EDUC Advice To A Young Woman Who Just Graduated From High School

[MinnesotaSmith]

Mods, I know this isn't exactly hard news. Still, most of what it covers has been discussed at length on Main in recent days, so I thought it might be worth posting there for a while. Whenever you deem it in need of being moved to the Janitor's Closet or the Corkboard, I will understand.

Substantive comments are welcomed. Critical ones are even more useful, as since I haven't sent this to my young relative yet, so there's still the opportunity to improve it before sending it to her.

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Hi, XXX. This is from your Uncle XXX. We don’t really know each other well these days, but you are blood family, and I genuinely hope for the best possible life for you. That of course includes you making the best choices for your college major and career, which as a very recent high school graduate, is right in front of you. So, I have written and sent you this letter (subject to your parents deciding if they believe it is appropriate for you) that I think could help you reach more fully-informed decisions about them.

I have previously arranged for you to be sent the best book of which I am aware about making college major choices, Worthless: The Young Person's Indispensable Guide to Choosing the Right Major by Aaron Clarey (2011).

I hope that you find that book and this letter I have written more useful than you find them offensive. It contains some of the best wisdom I know on how a bright young woman just graduating high school could go about making the best decisions for her on college major choice and career. Whatever you read in it that you see as inapplicable or disagree with, don’t let that keep you from getting what use you can out of the rest. (I have spent over 30 years working as a scientist or studying to be one post-high school, and have met and talked with thousands of other STEM people over those decades, if you wish to judge my background to advise on career choices, especially STEM ones.)

All the best to you in this life.

Love, your Uncle XXX.
May 2015

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The biggest choice you will have to make in your life isn’t your college major. It’s where you want to be on the “motherhood vs. career” continuum. Everything in life involves choices that preclude other ones. Think of it this way, that there is 100% of you to go around during your coming adulthood, and no more. I’d say a 100% mother would be one who’s married two weeks after high school, staying that way til death does them part, and is a stay-at-home mother who homeschools her 5+ children to the end of high school. A 100% career-oriented woman would be more like Maureen Dowd (writes smarmy columns for the NY Times) who at age 57 (long past her potential child-bearing days) has publicly mused that she might like to find a husband and settle down “one of these days”. (She’s never been married and has no children, and I think at this point might as well wait just a bit longer, and simply show up to when the will is read out a week after the funeral was held for some man she never knew.)

Odds are you will want to follow some path in between, perhaps a 70/30 or 50/50 split, dependent of course upon you getting a man you’d want to marry to go along with it. (Men are rarely willing to be househusbands, and few of those that are, are attractive to women, so forget that idea.) Be aware that very few people find sufficient meaning in just their career (odds that you will be another Salk or Sabin, Fields Medal winner, or any Science/Medical Nobel Prize winner are less than one in 100,000, along the lines of your odds of being killed by bees or lightning, less than your odds of dying by drowning, which means it would make more logical sense to plan your life on one of those sad events, than it would be to plan on being a science Nobel Prize winner at the price of never having had a family, if you were to think that was an acceptable exchange). They have to have had a family of their own that they raise well to do that, in the vast majority of cases.

I read an essay by a woman who worked at a hospice for a few years. She noted that two kinds of people typically accepted their upcoming death fairly well; those with very deep religious faith (we’re talking level of commitment to a religious vocation typical only for clergy/nuns who were that for practically their entire adult life, like a Mother Theresa), and those who had had children. People who were dying who had had neither of those to give their lives meaning often tragically found the prospect of death to be an absolutely terrifying prospect due to no meaning at all in their entire lives, even when it would be a release from horrible untreatable pain. I find that observation to be very believable. Speaking for myself, I have found everything I have done professionally in decades of working as a scientist to be minor in real meaning compared to being a parent to children of my own blood (my two twin daughters, age almost 3, as you know) that I’m deeply involved in raising. Only as a means to an end do I believe my work is really important. (That means providing for them, before that preparing to provide for them, and learning things through my work and schooling that helps me be a better parent such as improving their nutrition or being able to do a better job of overseeing their education.)

Note that replacement rate (break-even, or really a bare minimum) for the number of children in a family is three, not two, the latter of which is a narrowing family tree, as unstable as an upside-down pyramid. (Recent Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has 20 grandchildren, to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s one, so who has the real legacy from their time here on Earth.) Even then, at just three children, there is no guarantee of grandchildren, and your line not disappearing from the earth like the dinosaurs and the Trilobites. Look at your late relative XXX; he had four children, two of whom are dead, and his two surviving children had only ONE grandchild between them, who is nonwhite. (Plus, it’s nice for kids growing up to have cousins, and as adults, too.)
Yes, I wanted more children myself than the number I have, but was unwise enough to become family-oriented rather late in life. I hope you make better decisions in that area than I did.

Doing a first-rate job as both provider and the parent providing most care for one’s children is nearly impossible (ask your mother if in doubt of this!), so being and staying married if at all possible the entire time while raising a family is the keystone for doing the best you can as a mother*. How to do that is a MUCH larger question, but one of the most important you will ever consider. (I suggest you ask several older men who you respect who you are absolutely sure do not want to date you to get insights on this subject in preference to asking any woman; these days, women commonly clearly do not understand men any better than men seem to understand women, going by the ever-higher divorce rates and plummeting marriage rates.)

*Take a look at http://tinyurl.com/pslazl13 if you have any doubt about this, including how things were for you during your own upbringing.

Regardless, make your decision where you will go as a mother vs. career woman carefully and correctly for you (and for any children you choose to have), and be prepared to live with your choice for the rest of your life. The saying is to be good to your children, as they’ll pick your nursing home (how loyal you were to them, is how loyal they likely will be to you in your inevitable, often otherwise terribly-lonely, declining years, in a future where corporate and government pensions and Social Security/Medicare are getting ever less dependable). And, remember that if you never have any children, that also means you will never have any grandchildren…

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More on the Aaron Clarey book: It advises that a person should pursue a STEM (Science/Technology/ Engineering/Medical) degree if they attend college, or learn a skilled trade (electrician, plumber, welder, millwright, HVAC, etc.) if they do not. I basically agree. The principles to keep in mind about college major choice are:

1) Go to school to learn about a field in which people will pay you for working.

2) Commonly, the amount of mathematics a major requires is usually a good (if not perfectly reliable) indicator that it’s very possibly a good choice. By math, I mean the major requires Calculus and Physics courses, and for the very best-paying ones, it may require its higher-level courses use Calculus and/or Physics. (Yes, I am aware that that means Engineering is usually a better choice than most or all Science majors; I freely admit I would have been better off as an engineer than as a scientist.) Examples of majors much less likely to give you good employment prospects (alphabetized to avoid giving any impression of priority):

