College women, take heed: Prioritize marriage and family!

[Elizabeth3]

All the doctors I have been to (that are female) are also mothers and work in group practices with other physicians so that they can also be very present for their own family. One of my past doctors (and this was back in the 1990’s) never had afternoon hours on Thursday. Instead, she had chosen recess duty and volunteering in the classroom at her children’s parish school. She also divided weekend and evening call with another doctor in the practice, who had very young children. Both ladies had their first child when completing residency in the mid-20’s. Even St Gianna worked part time with her clinic hours.

And this is fine but not all women aspire to be doctors. This isn’t about discouraging women from going for degrees such as doctor, lawyer, scientist, etc. It’s about recognizing that the larger portion of women don’t want that kind of career and are being discouraged from choosing marriage and motherhood as an option. I know at least five women personally who have expressed that they would love to quit work and stay home with their kids but they are too far down the path of college debt, mortgage, and multiple children to be able to do that. They wish they would have made different choices that would have made it possible.

 

[Elizabeth3]

My concern is that we are shutting the door after the horse has left the barn. Don’t get me wrong, I agree 100% with what you are saying. But it’s an uphill battle to try to convince young women not to find a career. I think society has already closed that door. Again, I agree with you, 100%. But it’s a losing battle.

Well yes. The cultural narrative is so strong that many young girls take it as a matter of course that they will have a career but then later find out it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be and they’d rather focus on raising their family. There are options for young girls to both get an education and job skills without racking up debt . It takes some creative thinking and planning and more girls need to hear those options and not be discouraged from them. I hope the article’s author is right. There are signs that Gen Z is a more conservative generation. Maybe they can be the ones to put the cultural narrative on a more balanced and healthy path.

 

[Sarcelle]

One drawback about having marriage and motherhood as a goal is that someone will have to ask you to get married in the first place.

What if it never happens? What are you going to do in the meantime? You still have to live life and support yourself.

 

[Elizabeth3]

Totally agree but many young girls aren’t even presented with the option that it’s ok to search their heart and if they want this path to prioritize it and make it happen.

 

[Elizabeth3]

That’s why I advocate that women who want marriage and family should still pursue some kind of job training after high school but be creative about it. Look for a career that has flexibility (there are tons of medical careers that are like that-nursing, x ray tech, ultrasound tech, lab tech, physical therapy tech, medical office coding). Work for a year or two after high school while living at home. Stuff as much money in your savings account as you can while you have no bills to pay. Use that money to pay for a two-year degree or vocation training upfront and be done by 22 and ready to start working. If marriage happens, then great. You have no debt, you have a good savings account and you have options if you want to stay home when the children come along.

This is all do-able for women who want marriage and family and at the same time, if it doesn’t happen, they still have a means to support themselves. I just don’t think we have to push every young woman down a path that prioritizes the “what if’s” to such an extent that it makes it harder to even achieve their goal of marriage and staying home to raise a family. The culture needs to have this conversation and the stigma around it needs to be taken away.

 

[otjm]

Is courting a practice in the U.S.?

As about 50% of marriages end up in court, one could say so “tongue in cheek”, though some might not consider that “courting”.

 

[otjm]

he liberal sex available by feminist women made it tough for old fashioned women to want a real traditional lifestyle and marriage. God, I hope we have gotten past that.

We haven’t. One only needs to look beyond one’s circle of friends to see that.

 

[otjm]

With remote jobs and web based businesses, it gets even easier to work from home.

It may be that you are working from home and find it easy.

If there are children in the home, they are going to need the attention of whomever it is who is working from home - and that is not of necessity the mother. Further, if both parents work and are doing so from home, the matters become even more complicated.

IT may be that many dads working from home realize (likely more now) that working there as opposed to the office provides them more access to the day-in day-out lives of their children, something they missed entirely working out of the house. And that in turn provides a serious challenge to them to buckle down and work, as opposed to “giving in” and being a parent.

One of my son-in-laws is an engineer trying to work from home; if he were at the office he would be doing 10 or more hour days at least 5 days a week; the distance from other team members is a far greater burden than if they could get together at the drop of a hat and hash out a problem.

My daughter has worked in the past as an editor of all written material, for a software company and has chosen to not work for the last ten years; her skills are not “rusting”, but I can guarantee she would be going batty were she trying also to work productively with kids home full time.

 

[PaulinVA]

My wife and I are so traditional. Sometimes we don’t want to admit it, but there you are.

She has stayed home since the first child was born. Sometimes we were poor. Sometimes we were in debt. But our kids are very thankful that mom was always home for them.

After they were all in school, she started teaching at a preschool, and loved it. She wanted to help out saving for college, but the Church does not pay well at all.

Yes, we are traditional, but my wife is one of the strongest, toughest, sweetest people on the planet.

 

[Lifeisbeautiful3]

I know at least five women personally who have expressed that they would love to quit work and stay home with their kids but they are too far down the path of college debt, mortgage, and multiple children to be able to do that.

What human wouldn’t want that? To enjoy family time instead of working their fingers to the bone? I would wager that most people (man or woman) would prefer that scenario and would accept an opportunity that afforded them more money and flexibility for time with family while spending less time in the office. As my grandfather once said, “they call it work for a reason.”

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I’m in a homeschool group full of a lot of super-duper traditional Catholics and will not SHUT UP about how their daughters need a career plan.

My father pushed me to educated myself in some area where I would be able to get a good job and have a career. Probably part of his motivation was that I was a only child and did very well in school, so the fatherly “expectations” for a kid to succeed were all on me. (My mother was the one who was always saying to him, “Well, she might want to do something else like get married.” )

But years later I realized that Dad’s other reason was that he was physically unwell and very likely figured he did not have that many years left and would thus not be able to take care of me, so I had to become self-sufficient. He was right, he became disabled before I got out of high school and he died when I was 26. By then I had already been living on my own and supporting myself for 5 years.

