First they laugh at you....
More and more people cannot get work or get work that is worthwhile. So they start to live another way. Many laugh at these people and think of them as Hipster poseurs. Maybe some are poseurs but, as the reality of the job world becomes more clear and long term, Urban Mamas are a trend.
“The various pieces—the urban chickens, the domestic-porn blogs, the retro cookery, the attachment parenting—are beginning to come together to reveal a larger whole,” writes Matchar. “To say that these phenomena are ‘just trends’ or to snark on them as the whims of privileged hipsters is to ignore this emerging bigger picture.
Fashion is fashion, but our current collective nostalgia and domesticity-mania speak to deep cultural longings and a profound shift in the way Americans view life.”
And not only well-off Americans with liberal-arts degrees. Matchar began her book expecting to find a lot of ex-CEOs and dropouts from corporate law. Instead, she discovered “middle-class people struggling with modern life. Underemployed recent college grads learning to knit because they got no satisfaction out of their temp jobs. Women who ‘just happened’ to learn about attachment parenting at the end of their too-short maternity leaves from jobs they felt ambivalent about to begin with.”
My wife and I live on a very very low income. More and more of us are like this. I cannot go back to get a job. So making our own food, clothes etc is not a hobby. Making bone soup is not a crafty new recipe but is a healthy necessity. We long term baby sit because our kids need the break. I ask my son to help me stack wood for the winter, because I need this cheaper alternative. I have a beard even. Do you know what blades cost today? I wear the same old clothes.
Living on a very low income will be where most of us will be soon.
We will be pushed into this or you will not be able to go back to your stupid job. We will find out what it is like to get more for less. Because, you can have more for less. You might have less stuff but you can have more life. You will have time to raise your kids. You will have time to cook and so eat better food for less. You will have time. Time to do things for your self and for those you love.
If this is being a hipster, I am one. And you?
