Photo courtesy of Molly Brennan

I’ve had an odd case of wanderlust lately, and not just thirst for travel, which is a permanent condition with me, particularly since I’ve had three kids who aren’t the world’s best travel mates. I’ve been thinking a lot about moving.

We’ve lived in our city for almost six years, and in many ways, it’s an ideal location. It’s a small city on the water. We can be at the beach in five minutes. I can walk to a quaint, New England-y downtown that’s refreshingly devoid of chain stores. We have a riverfront park two blocks from our house, and a brand new bike path a few blocks in the other direction. We love our house, and have invested a lot of time and money into making it amazing. And there are more young families here than you can shake a stick at.

Which is sort of my problem. There seems to be only one type of young family here—the white, upper-middle-class kind.

I have lived in both urban and rural areas, and have enjoyed much about both settings. I always figured I’d decide where to settle based on factors like how close I was to the mountains or ocean and great restaurants and artsy movie theaters. Schools weren’t something I ever spent much time thinking about, and neither was diversity. We ended up in our city about 45 minutes north of Boston after almost a year of trying to buy a place in Boston at the height of the real estate market. This is a beautiful location and it’s close to all of the things we love to do. But now that I have children, I’m concerned that’s not enough. I’m worried about what growing up in a mostly white, upper-class community will mean for my kids. How will they learn to be compassionate, open-minded, and active citizens in the world that we live in if they spend their formative years in a bubble that’s not at all reflective of socioeconomic and racial realities?

There’s a very active mother’s club in my town, which I joined when I had my first child. I’m not much of a joiner, but being new in town I thought it would be a good way to meet people. I was blown away by how many of the new moms I met had decided to be stay-at-home mothers. These are women in their late 20s and early 30s with college degrees and former careers who, after the birth of their child, gave it all up to stay at home. I don’t have anything against that decision, I fully support everyone’s decision to do whatever they decide is best for themselves and their families. I just had no idea so many women my age were making it!

I find myself occupying a very different world than most of them, and consequently, have had a hard time connecting. But what concerns me more than the high ratio of stay-at-home moms here is what the families I’ve met are thinking and talking about. If the mother’s club list server is any indication, it’s not politics, complex parenting issues, or even the state of our rapidly crumbling public school systems. The posts that get the most responses are requests for referrals for house cleaners and contractors, with desperate pleas for advice from sleepless parents of infants coming in a close second. A few days after the earthquake in Haiti I posted something about Partners in Health, a Boston-based non-profit that does amazing work in Haiti, and urged my fellow mothers to donate. I got zero responses, but a post five minutes later asking whether the Dyson vacuum is worth the expense got more than 10 responses. Millions of people are living in the streets of Haiti with no hope of medical assistance, food, or fresh water and the topic that got everyone excited was whether a $500 vacuum was worth it?!?

There are very few families of color in our community, and what economic diversity there may be is rapidly disappearing thanks to housing prices that have held strong despite the economic downturn. Yet, just a few towns over, a mere 20 minutes, there are families living in abject poverty. This makes me feel uneasy in a way that I haven’t experienced before. What will my children learn about the world by living in a town like this? Or more importantly, what won’t they learn?

I bought a local paper in the airport recently on my way home from a work trip to San Francisco (which, incidentally, is a city that I’d love to live in). The first article I read was a column by an editor about why he chose to send his son to public school in San Francisco. The gist of it was that he knew his son was privileged. He was headed to college, he’d have books and curious, attentive adults who pushed him to do his best no matter where he was. This father decided to send his kid to an urban public school for the education that you can’t get from extracurriculars, for firsthand knowledge of what it means to live in a world where people are rich and poor and in-between, where some kids live with their grandmothers, some live with two mothers, some with foster parents. Where the kids in your class might come from any country in the world. Where some families live in public housing, others in apartments, and some in big houses on a hill with a view of the bay.

I know that many people’s first reaction upon reading this will be, “So move.” But it’s not that easy. First of all, we like where we live for many reasons. Second, my husband doesn’t necessarily feel the same way I do. Third, we can’t afford to live the same lifestyle we have here in Boston or any other big city. And that’s just to begin with. We also have jobs and family members and what we’d do about school for our kids to consider. My husband thinks that with thought and effort we can make sure that our kids are exposed to a more realistic and nuanced view of the world we live in, but I’m not convinced. I don’t think that volunteering in a homeless shelter is quite the same thing as being a member of a diverse community. And I know that the longer we wait to do this, the harder it will be as the kids get settled into school.

Part of me thinks the idea of uprooting my family and leaving a town that I actually really love because it’s not diverse enough sounds ridiculous. I know that more than a few people that I’ve brought this up with think so. But I also can’t shake the feeling that this might not be my place, that I’m not going to find my tribe here, so to speak. And I wonder, what’s the point of saying you value something if you’re not going to take action, even dramatic action, to make sure that your life is in line with your values?

ODDS CHECK: The odds a US household will move in a year are about 1 in 5.77.

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