“They know they ought to remove their kids from these schools but are helpless to do so.”
Most people I work with are well-paid and they CHOOSE lifestyle over what their kids are subjected to - and then are VERY DEFENSIVE when that is pointed out to them.
It’s hopeless, at least for the Upper Middle Class (may be better with the poor, though).
Yyyep.
I’ve seen this happen in the Upper Middle Class. Here’s how it starts. Get married, then buy the best house you can afford with two incomes. Great. Then Kid #1 comes along. Mom takes time to have the baby, but grudgingly realizes they can’t pay for their lifestyle on one income. Mom goes back to work—finagles some extra hours or days from home, but kid still needs to go to another caregiver or day care until old enough for school. Now they get locked in. More kids come along....they fit right into the same pattern. Nothing changes until they are old enough to leave the house. But the damage is done.
This is what they mean by “mother and father have to work.”
But no they don’t. This is how we did it.
We got married, bought a little suburban home we could afford with one income, even though we had two incomes at the time. Paid off debts like crazy—car, student loans, mortgage. As Baby #1 is coming along, Mrs. Claud quits the rat race and stays home permanently. I keep working—and am not making much. Then Baby #2 and Baby #3, which technically puts us below the poverty level. Thanks to generous grandparents, hand-me-downs, and the occasional WIC, we scrape by. The little house gets crowded, so we move to a bigger one in a rural area. Thanks to careful choice of house/location and grandparents again, our mortgage barely goes up. Mrs. Claud starts homeschooling, and baby #4 and #5 come along. And here we are 10 years later, still ticking.
Not gonna lie...BOY has it been tough sometimes. And we’ve had massive, massive help from more kind people than I can ever count. But our kids have got the best education, the best teacher (mom), and we all grew together *as a family*. I am very very proud that we made the decisions that we did.
It can be done. It just takes two people to make the decision and stick with it.