I'm not a parent, but as someone who will eventually have to leave the bay area if I want to be a homeowner (and I do), I totally get what you're saying and worry about it a lot.
This is the first time I've read this blog, so I don't know what the answer to your question turned out to be. Hopefully I will find out after reading more.
I know when my husband and I moved away from here for 2.5 years, the issue you discuss here is a huge part of why we came back.
It feels like home when you are among others who are like you, and when you are not, well, it can be very difficult not feeling at home where you happen to live.
I realize that this post is old, however, it struck home. An acquaintance directed me to you today after remembering that I am, indeed, expecting a child (our first) in a few more months.
As time has gone on and I've read the news more and more, I find that we're at a crossroads between what is considered "normal" to the average parent and "abnormal" to the rest.
Living in Boston presents us with a twisted dichotomy of traditionalism and non-conformist liberalism - and we fit into no category comfortably.
I wish to raise our daughter with air conditioning, some measure of religion and possibly even a little bit of Disney. She will be vaccinated and more likely than not, breastfed for a little while.
On the other hand, she'll grow up knowing that mommy is in the Army but daddy got out. Mommy is tattooed and can still weasel some piercings into odd places if she wants to, but works for the government. Daddy is not tattooed or pierced but is far more earthy and liberal in many senses having grown up in San Francisco himself.
And oh yes, I judge, I judge those who don't vaccinate their children because the reasons given don't have any medical basis and, in at least one community, have caused a once unheard of in modern times disease to re-appear and claim lives. I judge schools that employ zero-tolerance policies with respect to violence and suspend children for drawing pictures of soldiers carrying their weapons. I judge parents who educate their children in Montessori schools and have no control over them.
And they will judge me. They will judge me for being a part of the military industrial complex and they will judge me for all of the same things I judge them on.
But in my community, in my immediate neighborhood, I will also be judged for allowing my daughter to listen to 77 punk rock music, for dressing her in moonstomper clothing rather than some rot with "PRINCESS!!" emblazoned on it. I will be judged for encouraging her to remember that there are, in fact, 26 letters in the alphabet (R being the long lost letter in this part of the world) and I will be judged most of all for not actually being married to someone I absentmindedly refer to as my husband. I'll be judged for not wanting to purchase a home (although if you want, I have one for sale in Saginaw, MI...) and preferring, instead, to raise her in an apartment.
But now you've been there and it seems you have another on the way. So maybe you can tell me...how DO you find like minded people, especially when your mind is unlike as it is?
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