ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how three major domains of contemporary life, such as, work, family, and community, are linked by crisscrossing minivans and SUVs as parents drive back and forth commuting to work and chauffeuring children to school and activities. It then examines these daily driving patterns to reveal how intertwining threads of class, gender, and place frame work and family decisions. The authors' ethnographic research provides an on-the-ground snapshot of these diverse forces as they shaped our informants' decisions about where and how best to live a family life, raise children, and divide up the paid and unpaid labor needed to accomplish those tasks. Cultural and structural factors influence the range of choices that individuals see as possible and desirable, while further choices are in turn constrained by resultant actions. Older farmhouses were spread throughout the township, interspersed with new subdivisions of high-end homes built on converted farmland.
