About a year ago, my wife re-entered the workforce after
thirteen years of being a full time mom, community leader and volunteer.
We were recently discussing the change in the “vibe” in our
household. Piles of mail, lists of
errands and tasks building up and just purely not enough time to wiggle
everything in that we used to do.
Some things were going to have to get dropped. Our oldest daughter is a few months away from being able to
drive independently – an unwitting chauffer in training!
Our thoughts went to people less fortunate than us
financially and single parents.
How do they do it? If two
of us can’t do all the kid stuff we want to get done – even with the help of
friends - how does just one person do it?
When we can buy dinner because we “don’t have time”, how does a family
who can’t buy dinner manage to keep all the balls in the air?
And then we came to a thought. Does our society financially reward people who ignore their
children? As the expenses and time commitments tied to the kids activities
escalate, we would clearly have been better off financially just explaining to
the kids that we can’t afford them anymore and moving on.
One friend recently told his daughter that he didn’t think
she was good enough at her activity to continue “to the next level”. Do we treat our kids like we treat our
cars: too expensive to fix. When it comes to our kids, is it even
possible to “throw good money after bad”?
Kids and families aren’t financial assets. I am just so happy that we have the
ability financially to live our lives according to that belief.
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