Toxic Society

This article says so much about the state of our lives in the U.S.  Anyone with children can relate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/opinion/sunday/a-toxic-work-world.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0

I'm a stay-at-home mom--so, no problem with work-life balance, right?  Wrong.  Stay-at-home moms who have no help (or very little, a couple hours a week) with childcare and who feel obligated to volunteer at least a few hours a week at school, as I do, and who still hope to build a career, as I do, have a work-life balance problem.  They just do.

But I realize that in many ways, my situation is not that bad.  I can choose whether to volunteer at school, for one thing.  Many working mothers cannot make that choice.  I have enough of a financial cushion (for now) and my husband's job is secure enough (for now) that I can actually remain unemployed for the next year or so, and thus, hopefully, do the things necessary to build a meaningful career.  (But it feels like I will have to start rowing very quickly to get there.)

I feel for those mothers and fathers stuck in a miserable job that demands twelve or more hours a day, who come home exhausted, who feel guilty about not spending more time with their kids, who aren't making enough to do more than put food on the table and a few items of clothing on their children's backs...who are just barely hanging on...and that is, I realize, a large percentage of the American population.

We can look at the Syrian refugees, or poor families in underdeveloped countries, or people coping with severe disabilities who are also raising children, and think, "Well I have nothing to complain about."  On the other hand, stress is stress, and even a small level of daily stress, when experienced over several weeks or months or years, cannot be alleviated by saying, "Look at those people with nearly-lethal amounts of stress in their lives, and stop feeling so bad."

American life is toxic in many, many ways; the only thing to do is to work together to change it. Parents should band together, across all socioeconomic levels, to demand truly high-quality childcare and after-school care for all children; not places where thirty or forty kids are packed into a small room, and where it is noisy beyond belief; but places where ten or twelve kids are working on projects that are meaningful, and there are soft, clean cushions and sofas on which to relax and do nothing from time to time, and outside they have access to gardens and trees to sit under, and large playgrounds, and there are always at least two adults for every ten kids.  That's my idea of a good childcare or after-school environment, but I've literally never seen it.  We just don't value our kids enough, and, given our increasingly toxic work environments, we don't value ourselves enough either.