The blog started to bubble and hiss during a conversation with a young guide who helped us zip-line across the rain forest canopy. As he snapped hardware around the crotches of myself and a girlfriend, he grinned flirtatious directions like, “ladies, please spread your legs for me.” I thought this was a good time to ask if he was married. He shook his head and looked down. I took my cue and followed up with the other intrusive questions I have ready for evasive males. Children? Girlfriend? Fiance? Common law wife? In the end I discovered that this twenty-four year old has been living with a woman for the last five years and they have two children. But he has no plans to marry. This surprised me. In largely Catholic Costa Rica it appears that the no-rules-relationship-revolution is here too. I had thought this trend was exclusive to America where currently 40% of babies are born out of wed lock, my own included.

My thoughts came to a full boil a couple days later as I lay in a hammock under a palapa reading a biography referred by a friend. It is the story of the double life of author Alice B. Sheldon who found freedom in expression in the late 60’s and early 1970’s using a male pseudonym. A frustrated feminist, her work in the science fiction genre railed with themes of female oppression and female anger, all safely tucked inside the bodies of space aliens. This made me think about where I am today. Where we are, as women, as men, and children.

For years I have wrestled with questions destined for women of my generation. Unlike Alice, we were born liberated women, saddled with career goals (and identity!) Some of us are more like paycheck toting wives with economic parity on the home front but that’s still important. My mother, a sidelined feminist, never burdened me with a Cinderella dream of a prince and a castle, but instead noisily stuffed her unused ambition into my tiny head with words like “independence” and “…don’t need a man.” So many of my girlfriends were spoon fed the same messages by working mothers of the seventies or housewives who lingered at home and watched the battles from the foxholes of magazines, books, and television. I don’t consider myself a feminist in the vein of the early soldiers. Sometimes I call us post feminists. At other times I give a nod to those still actively organized in the cause of liberating women and acknowledge the third wave of feminism.

But my problem is this. Now that I am safely on the other side of the big leaps of struggle, past the shoulder pads and most of the glass ceilings, I see the flaws in the movement. I see the babies thrown out with the bath water. I hear the cries of toddlers with attachment injuries as motherhood increasingly becomes outsourced. I see the crumbling of good enough marriages and other kinds of love commitments as women continue to demand sanity and freedom. And I shake my head with astonishment at the one, last, accepted remnant of femininity, now exploded into a grotesque commercial monster — the sexualization of women. Must a new mother, plump with maternal fat stores designed to sustain a long term breast feeder, struggle on a stair master to squeeze into the latest Victoria’s Secret merchandize to please a husband and a culture and her female co-workers, who congratulate her for getting back into her jeans and her cubicle and her BMW within weeks of giving birth? I ask you, is this liberation?

What my mother forgot to tell me as she cheerfully handled Daddy’s paycheck and sent him off to supervise my brother’s hockey games and chauffeur me to ballet class, is that, in fact, to raise children well, you do need another person. That other person may not be a man. And he or she may in attendance out of economic necessity rather than biological obligation or love, but it really does take two people (at least!) to shoulder the workload and help us mothers feel liberated. And, by the way, raising kids and managing a home can be empowering itself. Mom didn’t know that because she didn’t have a cubicle or stock options to compare it to.

The third wave of feminism calls for more affordable childcare to help women on the path to some sort of economic equality. But shuttling babies and toddlers out to strangers is not the answer in my book. And what of the maternal women who work as childcare providers? Will the third wave of feminism find more liberated maternal women to help raise their kids? Then where does it all end? Probably with an underclass of low paid women skilled in childcare but little else. Oops! I think we have that already. We give these duties to immigrant women and call them liberated from their oppressive home cultures. Urgh! Feminism would do better to help “liberated” women relearn the some antiquated tools of relationship skills. Women have a specific skill set when it comes to communication and emotions. Why not put that to work into their relationships and get a helper with a biological interest in raising offspring?

And what of men? I mean, what are we going to do with all the fine men out there whose jobs as husbands and fathers are being outsourced?  I had dinner with a twice divorced man a while back who summed things up in a dismal way. “All women need us for is money,” he sighed. “As long as my child support checks keep coming, they need me for little else.”