Advertising, advocacy of any kind,"alternative" (quack) medical studies of any kind (including chiropractic/herbal/aromatherapy/homeopathy/traditional " or “folk” medicine), anthropology, archeology, architecture, art anything, astronomy, aviation (if you want to be a professional pilot, get trained by and experience through serving in the military; civilian entry-level pilots make very little money and typically can’t pay off their school loans, the same as gourmet chefs), business majors in most cases (exception: bookkeeping/tax/clerical courses that would help anyone in managing or helping administer a business, but commonly an entire degree in this is overkill outside perhaps accounting), cosmetology, counseling (everyone thinks they’re a perfectly competent counselor, and anyway medical insurance pays ever-lessening amounts for that service, like every mental health field, with ever fewer government-funded jobs available in it), drama, English, environmental anything, ethnic studies, fashion design, floristry, foreign languages in many cases (best to choose a foreign language at least a billion people speak and the # of speakers is not steadily declining with no apparent bottom, as French/German/Italian/ Greek/ Japanese are declining, while Hindi, the top two Chinese dialects, Spanish, and Arabic are not declining in number of speakers, and anyway foreign language fluency typically pays best when is in addition to another skill), gender studies, history, interior decorating, legal anything (half of lawyers make about $30K/yr and many are suing their law schools over being blatantly lied to about job prospects for lawyers), literature, journalism (print newspapers are folding right and left due to better-quality and mostly free stuff available on the Internet that hardly anyone gets paid anything like middle-class wages to write), marine biology (U.S. colleges produce over 100x the workplace demand for employees in that field), marketing, music anything (it’s now mostly gotten for free on the Internet, except in person for peanuts for all but the very top performers), oceanography, philosophy, poetry, political science, public relations, purely theoretical anything, social work (gov’t-dependent degree requiring a master’s degree to make more than barely above minimum wage), sociology, sports anything, theology (the ministry, especially in numerically-declining denominations, which nearly all denominations that ordain any women are, aside from whether or not your Bible contains 1 Corinthians 14:34, 1 Timothy 2:12, or Titus 2:5) or any major predominantly used in government employment (given the steadily continuing layoffs at many levels of government as their deficits worsen).

3) Minimize and/or avoid debt. I only see college loans as justifiable for four-year degrees or beyond for Engineering or Medical/Dental schooling. Yes, that absolutely means that for many or most college students in most majors, they would have been better off not going to college at all. Good graphic showing how student loans work: http://tinyurl.com/2955m47 (also at:
http://www.collegescholarships.org/research/student-loans/ ) Note again that trade schools commonly are very worthwhile economically IF they involve getting dirty while using tools. Examples include electrician, plumber, welder, millwright, HVAC, locksmith, firearm repair, and large-engine mechanic. (Upholstery/fabric anything/pet animal vet assistant or craft things, not so much.) Remember that traditionally college students are supposed to have at least 115 I.Q.s for college to not be an ultimately-frustrating waste of time and (someone’s) money. Here is a thought-provoking chart showing how to relate SAT scores to IQ: http://tinyurl.com/2dymqs .
(If you want to look up what IQ they have, feel entirely free to ask your parents their SAT scores, if you’re feeling brave one day.)
And, here are graphs on comparing IQ by college major: http://tinyurl.com/oftxmzz (just lop off the bottom 75% or so to see who probably doesn’t even belong in college) and http://tinyurl.com/naqc6po .

4) If at all possible, live at home with one of your parents for at least part (ideally all) of college.

5) Attend community college rather than a 4-year school for the first two years of school (not two years of time, but the first two years of classes).

6) Attend a public (state) college instead of a likely far more expensive private one that usually isn’t any better, unless you are either going to be an engineer via some place like Caltech/MIT/Georgia Tech (you’d better be REALLY good, like over SAT math over 700) , or you get scholarships (NOT loans!) that bring the price down to that of a state school, and then, you have to manage to not flunk out of such schools (beyond what I probably could have accomplished, I readily admit).

7) CLEP Test/Advanced Placement out of what college classes you can. This applies fully for liberal arts course requirements, and cautiously for courses remotely connected to your major field (including math).

8) Good free online book on how to get an accredited 4-year college degree for under $15,000: http://tinyurl.com/p3trm8s

9) Good free website with many well-composed instructional videos on college subjects, primarily but not exclusively on math and science: https://www.khanacademy.org/

10) MIT allows anyone to audit (no credit, but you can learn for free) any of their courses for free online, here: http://tinyurl.com/ny73z8z

11) Surefire simple way to have more time every day to get things done while in college: do not own, watch, or have in your dwelling a television set the entire time you are in college (and leave any video games with your parents while you’re at it).

12) Go most days without going on social media even one time (Facebook, Google Plus, Myspace, Yahoo Messenger, Flicker, posting karoke on Youtube, all that sort of thing). As a college student, you’ve got other things to do than look at pictures of cute kittens or post pictures or videos of your lunch, new clothes/shoes, hobby stuff, anything about a musical group you like, or your newest boyfriend.

13) Do NOT join a sorority or anything similar. You haven’t the time if majoring in anything serious, and if you aren’t in a major requiring serious focus to the point you have the free time available for being in a sorority, either change your major or DROP OUT and don’t waste any more money or time on being in college studing something likely economically pointless.

14) I have not looked at these sources in a while, but Peterson’s and The Blue Book were once the best references on which colleges offer which major. (At least one of these should be available in all college libraries and the better high school guidance offices.)

15) Five years after leaving college, you will likely not even know where as many as four of the close-friends-for-life you had in college even live (or if they are even alive), so don’t get too hung up on putting too much time or concern into friendships you make in college, especially people with different majors from you who aren’t potential husbands. (This five-year rule will likely also apply to your high school friends you have now.)

 

[MinnesotaSmith]

Continuing...

16) A major should ideally lead to jobs that won’t easily be automated (as many will be over the next 10-15 years) or outsourced to someone in a foreign country, who will do the work for less than U.S. minimum wage. Any job that can be done via the Internet eventually will be, and that commonly means outsourced to the Third World.

17) Not all Engineering majors are economically equal. Textile, Environmental, Industrial and Nuclear (unless you want a career in the U.S. Navy) on average are the least desirable choices. Chemical, Electrical, and Petroleum are the best-paying ones. Mechanical and Civil are so-so. I do not know enough to say anything about Metallurgical or Optical engineering degree prospects, and Biochemical Engineering these days for that matter (so research the heck out of the job prospects for any of those fields before majoring in one of them).

18) The best two schools in the U.S. for (probably) Geology and (certainly) Petroleum Engineering are probably the University of Texas—Austin and Texas A. & M. – College Station, although Colorado School of Mines and (for Geology) Berkeley are well-regarded. There are perhaps 25 more that offer Pet Eng, and many more than that which offer Geology bachelor’s degrees.

19) For Geology, that field is divided into soft-rock, hard-rock, and environmental/ geotechnical areas. Soft-rock pays the best (it’s what oil companies use), and is easier than hard-rock (mining-oriented), which requires more math and chemistry. I strongly suggest taking extra Chemistry beyond the minimum required and Optical Mineralogy if you go soft-rock, though. Be aware that nearly all jobs for Geology bachelor’s degree holders above low-paying technician level require mostly or completely working in the field (not usually in an office or in your home town), with lots (like over 75%) of travel absolutely required, the way I typically work a thousand miles from home for months at a time. Environmental Geology is very dependent upon government spending, which as noted earlier is declining.

20) Do not go to Veterinary School no matter how much you love the cute little kitties, puppies, and horsies. Dental and Medical schools are comparably difficult for gaining admission and little or no more demanding to graduate from, with far more economic potential. (However, do NOT go to a medical school in the Third World, such as the Caribbean, as you would probably never be able to practice in the U.S. or other First-World country.)

