Hi Ann!
I've always said that there is one surefire way to solve any of our problems related to education in this country. That surefire solution is to solve the failing family economy. Republicans are for people working multiple jobs, but they are also always for the stay at home parent, and the nuclear family.
You want to solve the problems that face America? Make it so that every family caring for a child in this country has the ability to stay at home to raise that child. Make it so that every family who cares for a kid can make the same choice you have made.
If you want to do that, you don't cut Medicaid. If you want to do that, you don't cut funding for public universities. If you want to do that, you exploit the wealth of the richest country on Earth to make it so that every single family has the option of keeping one them home.
When someone stays home with a child, when someone is there at school to support their work, when someone is at home, waiting for that child to walk through the door, when someone is walking that child to the bus stop, when someone puts on their stern face and argues with the teachers and principals to make it so their kid has chances that are not even remotely the same kinds of chances your kids have had...
When someone is there for a kid, that kid will do measurably better.
It's this simple: Every family should be afforded the legal and financial ability to invest their time and love in their own children.
But it doesn't work that way. The people in the real world have to pay for their student loans, their transportation (you and your husband would cut mass transportation funds, yes, you are part of that decision making process), they have to pay for clothes to wear to work, food, rent... (did you know that some people don't own even one house!?)
About 12 years ago, my wife and I made the choice for me to stay home to care for our son. He was just 1 at the time, and we had no plans to have a second. We would eventually have a second child, but you know what they say, right? "The best laid plans of mice."
When I decided to stay home, my wife was in her 6th or 7th year of teaching, but I was only in my third. Needless to say, she was earning more, and that was something we had to be concerned about.
Why on Earth would I take myself out of the workforce to raise a little boy?
My Mother never had a choice about staying home. She either had to work, or we wouldn't have anything, period. After my Mother died, my Father reluctantly took us in. We had the benefit of social security death benefits. Without that, we probably would have been raised in Texas or California by my grandmother. My grandmother would leave her abusive husband and begin to work on her own, buy her own house (it sold in 2000 something for 50k), and still have time to have me and my brother come and stay with her over the Summer.
These were not choices. These were just things that happened.
So let me just repeat what I said in a comment earlier (with some additional spice for flavor):
I'm a stay at home Dad, and I work 20 hours a week, and I teach and organize two school's chess clubs, I coach my kids' sports teams, I clean the house, and I cook the food, and I get the oil changed in the car. My wife does not need to do any of the housework, because I do it all. I have never once hired a house cleaner.
Guess what, Ann?
I paid for my own college. I started working in a restaurant when I was still 14 years old.
I don't have a Cadillac. My last 4 cars have been hand me downs from the in laws. I have never ridden a horse. I have never owned a vacation home.
If only every single family in the US had the ability to make the choice that you made.
Your problem isn't that you stayed at home. Your problem is that you don't understand that it is well within our power to make it so that everyone can have the opportunity to make that choice.
You and your husband are the American Family Wrecking Crew.
2:29 PM PT: Here's the expected thank you.
I had to leave for work right after I posted this, so I had to miss out on the convo! Sorry.