But even that straight forward, though demoted task, may not be in the cards for men. If you believe last month’s Atlantic magazine article entitled “The End of Men,” women have both the numbers and skills to organize a coope. With 75% of embryos from fertility clinics being popped out as females (per parental request,) women outnumbering men on college campuses, and the decline of labor intensive jobs in favor of white collar employment that requires good social intelligence and communication skills, a matriarchal America is on the horizon. Already women make up more than half of the work force.

During the last year, my blogs has used data on gender and marriage to help us understand the changes in gender and relationships. I have tackled the rise of the metrosexual (liberated by masculine energy in women and by capitalist longings to sell more personal grooming products), the high divorce rate and birth outside of an old fashioned legal contract, the power and high depression rates of women today, the psychology behind cheaters, the growing single mother village and the confusing gender role expectations that sabotage so many relationships.

But the biggest question that still remains unanswered and it will be the burden of my daughters’ generation. What is the best basket to raise confident, loving children, who know how to attach long enough to raise confident, loving children? I’m still not sure what that answer is.

Our young zip line guide spends his days shuttling tourists like cattle across the treacherous heights of the rain forest canopy. He tells me his “girlfriend” says he works too much and doesn’t spend enough time with her and the kids. He tells me he loves his kids and he loves her, he just doesn’t like her anymore. So many marriages, legal or not, reach that stage of boredom and irritation. My best guess is that this is the time to use a human’s powerful mind to find a new path toward intimacy and commitment. Of course I speak from a place of wistfulness. Maybe the new kind of family will be our motley group who travelled to Costa Rica. Three single parents, five kids, and we mothered and fathered them all like an ancient village.

With so many families struggling in the great recession, many readers lost sight of the point of the article and instead assumed I am a wealthy woman who can afford extravagant vacations. Their comments on my post suggested that I am out of touch with the realities of most Americans. In truth, tips on affordable travel for families would be an entirely different article. So, here it is!

First of all, to make travel a priority, as I do, the travel budget begins with lifestyle choices at home.  I am a single mother of two. Since the recession, we moved from a three-bedroom apartment to a studio apartment. I drive a Toyota Prius. Just going from a Lincoln Navigator to a Prius put about $1000 a month in my pocket. But this article isn’t a blog about how to save money at home, it’s about how expose your children to international experiences. And here are some of my tips:

1. Forego Hotels and Rent Private Homes and Apartments

You’d be surprised how much cheaper an apartment in Paris is than a hotel. And it allows you to stay out of the expensive touristy areas and live in a neighborhood. The biggest website for private vacation homes is VRBO.com but my new favorite boutique site is www.travelhome.com

2. Share Expenses with Other Families

We are leaving for Costa Rica this week and have split the cost of the home with two other families. Traveling with a large group can save lots of money. And kids can sleep on inflatable beds and sofas so you don’t need a mansion.

3. Use Public Transportation

Taxis, car services and private shuttles don’t let kids rub shoulders with the locals. But a bus, train, public ferry does. In Venice, Italy, we ignored the water taxis and bought a water three-day “bus” pass for about $12.

4. Cook!

There is no better way to expose your kids to local customs in foreign countries than to bring them to local markets and try local ingredients.

5. Try Educational Tours

There are often group discounts on educational tours of say, art and architecture. In Ireland, I went to cooking school on a 400 acre organic farm that offers residential discounts in their “dorms” (Read: Elegant stone structure that were probably converted stables.) That farm also offered free room and board for those who volunteered on the farm.

5. Fly on International Carriers

Many international airlines offer discounts that Americans may not be aware of. Ryan Air is an example of a budget airline in Europe. At the time of this writing, they have a flight from the UK to Spain for just ten pounds each way! Ask the homeowners which airline they like to fly on. When I began to search for flights for our summer trip to Costa Rica, I was disappointed to see that most of the America carriers had really jacked their prices this year. But the owner of the home we’ll be renting suggested trying Taca Airlines, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that this Costa Rican airline still offers 50% discounts to kids. Their flights from L.A. were only $265 return!

6. Be Prepared to Go Last Minute

One of my favorite web sites, FareCompare.com has Twitter lists you can follow that tweet breaking news of last minute deals from your home airport. Mine is called @FlyFromLAX

Finally, I have one very creative way that I “earn” money for travel. I often rent out my own apartment to international travelers and use that money to get away. I’ve tackled this assignment with zest, putting chocolates on pillows, fresh flowers in the bathroom, and writing my own “guide to the neighborhood” book with restaurant and amusement recommendations. This alone has exposed my kids to plenty of international folks. We hosted amazing guests, such as the Canadian television host who left gifts on all our beds. The English screenwriter who left behind scraps of paper scribbled with prose that might turn out to be valuable someday. And the family from the Netherlands whose little girls learned to boogie-board with my kids. If we are in town when we have “guests” we couch surf with friends until our place opens up again.

