In his memoir “In the Shadow of a Saint,” Ken Wiwa, the son of executed Ogoni activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, observed that “All of us have a choice in the world, to make our children safe in the world or to make the world safe for our children.”
In our experience as parents socialized in dominant white middle class communities who are now raising four young daughters, the social pressures to choose the former are weighty, insidious, and unrelenting. With the arrival of children, school options dominate decisions about where to live. Having a frenetic schedule packed with music lessons and sports, playdates, birthday parties and nightly bedtime routines becomes a badge of honor.
Domestic labor arrives to clean the house so parents have quality time with their children. Excess income goes into college savings accounts and experience-rich family vacations. Deferential to neoliberal economic and political forces that encourage privatization and individualism, folks of privilege like us turn inward and focus predominantly on our own work and family as we go about blissfully ‘making our children safe for the world.’