21) If you intend to go to medical school: a) plan to spend 3-6 months of 40-hour weeks studying for the MCAT (so you will score high enough on it to be admitted to medical school), b) understand you will need to do hundreds of hours performing volunteer (means “completely unpaid and highly menial”) work at a hospital or clinic, c) do not have a child or be married during or before that time (includes all of your residency), and d) if at all possible, avoid “pyramidal” residency programs (where they automatically flunk out some residents every year no matter how well they perform).

Frankly, if you have normal or above-normal need for sleep (if you commonly sleep over 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night), medical school would probably be a poor fit for you. You can also expect to essentially completely give up all your hobbies and interests for over a decade if you aspire to go to medical school, counting the time as an undergraduate where you MUST get grades along the lines of 3 As and at most ONE B, every single term, in VERY difficult subjects, to have a realistic chance of getting accepted. (Dental and vet schools are reportedly a little better with respect to admission chances, but not very much.)

22) If you go into computer science, be aware that that field’s age discrimination is nearly comparable to being a runway fashion model or being an athlete in professional team sports, e.g., severe, where many people with C.S. degrees cannot ever work in their field in regular jobs (e.g., with steady paychecks and health insurance) after their late twenties, very much unlike the sciences and engineering. This issue is worse for programmers than for networking people. You MUST get at least one internship as an undergraduate C.S. major, or you will likely never get actual programming work after graduation (just lowpaid helpdesk jobs for your entire career).

You must also be very comfortable with working alone most of the time for much or most of your career, completely away from any other people, if you are a programmer. The best paper by far on job prospects in the I.T. field is probably Norman Matloff’s “Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage” at http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/glut.html. The books “Decline and Fall of the American Programmer” and “Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer” are also useful.

Anyway, certificates of competence are rapidly replacing Computer Science degrees as a top criterion for hiring in IT, so it’s probably preferable to pursue certificates over a C.S. degree for anyone aiming at a career in IT.

23) Internships are actually VERY desirable for most college majors. If at all possible, get at least one as an undergraduate.

24) Majoring in either Interior Design or Architecture will likely result in you having essentially no income your first two years after graduation as you establish yourself professionally. (Veterinarians reportedly have some of the same problems.)

25) Nursing is much better than being a K-12 schoolteacher as a career path. (These are listed here together as both traditionally popular for women who want both a career and a family.) Nurse anesthetist, operating room nurse, nurse practitioner – there are many career opportunities out there for ambitious nurses with 4-year degrees. (Orthopedic nursing will likely kill your back if you’re in it long enough, though, and pediatric oncology will break your heart.)

Comparatively, online/computerized instruction by a few of the very best teachers will result in far fewer teaching jobs in the future that involve much more than babysitting. Plus, the teachers’ unions are getting weaker, so the days of inflated salaries for large numbers of tenured public schoolteachers are ending. (Teachers in private K-12 schools make less money, but are usually physically safer and much happier with their jobs than public teachers, and typically aren’t required to teach horrible, immoral and/or anti-American things the way public schoolteachers increasingly are so required to do in more and more states.)

Lastly, the percentage of children in the U.S. that are homeschooled by all predictions will continue to rise (my two children are going to be homeschooled), and those children result in employment for NO professional schoolteachers. (If you must be a K-12 public schoolteacher, specialize in science/math/special education, with elementary education the least desired.)

 

[MinnesotaSmith]

Still more...

26) Do not get a Ph.D. Not one in seven people who do this are glad they did so. The only possible exceptions are if ALL of these are true for you: an employer (other than a college, who pay graduate students almost nothing to live upon) or someone else other than you completely pays for it (so it does not involve ANY debt on your part); you understand you will never have a career teaching at a college or university (a horrible career path, now that university tenure-track positions are largely replaced by poorly-paid adjunct teachers with zero job security); and, preferably is in accounting, nursing, or perhaps Chem/Elect/Petrol Engineering (where there actually are perpetual shortages of native-English-speaking-Ph.Ds to fill teaching jobs).

Please read this paper written by Gary North if you have any desire to pursue a Ph.D.:

"The Ph.D. Glut Revisited":
http://archive.lewrockwell.com/north/north427.html

27) Economics rarely pays enough to justify studying it, at any level. This is now also true of the MBA degree, as very many people have gotten them in recent years, diluting its value in the job market.

28) A bachelor’s degree in Biology is really not that useful for anything beyond getting into medical/dental/vet school, and Chemistry is a better degree for that, going by admissions rates. Biology is an economically less promising major than Microbiology, which is worse than Biochemistry, which is worse yet than Biochemical Engineering/Microbial Engineering.

Chemistry often is more valued than any of those, while Chemical Engineering is much better-paying than Chemistry. A Chemistry Ph.D. once told a friend of mine that a doctorate in Chemistry had approximately the same economic potential as a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering.

29) Be aware that Field Biology/Wildlife Biology degrees tend to lead mainly to low-paid field jobs as game wardens, who get shot at by poachers and pot farm guards with regularity.

30) Forestry is not high-paying work; the saying is that it pays off partly in sunsets (scenery). Also be aware that due to decades of low budgets, housing provided to field U.S. Forest Service employees, where most new Forestry degree holders have to start, is commonly slums.

31) Something I put together years ago about career choices for women who want a family:

“A woman can be a neurosurgeon – or a mother (pick one): Age 22-23, just got a Science B.S. degree. (Most hard-science and engineering degrees take five years, not four.) Add a possible year for getting into medical school; that’s age 22-25 on entrance. 4 years to pass medical school, but many aspiring doctors have to repeat a year; age 26-30 on graduation. Add in the 7 years standard for a neurosurgery residency, but note that many residents have to repeat a year of their residency; that’s age 33 best case/ age 38 worst case when they truly begin their field.

Now, she probably has a quarter million dollars of student debt, while she’s been a poster child for deferral of gratification. Oh, sure, she’s going to work in her field a while before she tries to have a family, despite the awkward fact that 90-95% of her fertility is irretrievably behind her before she finishes her residency, having silently slipped away during all those years of arduous study (and likely no husband yet, either; when would she have found the time to meet one, or keep one?).

This is a classic example of why I note that the typical (if usually completely unintended) result of schooling beyond the bachelor’s level for women is “Master’s = not much of a family, and Doctorate = no family”. Much better planning would be for her to bear all her children during her twenties, and then go back to school in her forties, if she truly wishes to do so. As at that she may decide she prefers instead to spend time with her husband and/or grandchildren, that may well not happen, to be sure.”

Unless you already know for certain that you intend to marry and start a family by mid-20s latest (which I would applaud), I suggest you read Sylvia Anne Hewlett’s excellent book on the subject of women juggling career and family, Creating A Life. Note that the odds of a mother conceiving a child with Down’s Syndrome begins going up due to her advancing age at NINETEEN. Another related piece of information not widely known outside of fertility professionals is the life expectancy dropoff issue.

It turns out that there is a roughly even reduction in life expectancy in daughters with increasing maternal (but not paternal) age past about age 34. Conceiving at age 44 [if you even could] would knock about a decade off the life of any little ones you'd want to put in dresses and put bows in their hair. And, it's not a case of "they just die at 66 instead of 76, with everything the same before then". Rather, they'd have about a 14% reduced life expectancy and reduced vitality all through life, from the very first day you hold them in your arms. It is apparently universal for all women, can’t be tested for (other than with a calendar), and can’t be avoided (probably related to telomere shortening).

