The “shoulds” are largely defined by family models, the press of the culture, or the prejudices of our peers.
A recent study found that the value of a mother’s work is $65,284 per year, up 9.1% over two years earlier.
With the help of our knowledge bank, you can choose for variations in your new neighborhood by:
But to zero in on the best place for you you’ll have to visit and schedule time to explore potential new homes in a region.
Oh, darn!
Adult Life Stages
Part One: She’s Leaving Home, Not Living Alone (Buy Buy)
Part Two: Failing at Growing Up
“Singlehood” and “couplehood” come and go, but barring divorce, family commitments begun in the twenties bridge the first and second stage of adulthood.
Their generational identity begins to further segment.
Singles and uncommitted couples find more in common with each other in one of seven Striving Single lifestyles while navigating the challenges of Erik Erikson’s “Early Adulthood.”
The four Sustaining Family lifestyles (ages 20-44) find love in romantic relationships that provide feelings of intimacy as they develop and grow as parents.
Singles and couples attend more weddings.
And slowly their Facebook feeds clog with what feels like an endless flow of cute, cute, cute baby pictures.
So former “Birds-of-a-Feather” BOF begin to fly in different directions instead of flocking together.
Early Marriage
From “Waiting for the Punch” by Marc Maron.
Terry Gross. I was very young. We were still in college. I was twenty, maybe. We got married quickly. I don’t know. We’d already been living together for a while. Time seems different when you’re young. A year is a really long time. pg. 144
We loved each other. It was a beautiful relationship. It was good. At some point were living with a group of people because it was the 1960s and 1970s and people shared the housework and the cooking and some point I realized, “You know what I really need? I need to live alone.” pg. 144
Gail Sheehy points out what’s at work here.
The “shoulds” are largely defined by family models, the press of the culture, or the prejudices of our peers.
Gross. I was too young to be committed. I think a lot of women go through this and I think when I came of age and I started college in 1968, it was kind of understood like you grow up, you get married, you have children, and even if you have a job, that’s the trajectory. pg. 144
I knew I wanted a different life and I knew to have that life, I needed to know who I was without picking up on what other people wanted of me or asked of me or projected on me or any of that. pg. 144
Sustaining family lifestyles show up in our work in High Country Eagles and Permanent Temporaries communities typically where the cost of living is cheaper.
As a whole sustaining families fall at the bottom out of a possible 66 lifestyles ranked for status and affluence by Claritas / Nielson.
- Families struggle to get by.
- Bills pile up.
- As children grow, they become more expensive.
- And, parents sacrifice the nice things they’d like to have for the well-being and care children desperately need.
Parent “Birds-of-a-Feather” flock together with other parents facing the same challenges to neighborhoods favorable for building a nest.
Sharing the same joys and sorrows.
Where can you find them? Here’s a sampling in California:
- Palm Springs
- Long Beach
- Ukiah
- Highland Park
And in many more communities across regions of the United States.
Lifestyle Profiles
Ages: 20-44
Life Stages: Sustaining Families
Community Neighbors:
High Country Eagles
64F4T4, Bedrock America – HCERE Rustic Eagles (Palm Springs, CA)
Community Neighbors:
Permanent Temporaries
65F4U3, Big City Blues – PTUT Urban Trapped (Long Beach, CA)
63F4C3, Family Thrifts – PTTC The Cutters (Ukiah, CA)
66F4U3, Low-Rise Living – PTTC The Cutters (Highland Park, CA)
Early Marriage, Making it Work
Chris Erskine. There was a lilt in her smile and mischief in her eyes. If you were to make a timeline of our very beginnings, you could start with that photo — before kids and mortgages and 10,000 pizza-box Saturday nights.
Musings on love, life and the bittersweet joys of children moving back home
That milepost photo represents the period when she met and married me, a dorky temperamentalist with an iffy future, right out of college.
Having a Baby
Mary Lyn Rajskub best known for portraying Chloe O’Brian in the thriller series “24.” (in “Waiting for the Punch”): I was just having that passage-of-time thing. I was like, “Oh, I’m not having a baby in my twenties.” pg. 166
I never really thought about having a kid. There was a time where I called my mom and started crying out of nowhere. I was in the freeway, and I called her. I said, “I’m too old to be a young mother,” but I didn’t even necessarily want to be a mother. pg. 166
It was terrible when the baby was born. It was really, really hard. Your whole life as you know it is just completely shaken up and turned upside down, and pushed all over the place. Just, everything that you want to do, everything that you are doing, you can’t do any of it. pg. 166
Even just simply waking up every three hours, and being enraged about that, and you can’t, because there’s this helpless creature. It pushes your buttons on every level of having to deal with being responsible for something. Everything else that you thought had meaning is just stupid. pg. 166
It didn’t come natural. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t like the kid, he wouldn’t stop crying. I lost all sense of myself and sense of time. Then the instincts kicked in, and now I love it. It’s awesome. I love it so much. My son is the greatest guy ever. The greatest guy ever. It’s the hugest, massivest, suckiest adjustment. Thankfully my husband is solid as a dam rock. pg. 166
Sheehy: One of the terrifying aspects of the 20s is the inner conviction that the choices we make are irrevocable.
Buoyed by powerful illusions and belief in the power of the will, we commonly insist in our 20s that what we have chosen to do is one true course in life.
A Mother’s Worth?
Erskine. Like I said, they’re all a little nuts — the good moms especially. They’re like characters in a satirical novel, the Catch-22 of love. I mean, only a crazy person would sign up for such warfare.
A recent study found that the value of a mother’s work is $65,284 per year, up 9.1% over two years earlier.
Insure.com based its Mother’s Day Index on government wage statistics for the various tasks a mother performs.
The marketing company also asked 1,000 married men and women, ages 25 and up, what mothers should get paid annually for the work they do. Almost 10% said more than $200,000. A nervy 2% said mothers should get nothing at all.
Which, as history shows, is exactly what they’ve been paid forever.
Part Four: Crisis and Pivots for 28 -32 Year Olds