And, oh yes, I have one other travel trick. On gift giving holidays like birthdays, graduations, and religious holidays, I ask friends and relatives to buy only gift cards like American Express or VISA, or give cash. I keep the gifts  in an envelope for our next trip and it becomes my kids personal souvenir money. Confidential to Aunty Maria: Thanks! My kids can’t wait to buy a souvenir when we go zip lining in the rain forest.

White faced monkeys and exotic birds, get ready, here come some adventurous American families.

Her husband, Dan Dorn, called them from his home in Los Angeles when the triplets were a year old and told their grand-father, “I need to move on.” He then divorced Abbie and has refused to allow the children to see their mother, saying it would traumatize them. They do not even know she exists.

Everything about this case disturbs me. It begs questions about the nature of motherhood? The rights of children and grandparents. And, perhaps most striking about this case, is what it says about our attitudes toward the disabled.

Long before we had institutions to house people with mental and physical disabilities, there were a common sight in our societies. Even Shakespere created characters with mental or with physical disabilities. I’m concerned that the more we insulate people, young and old, from seeing the full range of human possibilities the more we limit our capacity for compassion.

Abbie may be a single case of a family’s trauma. But it makes me wonder about the thousands of dedicated young men and women who are continuing to return from Iraq and Afghanistan with disabilities. I happen to support an organization called Iraq Star Foundation that gives free plastic and cosmetic reconstructive surgery to soldiers wounded in the war because, after risking their lives for our country, they are severely discriminated against when they come home disfigured. Our society has become intolerant of ugly and disabled.

Are Abbie’s children too young to see their mother? NO WAY. Everything is new, strange, and normal to kids. Some form of a living mother, her body warmth, her breath, her tears will have deep meaning to her children.

I happened to have grown up with a mother had a chronic illness (Lupus.) Consequently she spent a big chunk of my childhood on the living room sofa, too weak to make dinner. Did I feel ripped off? No. This was normal to me. We snuggled under quilts on that coach and read books together. This is my version of a mother’s love.

Who are we to decide what these children will take away from a relationship with a living being? Could it be more injurious for them to live with an adult anger when they learn they were deprived of their mother? Would a lifeless Teddy Bear be more acceptable for comfort than a living, breathing, feeling, mother? And what about the healing benefits for Abbie? Losing one’s body and one’s children is a double loss.

My answer is simple: Be a parent and say no. The good news is that the law is on your side. According to my research, all but one American state requires a parent’s consent for anyone to get married under the age of 18. Nebraska insists on that partners be 19 to get married with parental permission. So, grow a backbone, Mom, and put your foot down and say NO.

Of course, we all know how oppositional teens tend to react to parental authority, so be prepared to be hated. Use the time before your kid’s eighteenth birthday to impress upon your child the following statistics:

• The current media age that most people get married in the U.S. is 26.7 for men and 25 for women.

• Teen marriage has a dismal divorce rate. About one half of teenaged pregnancies will end in divorce within 15 years. But the younger the teen female the more staggering the rate with some studies showing a divorce rate as high as 70% for girls who marry below the age of 18.

• Teen fathers have incomes that steadily lag behind other males, even into their twenties and thirties. This could be related to the fact that they forgo educational opportunities in order to be a family wage earner in their teens.

• And let’s say a baby comes of that teenaged marriage and then the marriage goes down the tubes. For unwed mothers of all ages, marrying and then divorcing correlates with higher rates of poverty than never marrying.

For some teens, the desire for an early marriage is really a bid for autonomy. Teenagers want to be grown up and bolting from the nest feels very grown up. I would suggest that these parents explore with their daughter ways that she can feel autonomous without having to marry. Does she need a bit more freedom? How about more responsibility? A part-time job and some bills to pay can sometimes be a wake-up call to a teen craving independence.