This effect likely also applies to some extent to sons as well, but this is not as well understood. Further supporting these findings is how many researchers have found about people who live really long lives (with good health and keeping their minds intact): they nearly always had very young mothers. (Health of cytoplasmic DNA, which comes exclusively from mothers and none from fathers, is apparently much of the reason for this.)

These are part of the reasons that women should try really hard to plan their reproductive lives to be done using their own ova before the genetic age of 30. (So, you may possibly want to consider spending the 20 grand or so it costs to freeze some of your ova before age 25 if you’re going to pursue a career that makes having a family at a more conventional age unlikely.)

32) Elizabeth Warren’s book The Two-Income Trap is also very useful for perspective on juggling work, finances, and family for married couples where both spouses have careers.

33) Do not go to law school, even if someone else pays for all of it. The employment prospects are just too poor, and getting steadily worse. If you ignore my advice and do go to a law school, you MUST either A) go to one of the top 5 law schools in the U.S., or B) go to one of the next 5 best ones while being be in the top 10% of your class every single semester. If your grades while at a non-top-five law school (e.g., not Harvard, Yale, etc.) for a semester are ever below that, even one time, DROP OUT before you destroy your future with debt (often in hundreds of thousands of dollars) you can never repay or discharge in bankruptcy.

Also, that field commonly coarsens people who work in it, becoming more argumentative/unpleasant/untrusting (rather like many police jobs, working for a telephone collection agency, etc.), and who really wants to long-term become ever less and less the type of person anyone wants to be around off the job (such as with friends or family)?

 

[MinnesotaSmith]

The last part...

34) Classic jokes about liberal arts college majors that have substantial truth in them:

Q: What does a liberal arts degree holder say on the job?
A: “Would you like fries with that?”

Q: What is the difference between a musician and a large pizza?
A: The pizza can feed a family of four.

Q: What do you call a young woman who just received a degree in psychology, communications, English literature, sociology, or women’s studies?
A: You say that she graduated summa *** latte. That is, all she can do on the job market is to go back to her minimum-wage counter job at Starbucks she had after high school – just four years older now, and with $80,000.00 in student loan debt she cannot discharge in bankruptcy to improve her life prospects.

Large debt (typically student loans, but also credit card debt) held by a young woman without the apparent ability to work and pay them off (includes ability to restrict her spending as well as earn a good income) in full prior to seeking to become married is a classic example of what is technically called a negative dowry, which makes her effectively unmarriageable by any man she’d look at twice as a possible husband (e.g., employed). This is a common result for the young women in America today who get liberal arts degrees from private colleges (which qualify them for almost no well-paying careers) while racking up huge student loans.

Further, lots of bragged-about previous foreign travel (such as through “Junior Year Abroad” programs many colleges offer, or taking off a year after graduation to travel since she had no job offers due to her unwise college major choice) in a young woman’s history just sounds to marriage-minded men like she’s developed expensive unnecessary tastes he’d have to pay for and/or done lots of partying (read: “had relationships with lots and lots of other men”), making her more someone at most just to date briefly rather than somehow making her more interesting or appealing to him as a potential wife. That goes triply if she still has extensive debt and/or has gotten considerably older from years of time spent on such travel with nothing real in his judgment to show for it.

Also, note that men are not generally impressed by advanced degrees/high-powered careers (even STEM ones to some extent) in prospective wives the way women are with prospective husbands having those. (He probably doesn’t want to have to be in a constant competition at home, too, the way he has to compete all day in the office.) When a man who is looking for a wife hears that a single woman intends to make partner at a law firm, become an M.D., become a senior vice president at a large corporation, etc., all he probably is hearing is that she’d never have time for him and any children they had, IF they ever even had any children together (so why marry HER?).

He’s already GOT money and a career, else he’d not be looking for a wife; she needs to have something to offer him he doesn’t have (and he can’t obtain through just dating) to make the marriage “deal” with him; it’s called “Comparative Advantage” in basic Economics class. Too, a man considering marriage already has friends who share his interests; do YOU prefer his hobbies to the hobbies you have now is a good question to ask before you can say “but as his wife, I’d be a better friend than any he has now!!”.

And, he can get affection as or more reliably outside marriage (wives tend to cut that off after just a few years of marriage, in violation of 1 Corinthians 7:1-5, so wise men aren’t motivated by that to marry anymore). A would-be wife typically has to have something to offer a man other than income from her career, companionship, or affection, or there’s no reason for him to marry her.

That’s usually one or more of the following things (cue the stererotypical offended-feminist gasp, but look at the low marriage/high divorce/low child-bearing rates of highly careerist women if you think I’m wrong here). She usually has to offer him one or more of:

A) the prospect of his genetic children she creates together with him (any children she already has by other men are NOT appealing to most marriage-minded men, rather the exact opposite) AND substantially helps him raise (doesn’t mean “starting in infancy dropped off at expensive, barely affordable but lousy daycare 50 hours a week to be raised by uneducated strangers”);

B) real help with his career or business that she doesn’t ever quit doing; or

C) just making and keeping a nice home for him. (Means “wife personally regularly doing timely housework routinely completed all the way and competent healthy tasty cooking”, NOT “spending all his money buying expensive stuff he doesn’t even really want/making craft stuff he doesn’t even like/getting lots of animals he never would have owned to all clutter up his house” or “spending a few minutes per day managing household staff he pays most or all of the wages for, while mostly spending her time while he’s at work sipping $6 lattes at Starbucks/watching cable TV/posting on Facebook”.)

Instead, a man wants to marry the kind of woman described in Proverbs 31 verses 10-30, which is not dependent upon age (we all get older) or looks (even if a woman starts out adulthood pretty, it’s guaranteed she won’t be like that forever, so she’d better have something else going for her before she hits middle age). Debi Pearl’s Christianity-based book Created To Be His Helpmeet also nicely describes such a woman, one that men want to marry, and stay married to, very eloquently, though the seventeen words of Proverbs 14:1 is a pretty good summary of how a woman can make her marriage probably last a lifetime.

Otherwise, not offering one of those, a nearly totally career-focused woman wanting to get a man with a good career to marry her is in the position of trying to sell sand to the Arabs, ice to the Eskimos, and seawater to people who live on small islands in the Pacific, e.g., a tough sale to make. (The only men who’d consider it are ones who don’t make nearly as much money as her, and not many women will generally marry a man who likely will always make way less money than she does, such as how women M.D.s rarely marry male nurses or schoolteachers; only you know if you are atypical this way.)


I would sum up that college and the college-age period in your life are extremely valuable opportunities for you that you should not use for subjects that judged by job prospects are really more hobby topics than good choices to focus on studying with a career in mind. If you’re genuinely interested in what I call a “foo-foo” (negligible job prospects) field, just go to the library in your spare time, read all you want about the subject, not having to spend a dime on this interest, and preserve your having a future (by avoiding wasting years of your precious life or racking up huge unpayable debts). There are tens of thousands of parking lot attendants and restaurant waitresses in the U.S. right now who have college degrees, and I sincerely hope you will not pursue a college major that will make you likely to become one of them.

 

[Dreamer]

I'd get rid of the "non-white" part about so and so's grandkids.

Your expectations of her also seem to be mixed. you tell her stem jobs are the only way to go, but that she won't find a good husband if she goes stem. I agree with many of your comments, but not all, and I had some difficulty reading through it without feeling defensive.