Over the years, I’ve found that other people who grew up in a family with a chronically ill or deceased breadwinning parent, or some other financial hardship like a dad who got laid off or even abandoned the family, understand this motivation and the idea of “career or family” is not an either-or for them. It can be almost impossible to explain it to others who are used to Daddy paying all the bills with no blips or downturns.

 

[otjm]

Then you are blessed.

 

[OddBird]

It just generally makes the most practical sense for mom to be the stay-at-home parent, does it not?

There used to be a poster on here (@HoosierDaddy, I wonder what has become of him, he hasn’t been around in a while) who was a stay-at-home dad while his business-talented wife was out there making money (and expecting their 7th child). Sometimes, it does make sense when the dad stays home.

Well, honestly, for most hard-core Catholic families, if they are not using ABC, how many kids are they likely to have? A lot, right?

Fertility is a fickle thing. Some couples are very fertile, some less so, some not at all.

We’ve never used ABC in the 14 years we’ve been married.

Number of kids : 0.

 

[Sarcelle]

I lost my job recently due to COVID but when I was employed, the people in my team were halfway across the world in India. I got used to working with people who weren’t in the same location as I. It didn’t matter if I was in the office or at home, the people I collaborated with were at a different continent or if they were in the States were either in a different state such as Texas or Florida.

It made working from home a lot easier. I am now job hunting and I was surprised at the number of work at home jobs available. I am talking about engineering jobs by the way.

 

[otjm]

What human wouldn’t want that?

I could name quite a few people, especially women, who would not want to be full time home. They range from individuals who are self-centered to an amazing degree, to those who are abusive, either through neglect or outright abuse.

I defended their kids in juvenile court, so it is not as if I had no exposure to another side of life.

I have known professional women, very good at what they did career-wise, who had no desire whatsoever to be full time at home with children.

People come in all sorts of types; and the presumption that women are best suited to be marriage and family oriented is an over statement.

 

[otjm]

What type of engineering do you do?

 

[Sarcelle]

I do electro-optical engineering.

 

[otjm]

I do electro-optical engineering.

My son-in-law is a mechanical engineer, fwtiw and I have spoken with him periodically. He has noted that not only he but the others he works with are finding that trying to resolve matters by text/email/phone is a whole lot harder and time consuming than being able to walk down the hall. His team is in a time crunch that is not getting better; the separation has slowed down what was already a difficult project.

I am glad that you projects worked reasonably well for you and your team. That does not necessarily translate to other projects.

Additionally he is a really good parent; but finds that it is emotionally hard to shut the door on his daughters - they are good kids, but “daddy is here” and it makes a difficult matter even more difficult.

He, as well as the rest of his team will survive it all. I have doubts that the firm he works for is going to go all in for remote; they may have some work from home, some of the time. What I am hearing though is that it is not a “one size fits all”.

My other daughter has been working from home 4 out of 5 days for several years and seriously appreciates not having the daily grind of driving back and forth; but she also misses the interaction with coworkers. She is now a part time trainee for others and finds training by distance to be a whole lot slower than being there in person. She is not able to have children, so kids at home is a non issue. Her husband manages a payroll section for the state so much of his work already was on line; the 40 minute commute each way to work is not being missed; he goes in maybe once a week for meetings and related work.

 

[Elizabeth3]

What human wouldn’t want that? To enjoy family time instead of working their fingers to the bone? I would wager that most people (man or woman) would prefer that scenario and would accept an opportunity that afforded them more money and flexibility for time with family while spending less time in the office. As my grandfather once said, “they call it work for a reason.”

No, this isn’t about more leisure to enjoy spending time with family. This is about focusing the work they do on managing the home, raising the children, volunteering in the community, etc. These women aren’t saying they want more leisure time. They are saying the work of a career is not fulfilling and they want to work at their vocation.

 

[jeannetherese]

From the article:

“In the last week alone, I’ve spoken with three millennial women (who reached out for coaching) who are all in the same boat: they’re up to their eyeballs in debt, having gotten degree upon degree due to the pressure they felt from their parents and the culture to do something big with their lives. To not let their intellect go to waste. To not worry about finding a man to marry or even having children because, well, they have bigger fish to fry.”

It seems to me that the article is calling for vocational discernment and recognizing cultural pressures which can make such discernment difficult. It then addresses the way poor discernment can be problematical for women who have based their choices on societal pressures, thinking that their human value is bound up with income levels and prestige, rather than being children of God.
I agree that this is important and should be brought up regularly with both boys and girls as they are growing up. This should be coupled with lots of discussion of what it means to be a husband or wife, so that as children begin pondering adult relationships and vocations, they will have a sense of the responsibilities and sacrifices associated with them.
Discernment of vocation will help to guide one in choice of education and profession. This also involves careful discernment.
Messages about choosing jobs which are self-satisfying may ignore financial realities. One needs to be able to support oneself, (and, perhaps parents or siblings under certain circumstances), and, if called to the vocation of marriage, to support a new family.
Sometimes that involves training for a job which will not be especially enjoyable personally, but which will enable meeting financial obligations. This includes those obligations which we might have, should those of us called to marriage not find a suitable husband or wife, or enter into a marriage which is of short duration.
Our society currently privileges wage labor and gives less support to the work of raising children and maintaining a home. I hope that, over time, we will see a shift in this attitude so that hard working, albeit lower waged or non wage earning parents will be give respect for their contributions to family and society and men and women will take time to carefully discern their vocational call and prepare to live this call to the best of their ability.