Above all, validate your teens feelings of love and attachment. Her feelings are real, even if they are a bit premature and are prompting an unwise decision. Try welcoming her boyfriend into the family. If you exclude him and bar her from seeing him, you stand a good chance of making her run further into his arms. One technique for compromise might be to help your teenager plan a “down the road” wedding, say, one that takes place after post-secondary education is complete. Remember, if you like her lover-boy a lot that, in itself, may

Parenting a teen is no cake walk. This mother’s challenge is one that many parents fear. Try to remember that in terms of emotional development, teens are a lot like two-year-olds, with one big difference. Two-year-olds are mentally ready for action before their bodies can do it safely and this causes frustrating tantrums. Teenagers are physically ready for action before their minds have caught up. But both stages secretly crave boundaries. Boundaries help children and teens feel safe, even if it causes them to feel really angry. So be brave mama.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here are the facts that have me ranting over my morning coffee today.

Recently Kathryn Blundell, the editor of a leading British parenting magazine, Mother and Baby, wrote an editorial entitled  I formula-fed. SO WHAT? . In it, she said breastfeeding is creepy and called breasts “fun bags” and continued with “seeing your teeny, tiny, innocent baby latching on where only a lover has been before feels, well, a little creepy.”

And, on this side of the pond, that wise, sage Kim Kardashian — whose own boobs are limited to working the night shift –  tweeted this to her fans: “ew, some woman has her boobies out, she should cover up, yuck, blech, ugh”

I understand that eyebrows get raised by this public display of this natural beauty, for I once staged a research study for my psychology dissertation on breastfeeding and romantic attachment. While interviewing nursing mothers I learned that one of the most common reasons that women quit breastfeeding is embarrassment about nursing in public. All over Europe, paintings and statues of the Madonna (the real one, not the one who Vogues) depict her nursing, yet our American culture still can’t get past the idea that breasts are more than sexual objects.

The sexualization of the breast had very early beginnings. Back in our evolutionary past, when humans got up off all fours and became bipedal, women evolved to grow larger breasts for sexual attraction. Now that we were upright, our lovely derrieres couldn’t be seen from our front side, so breasts got bigger as a kind of, ahem, yes, frontal tushy. Men liked the view on both sides now, and all our lovely orbs signaled our fitness to reproduce.

But for hundreds of thousands of years, breasts still had a day job, and the sight of a nursing woman was commonplace in all cultures around the world. For millions of years, up until 1932, every human being was breastfed by their mother, auntie, or wet nurse. It was how humans survived before infant formula. During World War II, when women were needed in factories to build weapons, mostly male pediatricians convinced women that this new product made from whey (a cheese by-product) was better than human milk. It also allowed women to leave their babies for longer periods. Anyone who has nursed a newborn knows that feeding schedules are based on a child’s needs, not a clock. And, sometimes their need is to just suckle and be comforted, so working full-time is possible, though tough.

Even though breastfeeding is on the rise today, it is in an uncomfortable race with racy messages. Sexy women are hot. MILF’s are hot. Women who nurse are creepy. Fortunately, our increasingly sexual media is co-mingled with a powerful chant of a growing body of women who still think like women. Women who know that breastfeeding contributes to healthy attachments and good health all around. Women like, Bettina Forbes, who co-founded “Best for Babes” a group that normalizes breastfeeding and shows that nursing moms can be powerful, sexy, glamorous, and nurturing all at the same time. Thousands of women follow her on facebook and are the what I like to call, the real feminists.

When women hate the natural function of own bodies, they need to stop and think. Whose sentiments are being recycled? I’ll tell you who. Those of a dying, patriarchal culture whose boys club would prefer that you enslave the boobs to them.

And here’s some news to throw back in the face of anyone who thinks that breasts are only “fun bags.” According to one of my all-time favorite studies, guess which kind of woman is most likely to choose to breastfeed? The woman who is most comfortable with sex, erotica, and her body. Prudes don’t breastfeed. Hear that Kathryn and Kim? Sexy women can feed their babies.

The only recent update is that authorities have dismissed her claim of “unwanted sexual contact” and her attorney said the case would be handled “civilly.” Read: For money not jail time. The sources are mostly tabloid. The National Enquirer broke the story four years ago and this week the New York Daily News tells it this way: In 2006, while staying at an upscale hotel on Portland, Oregon, Mr. Gore scheduled a massage under the name “Mr. Stone.” Then while the massage therapist was doing the abdominal portion of the massage, he made some moaning sounds and asked her to go lower, even attempting to guide her hand down below.