You also focus on mass available jobs, rather than make the concession that she can be world class at a marketable skill and profession and write her own ticket.

I would have more comments, but alas I have housework to do and I shouldn't be a bad wife sitting on TB2K when there is laundry to be done and floors to be scrubbed. If hubby wasn't off using his PhD to provide well for us, I would also need to be ready to be available for him sexually and be sure that I do enough of the garden work that he has the energy to accept my invitation.

If it was a weekday, I might better spend my time talking to one of my sorority sisters about a banking deal to take one of their Vc companies public. Many of them took their engineering degrees into the business world, and benefited from their MBA programs.

I would suggest that you lighten up the letter substantially and offer to make yourself available as a sounding board and guidance as she thinks through her choices. The MOST important thing you can pass to her is a true understanding of opportunity cost and the idea of understanding which choices expand or contract her options through life. She needs to understand exactly HOW something will help her career or life in particular before pursuing it. To really succeed she needs to write her own playbook. You can help her dramatically with this information about why many "conventional success" things are far from guaranteed success. That would be a tremendous help for her and do amazing good with all of your knowledge.

Now, to the laundry and floors. For real. They need to be done.

 

[MinnesotaSmith]

I'd get rid of the "non-white" part about so and so's grandkids.

Your expectations of her also seem to be mixed. you tell her stem jobs are the only way to go, but that she won't find a good husband if she goes stem. I agree with many of your comments, but not all, and I had some difficulty reading through it without feeling defensive.

You also focus on mass available jobs, rather than make the concession that she can be world class at a marketable skill and profession and write her own ticket.

I would have more comments, but alas I have housework to do and I shouldn't be a bad wife sitting on TB2K when there is laundry to be done and floors to be scrubbed. If hubby wasn't off using his PhD to provide well for us, I would also need to be ready to be available for him sexually and be sure that I do enough of the garden work that he has the energy to accept my invitation.

If it was a weekday, I might better spend my time talking to one of my sorority sisters about a banking deal to take one of their Vc companies public. Many of them took their engineering degrees into the business world, and benefited from their MBA programs.

I would suggest that you lighten up the letter substantially and offer to make yourself available as a sounding board and guidance as she thinks through her choices. The MOST important thing you can pass to her is a true understanding of opportunity cost and the idea of understanding which choices expand or contract her options through life. She needs to understand exactly HOW something will help her career or life in particular before pursuing it. To really succeed she needs to write her own playbook. You can help her dramatically with this information about why many "conventional success" things are far from guaranteed success. That would be a tremendous help for her and do amazing good with all of your knowledge.

Now, to the laundry and floors. For real. They need to be done.

Thank you for taking the time to comment here, Dreamer.

Responding to part of your post:

1) A Ph.D. used to often be a good investment of time and money, as your husband is apparently an example. Now, though, it's usually a nuts decision to pursue, one that blatantly flunks cost/benefit assessment.

2) Re advising her to pursue STEM: I want her to understand that it won't much if at all help her marry well, that it mainly is useful for her only to the extent she is careerist. Too many young women get advanced degrees and through thinking that it impresses men who are potential husbands, and her hypergamy goes off the chart (an aging "6" in her prime but past it now so is only a declining 4.5 or 5.0 thinks it entitles her to at least an "8" husband, so she never is willing to marry any man who'd have her, so she lives out her life unmarried and childless when she didn't want that result, that sort of thing).

3) Re the "nonwhite" adjective on her distant relative: aside from being accurate, she has become quite racist against Indians and other South Asians through her experiences having to deal with them in her high school, aside from the near-universal pathologies she's seen from the black students there, and the less she has to do with them the rest of her life, the happier she'll be.

 

[moldy]

That's an incredibly long letter. I hope she reads it. I think you phrased many things well and you did point out her most important choice is work or 'home'. That is absolutely true. However, you know the saying that men (or women) plan and God laughs. I've been a riot for Him I'm sure. We plan and life happens - sometimes things work out the way we plan; most of the time not.

Nursing is a great career - I would advise a BSN. It's possible, but difficult to get a job as a new nurse with just an ADN. MSN is necessary for management (gag!) or teaching (pays lower than floor nursing). Find a great company to start with - HCA, Kaiser, and Banner are great. they help with tuition costs and work hard to retain their staff. Big plus! Orthopedic nursing will not kill your back anymore than any other type. Mechanical lifts are standard in most facilities (including nursing homes) and are mandated in use. Any kind of nursing can break your heart - but there is a high burnout rate with oncology. I work in a small town ER, and it's tough seeing my friends and neighbors -- especially when there is a death. OTOH, nursing is a great privilege. To hold a person's hand to comfort them, to make their passage thru death easier is a gift that not many get. CRNA and NPs do make quite a bit more - otherwise it is where you work (state or facility) that makes the biggest difference in salary. Additional degrees only help with getting a job (see above); they do not increase your salary as a floor nurse. Out here, I could make 10% more if I worked in a nursing home.

 

[TerryK]

I wonder what advice the author would have given to a male? Would it be the same?
Times have changed. Everyone needs a valid career that pays well that will allow them to be self supporting and independent.

I do agree with this part, pretty much for almost everyone:
More on the Aaron Clarey book: It advises that a person should pursue a STEM (Science/Technology/ Engineering/Medical) degree if they attend college, or learn a skilled trade (electrician, plumber, welder, millwright, HVAC, etc.) if they do not. I basically agree. The principles to keep in mind about college major choice are:
1) Go to school to learn about a field in which people will pay you for working.

 

[MinnesotaSmith]

No, TerryK, a few things would be different...

I wonder what advice the author would have given to a male? Would it be the same?
Times have changed. Everyone needs a valid career that pays well that will allow them to be self supporting and independent.

As I told my wife one time when she was openly musing about the grass possibly being greener, I was her 401K (and a better one than she could get by herself, given the substantial difference between our job prospects).

Sure, people of both sexes can go careerist to the extent they completely forgo the very idea of family. However, men's biology is very different, so a 40-YO man still very likely has good options for having a substantial family (no need for 200,000.00 in payments to a fertility clinic to get ONE LD/partly-deaf limping child). A 40-YO woman who's never had a child and has no husband, not so much. Plus, men are judged much more on their economics than women are judged by men (other than having avoided debt/not being overspenders), so there's much more ROI WRT marriage for men pursuing demanding degrees/careers than there is for women.

 

[TerryK]

My wife in our over 40 years of marriage has never worked outside the home either, but I am a realist.
Times have changed and many, many marriages end in divorce and society ends up with a single mom with no marketable skills, with kids and a husband being stuck with paying full child support until the child becomes an adult.
Wouldn't it be better if both parents could work at good career type jobs and make a descent living so both could continue somewhat normally with their lives?
But to each his own I guess.

And I agree that not everyone needs to go to college. There are many trades that pay relatively well. I also agree that if you are going to make the now tremendous sacrifice of paying for college, you should at least get a degree that had good continual and well paying job prospects.

 

[MinnesotaSmith]

No, Terry...

My wife in our over 40 years of marriage has never worked outside the home either, but I am a realist.
Times have changed and many, many marriages end in divorce and society ends up with a single mom, with kids and a husband being stuck with paying full child support until the child becomes an adult.
Wouldn't it be better if both parents could work at good career type jobs and make a descent living so both could continue somewhat normally with their lives?
But to each his own I guess.

