The headline “Some Said They’d Flee Trump’s America. These People Actually Did.” appeared in the Style section of the Sunday NYT (April 15, 2018)–see the link below. A misleading headline (aka “Clickbait”) because the article wasn’t actually about disgruntled Americans bent on fleeing their homeland because of their fears over the (then) incoming administration. The article actually featured parents who seemed discontent with a multitude of things: trending consumerism, waning education, binary politics, healthcare, etc., etc.  The real story in the story was more interesting than the headline.

Regardless of their reasons, the article featured several families who were/are pursuing the nomadic life. I admire the family who trades their objects, pets, family, and familiarity for adventure, movement, placelessness, and travel. I admit that I could never have done that with my children. “Worldschooling” sounds great but I remember the basic struggles of parenting and I wouldn’t have willingly added homelessness to the mix. Not to mention, packing around MAYBE five sets of clothing means several days a month in a public laundromat. That’s not to say that my several visits to laundromats in Florence and Rome were horrid. In fact, I remember them fondly thanks in large part to the fiasco bottles of chianti that were just as important as the detergent.  Still, laundry is never at the top of anyone’s fun-list.

While the article was interesting, my main reaction was not of admiration or awe of these families. Several important things go unaddressed in the article by either the journalist or the families themselves.

Parents featured in the article commented that they worried about how their own busy work-lives would translate the wrong values to their children. One parent said her decision to “unplug from the Matrix” was a way to keep them from growing up “to be worker bees” and encouraged them “to be freethinking entrepreneurs” instead. This comes from a parent who claims to have been working 100 hours a week or more in her previous life running her own company. And then, in the next breath, says “Once I get my business up and running”…wait, that doesn’t sound like there has been a change in HER life. Wasn’t she doing this to the give up all the work hours in order to seize the moment? She goes on to mention that a nanny is part of her expenses. As a parent, and of the parents I know, the greatest part about dreaming of a different life is better time management in order to have the time to care for our children rather than leaving it to someone else. What seems obvious to me is that she is doing the SAME life/parenting she was doing in Seattle but she’s now doing it in on the move. She hopes her freethinking children will start their own YouTube channels and claims that she’ll “hire people to teach them how to do things.”…uhm, paying someone to educate your kids…did you learn that on your travels?

Under the sub-section “What It Costs” author Paul Kortman claims “a family could travel indefinitely on $60,000 a year, a salary he says could be earned with a little ingenuity”….oh, here we go.

There is a prevailing rhetoric in contemporary parenting that if you aren’t making it work, YOU must be doing something wrong without acknowledging class or privilege inherent in these trendy movements for alt-parenting. Kortman claims that all you need is a laptop and to “be an intelligent person” to make it work. Intelligence doesn’t get you a $60k salary per year.  In fact, several of the families presented in this article took savings, inheritances, and severance packages to build their nomadic life.

The article does not mention how long any of them have been doing this. My guess is that their intelligence will run out… Sorry! I mean their finances. When their intelligence runs out…sorry, finances run out, or the single-mom who is trying to start her own business can’t afford that nanny, or the photographer-mother who is hoping to monetize her social media accounts doesn’t get the payout she expects, these families will cope just like the rest of the parents in this world: they’ll learn to live on less or they will work more.

Parenting is a complex matrix of its own no matter where you are parenting. And essentially these parents are doing is limiting their children’s exposure to things they approve of, or limiting their children’s experiences to those they construct for their children.

Aren’t we all doing the same thing with the resources we have?  One parent commented that after living in Chile she appreciates “how much we have in the U.S.” How much you have? You mean all that stuff these parents claim they want to distance themselves from: consumerism, political systems, healthcare? Let’s remember that nearly half (43% according to the National Center for Children in Poverty) of American children live in a low-income family. Who is she referring to when she says “we have in the U.S.” 

So, shout out to all those stay-put parents making low-income life work and creating a constructive experience for your kids with the environment you have. And, for doing the laundry.