonable and good enough for oneself often start to seem 'sub-par' when one has children. I realize that more money, as in a school system, doesn't always mean better. But as a parent, it's difficult for me to rationalize what I come to see as settling when I think there may be some even marginally better opportunity for my child.

Being a parent can do crazy things to your thoughts and actions. I hope you are able to keep your level head once you have real live children to raise.

A lot of good points here ... other than the weird idea that having two incomes somehow causes any of this. Oh, and the idea that having mom not work is better because she'll then be available to work if dad is out of a job is pretty goofy. If mom is working, she'll STILL WORK when dad is out of a job, and continue to help out.

Your point that having one parent at home can mean more flexibility is well-taken, but it has nothing to do with preventing families from overextending themselves. Families with one parent working can go bankrupt just as easily as families with two parents working. Arguably easier, since mom has no skills to speak of, and if dad's out of a job any supplimental income from mom working is going to be really low, nothing that'll pay all the bills. The real problem has nothing to do with how many people are making money, and everything to do with what percentage of the income is being saved/invested versus how much is simply being consumed.

Inexplicable rants against non-traditional relationships aside, I appreciate your observations about the upper-middle-class rat-race. I think you're right that it's easy to get sucked into a shallow, materialistic game of be-the-best-consumer, and miss your one chance to build a meaningful relationship with your kids while they're young.

Since I pretty much completely agree with Eric on the substance here, I'm just gonna indulge in two utterly frivolous comments of completely unneeded information:

(i) It should be "ceteris", not "cetera", because the form in question is an ablative absolute, and "cetera" can only be nominative or accusative. (I'll give 10 bonus points to anyone who knows the first stanza of the Junior Classical League fight song, by the way.)

(ii) The Pleasant Valley in the song is Pleasant Valley Way in W. Orange, NJ, which ran near where Goffin and King were living at the time.

Speaking only for my own family...

We started out as a couple of go-go professionals whose combined salary was quite comfortable, particularly since we lived in Alabama (combined we made in the very low six-figures).

When we moved to Denver, I saw a 30% pay increase and she saw a job market that had nothing to offer - so we started our family. My wife happily let go of a career in IT management to find an equally fulfilling one as a stay-at-home mother.

The net effect, when you factor in increased cost of living, was basically a 40% reduction in our take home salary. And we wouldn't trade it or the opportunity to raise our daughter in our own home for the world.

So we don't get yearly trips to Europe. So we don't get new cars every few years. So we don't have the biggest house on the block.

Big deal. We save for retirement. We invest in our little chunk of happy property. And I've got an incredible, beautiful, and loving 2 year old daughter and a wife who is happier than I've ever known her to be. I think I win.

(Which isn't to say we don't still buy the odd lottery ticket - heh!)

Eric,

Maybe in your county the haves and have-mores voted for Kerry, but no so nationwide.

From a CNN site:
income of 200,000 or more: Bush 63% Kerry 35%
150,000 - 2000,000: Bush 58% Kerry 42%
100,000 - 150,000: Bush 57% Kerry 42%
75,000 - 100,000: Bush 55% Kerry 45%
50,000 - 75,000: Bush 56% Kerry 43%

I will grant, however that Democrats do better than they use to among the wealthy and Republicans do better than they use to among the poor.

Heh. I should write a book:
The CEO salary bidding war trap.
The more you pay your CEO, the higher your competitor will pay his CEO. It's a never ending upward spiral!

Hell, this kind of logic justifies a speech my company's CEO gave us in 1994 (not my current employer, that company has since been bought 7 times in successive mergers). During the QA session, an employee asked; if our profits were record high for the last four quarters, why were all of our increases so paltry (average of 1%). The CEO had the BALLS to answer, in front of the whole company: Well, we have to be careful about how much we compensate our workers, because we don't want to trigger inflation.

Doug Cogswell, if you're out there, a hearty f-u to you.

I angered quite a few people twenty five years ago by telling them the only way we could maintain our lifestyle was for my wife not to work.