Careerist wives are more likely on average to cheat on their husbands, cuckold them, frivorce them, and bear fewer children (and those at later ages, when her ova make for less healthy children). Given that only having a family is to many men now remotely worth the risk of marriage (they perceive with some accuracy that everything else they can get outside it), why wouldn't a careerist woman end up being seen as a second-rate choice to a man seeking a wife?

BTW, the fact that your wife was SAH gave your marriage a better chance of surviving. (I'm glad it did).

FYI, a divorced woman with children is a divorced mother, not a single mother. The latter is one has children neither conceived nor born within marriage, also called bastards.

 

[Scotto]

A lot I agree with in the letter, some I don't. But it's not my letter to my niece - it's yours.

With the way the country and the economy is headed, I'd be leery of pushing or advising anyone towards the college lie that so many young people have swallowed and now have massive student loan debt or no jobs. All colleges and universities care about are tuition and other fees - and not preparing our young people for the workplace or job environment like days gone by.

My own niece recently got a degree, she's smart, young, pretty, and and she can't find a job and angrily admitted to us "I have a degree and I don't know shit!" She sees now (even though it's too late) that she was sold a bill of goods, and wasted 4 years of her life to now do nothing.

But in today's world that holds up money over family and values, this is very sad.

But I think it's great that you took the time to write this letter to her, if more people thought like you do, this world would be a better place.

 

[moldy]

I have very briefly thought about returning to school for my bachelors. However, when papers are downgraded for using "obamacare' as a racist term, and you are required to attend class discussions for part of your grade - I think not. Not that I didn't have class discussions with my peers - it was usually over a beer after a big test - I don't really want to pay for that privilege or get a grade on only my opinions.

 

[MinnesotaSmith]

A lot I agree with in the letter, some I don't. But it's not my letter to my niece - it's yours.

With the way the country and the economy is headed, I'd be leery of pushing or advising anyone towards the college lie that so many young people have swallowed and now have massive student loan debt or no jobs. All colleges and universities care about are tuition and other fees - and not preparing our young people for the workplace or job environment like days gone by.

My own niece recently got a degree, she's smart, young, pretty, and and she can't find a job and angrily admitted to us "I have a degree and I don't know shit!" She sees now (even though it's too late) that she was sold a bill of goods, and wasted 4 years of her life to now do nothing.

But in today's world that holds up money over family and values, this is very sad.

But I think it's great that you took the time to write this letter to her, if more people thought like you do, this world would be a better place.

Thank you for your response, Scotto.

You saw the list of college majors that I would advise no one to major in for the forseeable future. Those would cut out close to 90% of college student matriculations currently. I also agree that just as many majors should have almost no one in them, the majority of current (and recent) students being in college in any major is a mistake.

What did you most disagree with in my letter to my niece?

 

[Mr. Inspector]

Youngest daughter graduated from a very good (old collage) with a degree in Sociology. High grades . Wow. Had to go to another collage for extra classes in the sciences, so she could apply to Medical school. She got in. Just don't ask about the loans she had to get .

 

[Scotto]

Thank you for your response, Scotto.

What did you most disagree with in my letter to my niece?

Not much, mostly just the "having to go to college" part for the time being. My niece should have taken a little time and decided what she wanted to do, rather than just "go to college for a degree." For instance, when she walks now for exercise, she takes a book with her to identify trees and such. She stated; "Why didn't I study this?" "This is so much more interesting and I could have had a forestry career or something." She was rushed and made quick choices, that she wasn't ready or mature enough to make at the time she enrolled.

However, the following you posted, I could not have agreed more, you are spot on;

11) Surefire simple way to have more time every day to get things done while in college: do not own, watch, or have in your dwelling a television set the entire time you are in college (and leave any video games with your parents while you’re at it).

12) Go most days without going on social media even one time (Facebook, Google Plus, Myspace, Yahoo Messenger, Flicker, posting karoke on Youtube, all that sort of thing). As a college student, you’ve got other things to do than look at pictures of cute kittens or post pictures or videos of your lunch, new clothes/shoes, hobby stuff, anything about a musical group you like, or your newest boyfriend.

13) Do NOT join a sorority or anything similar. You haven’t the time if majoring in anything serious, and if you aren’t in a major requiring serious focus to the point you have the free time available for being in a sorority, either change your major or DROP OUT and don’t waste any more money or time on being in college studing something likely economically pointless.

 

[Masterchief117]

Its a good letter and you make good points but the length of it. Do you think she'll read it? Is her attention span more than the majority of her peers? If hers is not, then she'll maybe read the first paragraph, look at the number of pages and say "I ain't reading all of this!" and will do what she wants to do. I give you a big "A+" for content and effort in helping.

 

[SusanKaye-ND]

I appreciate the fact that you took the time to write to your niece, and I read your entire post. However, when you called the child of a single parent a "bastard", I had to respond. That means if you met my 22 year old son, you'd call him a bastard. And you have that right. I was 21 when I had him, his father was 27. We were never married and his dad died in a car accident at the age of 32. I was 25. Our son was 3. So our son had NO choice in his path. Our son is 22, in the military since he was 17, a diesel mechanic. Plus he works full time in construction and makes his own way. I taught him to respect others, that he'll meet people in his life that he may not agree with, but to still be a gentleman and help out in times of need. If I introduced you to my son, would you call him a bastard? That's your choice.!i hope you wouldn't, but it's still your choice. If I were you, I would tell my niece this.... You will get your heart broken in life. Things and people you believe in will turn out to be untrue. You cannot (as much as you want) depend on anyone else to make you happy. You have to find your own way, as hard as it is.

Please don't use the word "bastard" so easily until you have walked in my shoes (which will never happen).

 

[MinnesotaSmith]

SusanKaye, thank you for taking the time to read my entire letter.

Out of curiosity, how is it that your son is both in the military AND works FT in construction? Is he in the Reserves or National Guard?

Re your distaste for the term denoting your son's personal history: words have a precise meaning, and without honest accuracy, useful communication is impossible, is all I wish to say on that.

Getting one's heart broken... Large subject there. I wish I could tell my niece about how the top 5-10% of men (the "alphas", the only ones she will likely ever find herself attracted to) are not the ones who would marry her and do right by her. Sadly, the latter men will be invisible to her until she becomes invisible to the alphas, and then likely only to make use of them, likely being unable to ever come to feel even sympathy for them (let alone love or lust). So, as a near-certain future Alpha widow (and probable Carousel rider), her choices for marriage eventually will likely be between a man whose touch makes her skin crawl, or growing old alone with 20 cats. It took me decades of adulthood to come to understand that; NWIH will she understand that pre-Wall.

 

[MinnesotaSmith]

Its a good letter and you make good points but the length of it. Do you think she'll read it? Is her attention span more than the majority of her peers? If hers is not, then she'll maybe read the first paragraph, look at the number of pages and say "I ain't reading all of this!" and will do what she wants to do. I give you a big "A+" for content and effort in helping.

Thank you for recognizing the effort my letter took, Masterchief.

Re my niece having the attention span to read it all the way through even once, your pessimism is quite likely appropriate. All I really hope for is that she does a quick scan (for information about her preferred major(s)), and hangs onto the letter long enough to have it as a resource when she inevitably falls on her butt. (She actually thinks that music could be a wise career choice, while she gets all the music she listens to for free off the Internet.)

