“What is it that I want?”<\/p>\n
Jane Van Galen asked herself this question after reading a gushing profile of an “island cabin” in The Seattle Times<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0 It begins: “Lots of\u00a0folks have lots of reasons for wanting their own piece of land out of town”\u00a0and quotes one of the new cabin’s owners who, when pregnant, came to realize:\u00a0\u201cI can\u2019t raise a child just in the city … I wanted woods, salamanders and pileated woodpeckers.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n So, she and her husband “went right out,” bought nine acres on an island, and built this a stunning “cabin.” Writing at her site, Education and Class<\/a>, Van Galen\u00a0processed\u00a0her reaction to this article. She added up the costs, figuring that the owners spent close to a million dollars. \u00a0“I knew that my unease,” she wrote, “was not just\u00a0straightforward jealously.” \u00a0So, what did she want?<\/p>\n She\u00a0knew what she did\u00a0not<\/em> want:<\/p>\n Narratives\u00a0in which the wealthy are held up as model parents who upon hearing of the dangers of the modern world, \u201cgo right out\u201d to provide acres of weekend woods\u00a0for their children; narratives that invite us\u00a0to admire their paint colors and beautiful windows and solid black granite bathtub without asking too many\u00a0questions about how it is that relatively young\u00a0parents can\u00a0ensure that their child has access to acres of his own private salamanders, and especially not to ask too many questions about\u00a0how all children might\u00a0have room to grow and thrive.<\/a>..<\/p><\/blockquote>\n She wanted, “for once,” to hear wealthy people just admit they’re rich — for whatever reason — instead of framing\u00a0their decision to build a vacation home as simply<\/em>\u00a0what any good parent would do.<\/p>\n \u201cI love having this for my son,\u201d the owner is quoted. \u00a0But Van Galen wants to know: What about everyone else’s children?<\/p>\n Cross-posted at Global Policy TV<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “What is it that I want?” Jane Van Galen asked herself this question after reading a gushing profile of an “island cabin” in The Seattle Times. \u00a0 It begins: “Lots of\u00a0folks have lots of reasons for wanting their own piece of land out of town”\u00a0and quotes one of the new cabin’s owners who, when pregnant, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":63553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[223,29,23642,23384,2123,272,129,23624],"class_list":["post-63092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-childrenyouth","tag-class","tag-class-prejudicediscrimination","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-environmentnature","tag-marriagefamily","tag-media","tag-media-newsopinion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/08\/1-2-Copy1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63092"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71676,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63092\/revisions\/71676"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}