Well, I started by not moving to the suburbs. I’m sorry, but there it is. I have friends who do live in suburbia and I’ve noticed that there is so much neighborhood pressure to be…well…like those around you. The kids grow up with no sense of street smarts or what the world outside of Stepfordia is like. So, while I am sure that not everyone has that same experience, I decided to avoid it altogether.

That being said, the pressures in my neighborhood are not better - but perhaps, what I think of as more important. How does a parent keep his or her kids on the relative straight and narrow when just down the block, there are kids who do their best to live The Thug Life, just like mommy and/or daddy do? It’s easy for me to brush it aside now, but in talking to other parents, as the kids grow and move away from you, it gets to be less easy. It just means more involvement and oversight than a parent in the suburbs may feel they need to have.

At work, I’m an Emergency Responder. I don’t care what the other girls are doing. I dress event-appropriate. And because my function falls under a decidedly blue-collar unit, cars aren’t an issue (much like in my neighborhood where people drive cars that just defy all laws of everything and somehow still start up to BMWs). I drive an Impala. My boss drives a Focus. The point is that they get us to work and home.

Finally, Kate is right. What’s the point of “Keeping Up With the Joneses” anyway? They’re them. You’re you. Wear what you want as long as it’s within the work dress code, drive what you like and what works for your family - even if it ends up being an SUV amid Prius’s, love your only child as much as her peers’ parents love their multiple children (and even more!). Otherwise, you’re just teaching your daughter that who you are - who she is - should be suppressed in order to not have to confront who you really are in the end, lest it make someone else uncomfortable.

Sod that!