 

[SusanKaye-ND]

He is in the National Guard. So his military duty is not full-time.

So I'm just supposed to call him a bastard? Really? You call him what you deem is right. At the the end of the day, he's my son. Sometimes people are handed things in life that aren't specifically outlined in the Bible, or anywhere else. You can judge and name-call all you want. I taught him empathy. And like I said, you could walk a mile or 2 in my shoes. But that won't happen. You seem too set in your ways to ever see the way someone else had to walk.

 

[SusanKaye-ND]

You didn't answer my question. If you met my son, would you call him a bastard? We live in ND, you're in MN? I'll make the drive.

 

[MinnesotaSmith]

You didn't answer my question. If you met my son, would you call him a bastard? We live in ND, you're in MN? I'll make the drive.

Susan, what I write isn't all about you. I don't know your son, and cannot imagine I will ever meet him, so your wondering what I would "call" him if hypothetically he and I were to meet is a moot question. (I'd probably ask him by which name he preferred to be called, and leave it at that.) Your concern with this seems akin to someone getting mad that I mentioned that their daughter or niece that has had 5 cohabitating relationships would traditionally qualify as promiscuous, say. (I don't cause things to be what they are; I just notice them.) Feel free to argue that you get a Mulligan on a clear dictionary term if you wish. I am trying to focus on larger issues with this thread, generalizing to large numbers of people where I can do so defensibly.

Oh, and I haven't lived in MN since the end of 2003. I live in NW Florida, but am currently on an oil rig a couple of hours SW of San Antonio, TX, if you are curious. I spent most of last year in northwest ND, but that is not likely to recur until the price of oil rises enough to restore drilling programs there, where break-even requires a higher oil price than in west TX, that my then-employer can hire me back.

 

[SusanKaye-ND]

Ok, i guess you win. You can say whatever you want. I will never, in heart my heart of hearts, call my son a bastard. And if you are "holier than though"..... Okay. You win. You speak out of both sides of your mouth

 

[Ravekid]

All the stuff you wrote is good, but it is way too much information for a young person to process, especially someone you say you don't see all too often. If you saw her a lot, I would more likely suggest that instead of a letter, have a conversation during a hike and picnic, or something along those lines. The problem with young people and college today is that many view it as all or nothing. They either think they have to do the traditional get it done in 4 or 5 years and "grow up" or that if they skip out for a year, maybe two, there is no going back.

Society still paints this picture of a person going away to college, and they either party it up or settle down relationship wise, then they all "grow up" and start taking everything seriously: Career, personal finance, relationships, etc.. There have been many changes though since this process really came about over the decades. Careers can and do change, they might require moving to unfamiliar areas. It is hard for young people to really save much anymore because interest rates are horrible, the stock market is at an all time high, and they will have much larger student loan debts than previous generations. Relationships are thus affected by the two previous issues, as well as a society where more and more people are telling people they shouldn't settle, they should "have fun", etc.. Young people are lucky if they find another person willing to commit and who will accept them for a spouse if you ask me. Many young people today aren't married, and plenty more married in their 20s and gave it a try but were divorced within just a few years. Also, I believe there is a difference between careerist and holding down a job. A young woman can easily get a decent job, but that doesn't mean it is a career. I think that any spouse who puts a lot into their career has to be careful when it comes to their family. A person who travels a lot could get easily tempted, especially if they are quick to drink a few drinks at the hotel bar. Likewise, a spouse who is constantly alone, be it male or female, might be tempted for nothing more than companionship.

I guess I will end by saying that I believe the college experience of leaving the nest and finding a path is good for young people. However, conscious decisions need to be made concerning what type of study one choices (something that will allow for a career where the person wants to work), the type of intimate relationships one engages in, the amount of partying that one chooses to engage in, etc..

 

[MinnesotaSmith]

Thank you for reading my letter, Ravekid.

I figure that this is my one shot anytime soon to get any useful life information across to this kid. Her parents have brains that work okay professionally, but are damaged enough by solipsism/political correctness/simple short-sighted selfishness that they have rejected any attempts on my part to tell her anything along the lines of "what feels good now may not be the best choice". (She is a legal adult now, and I think that gives her more right to receive and read what she chooses.)

About your thought that people who travel for work are equally at risk of marriage-threatening infidelity: I travel for my work, yes, but I value my children above what any fling could net me. (That doesn't even get into commandments in my religious faith, and that I gave my word.) Agreed that others aren't so self-restricting, and that women (who usually get the kids in divorce even if video of them getting a whole sports team running a train on them is played in the divorce court) don't have the fear of their immorality costing them their children as a fidelity motivator.

Re your comment that low interest rates/crummy-performing stocks make saving money impossible, I disagree. To INVEST, perhaps, but not to save. If someone earns 1.0, but only spends 0.7, eventually they have some savings, yes, even if they have no place to invest it so it can grow. I think she could buy some PMs and do okay as an investment, or at least probably not losing value, but that's beyond a young person who doesn't even understand what I said about music's likely future as a potential career for her. Trying to get across to her that even a little bit of carousel riding will likely make her unable to ever get and stay happily-married would probably be impossible, so I'm not even going to try. One does what one can.

 

[Scotto]

Ok, i guess you win. You can say whatever you want. I will never, in heart my heart of hearts, call my son a bastard. And if you are "holier than though"..... Okay. You win. You speak out of both sides of your mouth

Good lord. Seek help.

 

[ainitfunny]

It is good advice, very good. The problem is getting a young person to spend more than two minutes reading, considering or allowing it to influence the decisions and attitudes that have been ALREADY been incrementally, subconsciously made under the OTHER long term influences (teachers, peer pressure, subliminal advertising and government & media "opinion manufacturing" power). IT IS ALL BUT IMPOSSIBLE for any useful counterweight to those long term, inimical influences to be made in a one time deluge of even the best advice.

Your influence would have had a MUCH better chance of success had it been proffered in smaller bites over a long term, trusted, respected relationship. You of course are aware how well received most unsolicited advice from virtual strangers is regarded.

Your niece would be MUCH more likely to contemplate the depths of your wise advice IF SHE READ IT ON HER OWN IN A MAGAZINE ARTICLE. Try to get it published somewhere (first EDIT IT DOWN BY AT LEAST HALF!) Not only will you be much more likely to influence HER, but may help many women make decisions that lead them into happier lives.

 

[MinnesotaSmith]

It is good advice, very good. The problem is getting a young person to spend more than two minutes reading, considering or allowing it to influence the decisions and attitudes that have been ALREADY been incrementally, subconsciously made under the OTHER long term influences (teachers, peer pressure, subliminal advertising and government & media "opinion manufacturing" power).

Agreed re the attention span issue, AIF. The fact that it's FOR her, and ABOUT her, is the only reason I have hope she might get all the way through it. (My mother drove to her town for her graduation, and the girl was so snarky, even disrespectful, to her mother, that my mother refrained from giving her her cash graduation present at this time.)

Thank you very much that you think it is on a level to merit further spreading around, even publication. Ideas on that are very welcome.

 

[MinnesotaSmith]

xxx

 

[SageRock]

I hope that your letter does reach your niece and that she finds some value in it.