There are few things to consider when thinking about this story. Included in my thought process are this: the physiological possibilities of a man in deep relaxation, the wide-range of services and specialties available in the massage industry, and the biggest issue of all, personal boundaries verses perception of personal injury. So, for the purposes of this hypothetical examination, let’s assume this woman’s allegations are true. We don’t even know it that is so. And, let’s start with what happens to a man in deep relaxation. Anyone with a husband knows that spontaneous erections happen all the time during sleep. Hard-ons happen. Especially during a massage. Which is one of the reasons that female massage therapists dominate the industry. Heterosexual male clients feel too uncomfortable having a spontaneous erection at the hands of a man. So, let’s assume a hard-on happened during the massage. And any woman with a boyfriend knows that when some men get a hard-on, it appears that all the blood from their brain drains out to puff up their appendage. Thus many men have the capacity to make poor decisions when they are aroused. Now, let’s assume, solely for the purposes of scientific examination, that this was in fact the inconvenient truth for our dear former VP.

But besides biology, let’s place a little blame on the massage industry. In America, the quality and nature of massage services can run the gamut from licensed physical therapists who work with doctors, spa therapists who focus on sports massage and relaxation, to massage studios that offer a “full body release” (yes, that’s code for a complimentary hand-job,) to illegal massage parlors that offer sex for sale. Who knows which kinds of massage services big Al has had in the past. Might he mistakenly assumed that he was getting a full body service in Portland? Opps. Wrong kind of massage therapist, Mr. Gore.

Finally, there is the issue of boundaries. Everyone has a comfort level with levels of sexuality, both in what acts they can tolerate and how comfortable they are in making sexual requests. Maybe Al Gore, if the story is even true, has a good ability to communicate his sexual needs. Kudos to Al. On the flip side, maybe the massage therapist is particularly sensitive to sexual injury. One massage therapist might have brushed off his advance with a tsk! tsk! and a little admonishing to the cheeky boy while another might perceive the same interchange as a sexual assault. Injury is in the eye of the recipient. Let’s hope the whole thing was a big misunderstanding. Miss Prissy massage therapist can hopefully get some cash to mend her wound and Big Al can learn to stay awake during a massage. Boys will be boys.

P.S. Only because blog readers will claim that I forgot to mention this. Al Gore was married at the time. Is it okay for a married man to have a sterile, hand job in a professional setting? That’s fodder for another blog.

As the aging playboy (52) announced his engagement to a willowy blonde from South Africa, Olympic swimmer, Charlene Wittstock (32) there are at least two other women rolling their eyes. They are the mothers of his two children, one in California and one in France. Both women had to fight a court battle armed with DNA results to get Al to pony up as a legal father. Those children are now 18 and 5.

For thirty years, Albert has been a playboy dating celebrities, including Angie Everhart, Brooke Shields, and supermodel Claudia Schiffer, and even some reported strippers. So why would he suddenly step up to alter? True love? A need for companionship with a soul-mate? No, he’s marrying for the historic reasons that marriage was invented, economics and politics. There’s a 2.4 billion dollar fortune at stake and a small country to be a ceremonial head of.

The real reason Prince Albert is marrying now is because the Monoco constitution says a royal heir must come out of wedlock. Prince Albert II of Monaco has fathered two children but neither of them can become an heir. And, Prince Albert II of Monaco’s longtime hesitation to tie a marriage knot has forced the Monaco’s constitution change and under these changes the 700 year old dynasty would continue through female line if he leaves the world without producing an heir for the Monacans. Yes, he’s marrying to keep the throne away from his sisters.

How romantic. I stand by my many earlier blogs. We would do well in America if we looked at marriage through a lens of cultural trappings rather than placing so much emphasis on romantic love. There’s practical business to the institution of marriage. Ask Prince Playboy.

One of the most common reactions to acute emotional pain is a kind of shutting down of emotional processes. It’s nature’s way of protecting the brain from deep psychic pain that could lead to dangerous behavior. And this phenomenon is evident here.When Joran’s mother was asked about how she felt when she first heard the news that a dead woman was found in her son’s hotel room, her response was classic:

“I was complete shut. Numb. No feelings. Numb.”

Most illustrative of her need to avoid more pain right now was her admission that she will not visit her son in prison:

“I’m not going to visit Joran in Peru. I don’t have any feeling that it can add up to anything. I want to keep distance. I think it will bring emotions up that I’m not ready for. I’m not a police officer. I’m a mom.”

