Just today I had a much saner discussion on Facebook, with people I really know, about how child-free couples are judged. In fact at first the discussion from this past week, I thought for a moment it may be someone I knew from my own community. It had me thinking all day… not about the benefit of marriage, but how communities are formed.
At one point in time, the married and unmarried and those with children or without could live next to each other. All adults wore the same style of clothing, there were not ‘mommy outfits’ or ‘dad gear’. Now where we decide to live are niche markets, and we’re categorized fitting a marketed profile from what we wear, eat, and how we spend our recreational time.
I don’t live out in the outer suburbs away from the pitfalls of cities have, we didn’t flight out as my parents did in the 70s utilizing their two-income to get into a suburb ‘with a good school system’. Instead I moved backed to Lowell, in 100-year-old home on a mere .1 acre. As we’ve all seen a gap between the middle class and those fighting poverty, we saw a change in what it meant to live in a community.
Decades ago if people drove different type of vehicles, it was because of function. Now cars make a statement, and that is how they’re marketed. People can’t sit down and watch the same television show either. I disagree with every person in the household have a TV in their bedroom, but there is no way I can sit through Nickelodeon. (We don’t have cable) Seriously I would snap. No wonder why parents just succumb to evils of tween marketing and give in. Remember when MTV played music videos, instead of being a ‘lifestyle’ channel heavily marketed to 12-25 year olds.
Children are divided from their parents, single people divided from the married, and childless divided from those with children in almost every aspect of our culture. Even married with children are divided from the unmarried with children, just look at how communities are divided.
Renee Aste
Lowell, Massachusetts
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