In looking back on that period of life, two things seem essential:

- Know thyself (aptitudes and values)
- Ignore the cultural hype

For women considering childbearing, I think that age 25-30 is probably ideal for starting a family. By that time, a young woman has enough self-knowledge and career development to be a good parent and participate in providing a stable home environment to raise children. It is also young enough to have good reproductive odds. Note that men over the age of 40 are more likely to father autistic children, and so men have a limited time as well, although the drop-off is less obvious.

To have a child is to open oneself to a whole universe of possibilities, both good and bad. I think that anyone considering parenthood should only do so if they so strongly desire to become a parent that they are prepared to take whatever God sends them, no matter what. Also, in these times, home schooling or private school seem like the only sane options.

The next ten years are likely to be very tumultuous and completely different from the world that your niece has experienced while growing up. The adult world that she saw around her while growing up will not be the world that she will inhabit as an adult herself. It will be a world that none of us has known. A strong spiritual connection is something that will stand everyone in good stead.

 

[niceguy]

Large subject there. I wish I could tell my niece about how the top 5-10% of men (the "alphas", the only ones she will likely ever find herself attracted to) are not the ones who would marry her and do right by her.

I'd put this near the start. Young women need the red pill almost as much as young men, if they are to avoid being alpha widows with wine and cats and nothing else.

Very near the start should be a very emphatic destruction of the feminist myth of "having it all". (I know it's in there and it's good as far asit goes, but I think it needs to be very near the start and more emphatic.) It is physically impossible to be working at building a strong career at the office (in office politics, presence and overtime will matter) *and* simultaneously be at home with your children, seeing their first steps, hearing their first word, teaching them letters and numbers, (and in the best case home schooling them).

It is stunning how many really bright women don't know this in advance. They buy into this "having it all" myth, then don't understand why they feel so horribly depressed hearing about their children's milestones *from others* - or not being able to make partner in the law firm.

 

[ainitfunny]

One common misconception popular among the "two career" households is that REMOTELY VIEWING your child's activity will give you a sense of closeness and involvement in their childhood experiences.

BUT THAT IS A FALSE IDEA. YOU may feel closer to your child, remotely watching someone else raise them, BUT THEY DEVELOP NO SIMILAR ""CLOSENESS" TO YOU!! To them, you are still gone, unavailable. You "relationship" grows only in YOUR mind, not your child's. It is not much different than feeling close to and "knowing" some TV celebrity that you watch every day. YOU may almost sense a relationship to them, BUT THEY DON'T KNOW YOU FROM ADAM, it is a "virtual", a false reality, existing only in your mind. When they get older they may even resent your having enjoyed "peeping" on them while they enjoyed no similar experience or reassurance of your "virtual" presence.
.

 

[Michiana MaJo]

Very good advice, MS.

Interestingly, what really struck me was the statement that children of women over 34 will probably not live as long as if they were born to a younger woman! I've never read that, before...has anyone, here, ever seen that info or know it to be true?

 

[ainitfunny]

Very good advice, MS.

Interestingly, what really struck me was the statement that children of women over 34 will probably not live as long as if they were born to a younger woman! I've never read that, before...has anyone, here, ever seen that info or know it to be true?

My mom's side of the family a lot of those 18 children (who survived childhood) lived into their 80's and 90s. My mom, the last baby of the family only lived to 79. Anecdotal but true.

 

[MinnesotaSmith]

Very good advice, MS.

Interestingly, what really struck me was the statement that children of women over 34 will probably not live as long as if they were born to a younger woman! I've never read that, before...has anyone, here, ever seen that info or know it to be true?

I sadly and regrettably lost the link to the article discussing that years ago, MM. However, it was specifically confirmed for me by our fertility doctor (who was amazed that anyone outside the fertility/genetics professions knew about it).

 

[MinnesotaSmith]

For women considering childbearing, I think that age 25-30 is probably ideal for starting a family. By that time, a young woman has enough self-knowledge and career development to be a good parent and participate in providing a stable home environment to raise children.

On average, a woman's fertility is already declining when she passes age 27. It's the first big "inflection point" (for those of you who took Calculus) in a woman's fertility curve, graphed over the part (less than half) of her life she's at all fertile, with about age 33 being the next one.

The "self-knowledge" in general and "career development" in particular you mentioned can come from the father, while a young wife who is a new mother finishes emotionally maturing. Anyway, there's nothing like having a child to make a lot of women (men, too, but you were talking about women) grow up the rest of the way really fast.

 

[MinnesotaSmith]

One common misconception popular among the "two career" households is that REMOTELY VIEWING your child's activity will give you a sense of closeness and involvement in their childhood experiences.

BUT THAT IS A FALSE IDEA. YOU may feel closer to your child, remotely watching someone else raise them, BUT THEY DEVELOP NO SIMILAR ""CLOSENESS" TO YOU!! To them, you are still gone, unavailable. You "relationship" grows only in YOUR mind, not your child's. It is not much different than feeling close to and "knowing" some TV celebrity that you watch every day. YOU may almost sense a relationship to them, BUT THEY DON'T KNOW YOU FROM ADAM, it is a "virtual", a false reality, existing only in your mind. When they get older they may even resent your having enjoyed "peeping" on them while they enjoyed no similar experience or reassurance of your "virtual" presence.
.

This is genius, AIF. I will remember this to retort with, whenever in the future I hear some careerist mother say that a webcam can replace a mother. (Means mothers are pretty unimportant, if she were right, way less important than I thought they were, despite my call for would-be UMC fathers to go egg donor/gestational surrogate and eschew a regular mother for their kids to preclude frivorce orphaning them.)

 

[Haybails]

Have to be honest . . . I just skimmed through this. But, this little nugget, here, caught my eye. And I'll politely disagree with it. I'm approaching my late 40s and still happily programming away. I have held positions for 6 different employers . . . but, I've made each job change and my age never came up.

As far as working alone, nothing could be further from the truth. I was programming via an "agile" methodology long before the label became the buzz-word . . . which means I have PLENTY of contact and interaction away from my desk.


HB

22) If you go into computer science, be aware that that field’s age discrimination is nearly comparable to being a runway fashion model or being an athlete in professional team sports, e.g., severe, where many people with C.S. degrees cannot ever work in their field in regular jobs (e.g., with steady paychecks and health insurance) after their late twenties, very much unlike the sciences and engineering. This issue is worse for programmers than for networking people. You MUST get at least one internship as an undergraduate C.S. major, or you will likely never get actual programming work after graduation (just lowpaid helpdesk jobs for your entire career).

You must also be very comfortable with working alone most of the time for much or most of your career, completely away from any other people, if you are a programmer.

 

[MinnesotaSmith]

Haybails, two questions...

Have to be honest . . . I just skimmed through this. But, this little nugget, here, caught my eye. And I'll politely disagree with it. I'm approaching my late 40s and still happily programming away. I have held positions for 6 different employers . . . but, I've made each job change and my age never came up.

As far as working alone, nothing could be further from the truth. I was programming via an "agile" methodology long before the label became the buzz-word . . . which means I have PLENTY of contact and interaction away from my desk.


HB

1) Your employer uses Extreme Programming, then?

2) Have you ever read any of Norman Matloff's writings? I reference him in the OPs. He's a C.S. professor at UC-Davis (wife a software engineer) whose main piece is a frequently-updated paper originally presented to a U.S. Senate subcommittee.

3) Not a question, but a comment here; many people note that the work environment is the primary reason the number of women programming for a living in the U.S. is low, and actually falling.