Then she goes on to imply that her son is suffering from a mental illness and suggests it is bi-polar disorder. While critiques may imply that she is helping to set up a legal defense based on insanity, I see a mother who is at wits end. It makes me think about other mothers who have been unable to get mental health services for their children, either because of cost or because the children are over eighteen and can decline help.

Here is America, we place so much emphasis on individual rights and freedoms that we do not forcibly hospitalize or medicate anyone unless they are an immediate threat to themselves or someone else. The problem with this liberal and well intended law is that many mentally ill people do not have the capacity to make these decisions for themselves. The mothers of mentally ill young adults often watch in horror as the child whom they have loved and nurtured for eighteen years becomes lost on the streets as homeless person because they refuse medication. Joran Van der Sloot had the financial where-with-all to get lost on the streets of the world and let his mental illness run the show. My heart grieves for this mother. She’s dealing with two losses in four months, and the public shame that comes from those who make motherhood a pathology.

Historically the medical community has loved to medicate womanhood. Depending on which study you read, one in six American women are currently on an SSRI (anti-depressant.) I guess that’s an advancement from traumatic surgical hysterectomies that women were once forced to endure to cure “hysteria.” And how about postpartum depression? It’s the darling diagnosis of our generation. Funny, affluent women with less pressure to work and mothers with extensive family support have lower rates of PPD. Now the drug companies are telling mothers, us exhausted caregivers/providers, that we have a sexual dysfunction???

According to the New York Times, there are questions about how pervasive low-sex-drive is in women. It is a bonafied diagnosis in the DSM-IV called hypoactive sexual desire disorder. And many of the studies mentioned in medical literature suggest that one in ten women suffer from the disorder. But the problem is this: Those studies have been financed by drug companies.

While the FDA weighs in, the German company is going ahead with a marketing campaign that includes a web site, a Twitter feed, a Discovery Channel documentary, and a publicity tour with Actress Lisa Rinna, a former Playboy model.

Here’s my two cents. To anyone who’s listening at the FDA or at home: We mothers do not need a pill to have a more active libido. Fly us to a resort. Give us room service. And stand back boys. Watch how fast our libidos come back!!!

But social class is a much more encompassing descriptor. It can relate to education, profession, dialect, zip code, income, ethnic heritage, fashion, decorating, and even food choices. Remember when Obama was criticized for preferring arugula over iceberg and Dijon over ubiquitous American mustard?

When we are not conscious about our social class, we may also be unaware of which advertisements we display that might limit us in our social world. Yes, ornamentation and adornment are social indicators of peer group allegiance and people use those visual cues along with verbal hints to peg us before getting close. What’s that accent? Does he swear? Use slang? Is she sporting a designer label?

I think about class a lot because I am acutely aware that I am in some ways class-less and can comfortably transcend class to and connect with the human under the environmental programming. My own class is complicated: I am a Canadian/American of Irish heritage, middle income/highly educated/mother of biracial children, who lives in a diverse zip code and loves European food and good crystal and table linen. I also swear more than a “typical” woman of my class, and I have friends of many races and nationalities. My world travels have given me a comfort level with people of all classes.

In a Subway Sandwich shop this week another customer intuitively picked up on this. I looked like any middle-aged carpool mom wearing jeans and a T-shirt with my long blonde hair in a pony tail exposing my blue eyes. All this could have been misleading. But the tattooed, corn-rowed, guy in a wife-beater and sagging jeans, turned when I entered the store and spontaneous said, “Hey” and extended a closed fist for me to knuckle tap. I tapped back. And only when my smaller, older, white knuckles touched his brown fist did he become self-conscious. He lowered his head, turned his back on me and looked ashamed. I’m sure he was confused by his impulse and when the reality hit that we didn’t display the trappings of the same social class, he went mute. What a shame. We might have had a chat.

In another version of the class trap, I have a New York friend going through an expensive divorce. He is fighting tooth and nail for every drop of their shared marital fortune. When I suggested that maybe his sanity was more important than money, he quickly responded, “Money is my sanity! Who would I be without money?”

Great question. Who would we be without money? Without racial identity? Without our jobs? Without our clothes? Who is the un-armored human being available to connect with other human beings?

In some ways we so cling to the trappings of class that we miss out on amazing ways to just connect as human beings. At other times, we ignore class and wonder why some of our relationships fail. Class is sometimes that silent orchestrator of destiny. Do you know your class? Can you transcend it?