[minism]

This is somewhat of an aside, but it's been interesting watching the constant debate about the direction of causality between financial and emotional stability in a family.

I think when I was younger I tended to see financial success and stability as a downstream effect of other factors, but I can't help but now see that viewpoint as naive. Economic pressure alone is sufficient to create severe emotional stress and instability (which probably creates a feedback loop that makes it even harder to recover from).