good post Marianne
It's always good to understand what your motivations are for taking up a martial art. I always liked the look of Capoeira because of how cool it looked - half dance half martial art. It's probably not great for self defence but it looks fun.

The problem though, is that most do claim that their martial art teaches self defence but rarely do they. On the contrary if you drill kids with bad habits, like keeping their arms down by their sides when they spar, it's very hard to train out of afterwards. There always have been a lot of charlatans out there charging a fortune for classes, uniforms and gradings every few weeks. Trusting parents can't necessarily discern between the good and the bad.