Thank you for writing so eloquently about all the complicated realities so many of us deal with.

Yes, I'm a SAHM. Yes, I'm an unschooler. Yes, I'm a feminist. Yes, I am in a wonderful partnership with my DH, supporting each other through all the same trials that every other family experiences. Yes, I have been the sole support of our household. Yes, it makes more sense to do it this way now. Yes, it is our choice for personal as well as financial reasons.

The same people who want to point at our tiny homeschooling/unschooling fraction of the world and blame so much on us -- either the downfall of the public school system (as if we are the cause of all the problems that system is being crushed by) or the demise of feminism -- are the very ones I would expect to have a clue about individual and family-planning choices, respecting privacy and individual needs, the ones who I would hope would be able to have some sort of long-term vision beyond the next election, the ones who could look at a person's life and see that she may wear any and all hats at various times and not wearing them all at once does not make her a less valuable member of the left.

I have been disappointed with my Democrats in Congress lately and I am repeatedly disappointed by women and men who conflate feminism with a narrow lifestyle.

I am heartened by you, though! You may renew my faith in the left after all.

Nance