Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2011

Abstract

Excerpt: "Sarah, my middle school daughter, finished her hot chocolate as I licked the last bit of foam from my mocha. We returned the white mugs to the counter and started our walk home. Glen Ellyn, the suburb next door, sits less than a mile from our house in Wheaton and is one of the wealthiest suburbs of Chicago.

In 1996, it also held the nearest Starbucks.

Wheaton ranks high on the affluent scale, too, and Mark and I found raising our daughters in Chicago's wealthy western suburbs a challenge. Our neighborhood, like most others, displayed well-landscaped front yards conspicuously absent of garden gnomes, plastic lawn chairs, and kiddy pools. It sounded like everyone our children knew went to the Bahamas or France for vacation and drove BMWs when they weren't driving decked-out minivans. Maids cleaned houses and landscape services kept lawns cut, fertilized, and weed-free. We wondered how we would teach mindfulness and care for marginalized people when we didn't see or rub shoulders with anyone in our neighborhood who seemed disadvantaged."

Comments

Originally published as a chapter in Just Moms: Conveying Justice in an Unjust World (Eds. Mock, Melanie & Schneiter, Rebekah D.). Barclay Press, Newberg, Ore.

http://www.barclaypressbookstore.com/Just-Moms.html

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