Forum Index
»
Off-Topic
Please stop assuming women with lower salaries are un- or under-educated
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
Sometimes things don't happen as you plan. I didn't specifically plan to be in DC, I didn't know back in Ohio when I was getting my degrees how much childcare would cost ten years down the road, I didn't know I'd have twins, I didn't know my husband's promised promotion wouldn't come through. I get what you're saying, and I think people do the best they can, but it's just not always as easy as you suggest. |
Anonymous
I work, and make enough to justify the cost of childcare, but compared to many that seem to post on this board I don't make much. I make about 70k and since I work 35 hours, about 10% less than that. I certainly didn't factor in the cost of childcare when I decided to earn a grad degree and go into the field of public health. In my 20s I wasn't sure I even wanted kids, and with friends having fertility problems, knew it wasn't a guarantee. My child is two and we hope to space our next child 3-4 years apart, but if I had two under two I wouldn't be able to afford to work. I also didn't dream that we would still be in this expensive area when we had kids, but here we are. Even though it doesn't apply to me, it doesn't shock me that there are plenty of educated women who went into careers that don't leave much left over after childcare in this area. |
Anonymous
So we should do away with schools, social agencies, libraries, museums, government, criminal prosecution, and all other lower-paying professions, and everyone in the world should become a corporate lawyer or investment banker and let their children run amok because there are no schools? Or should we just prohibit people under a certain income level from having children? |
Anonymous
Actually I left the work force b/c my youngest child has special needs and the cost of childcare for her plus all of her therapy (which is a lot of out of pocket expenses) was too expensive. None of the daycare centers I called and visited would take her. My DH makes about $75K (he also has a Master's degree) and we are now in debt. I would love to still be teaching but sometimes life hands you a different set of circumstances. I now tutor out of my home when my husband is around on the weekends to make extra money. The smugness of some of the posters on this board is incredible. I hope nobody in your family gets sick, hurt or dies and leaves you to deal with everything on your own. Nobody thinks their child will be born needing 24/7 care for the rest of their lives but it happens. |
Anonymous
PP, it's perhaps practical but nevertheless fundamentally messed up to consider education to serve the purpose of career-building rather than as a benefit for its own sake. As an aside, this is why I think more professionally-focused courses of "education" shouldn't carry bragging/ bludgeoning with bragging rights. If a lawyer can leave practice and consider her "education" wasted, it was in fact more job training than education. |
Anonymous
|
To 17:02 - why? What's the point of SAH for 7 years (the amount of time from when I became a parent until my youngest was in full time school)? I would have just lost marketability. And my kids, who would never have experienced daycare at all would have to adjust to 10 hours away from both parents.
And I didn't start having kids until my mid 30s. 35 to 42 is kind of a crucial period to be in the working world for some careers. |
Anonymous
| To 18:04 - you're basically doing pro bono social work, given the salary you're probably making. It's a spectrum. |
Anonymous
| To 18:12 - you should plan for things not going according to plan, and have a backup plan. |
Anonymous
| To 20:20 - let other people go into those occupations. On a macro level, we of course need people in those positions. Just let them be filled by other people. |
Anonymous
|
To 23:13 - of course law school is vocational training.
Who can afford the luxury of a couple hundred thousand dollars just to get educated? |
Anonymous
Oh dear. Pearls before swine, I suppose. In that case, count yourself as a lot less educated than many women with bona fide graduate educations who may earn far less money, even after having spent a comparable amount. |
Anonymous
Thanks for your concern but we are doing fine. Planning is one thing. Making all your decisions on fear and what ifs is a shitty way to live IMO. Not for me. We both work and do fine, I was just saying I could see why someone would go into teaching or social work or public service and have kids and realize it's not worth it. Anyone who can't see that has a really limited view of the world. |
Anonymous
Agreed. Plus you could easily spend so much time planning for what-ifs that you never actually move. |
Anonymous
|
to 14:43
"I was just saying I could see why someone would go into teaching or social work or public service and have kids and realize it's not worth it." Meaning that they didn't realize it would be worth it to continue to work after having kids if they were in one of those occupations? I realize it right now and I'm not even in any of those occupations. |
Anonymous
This is either tongue-in-cheek, or profoundly stupid. Let's talk about teachers. Only trust-fund babies should go into teaching? Teachers should be required to remain childless to keep their jobs, like stewardesses used to be? Or perhaps we shouldn't have schools at all in high cost-of-living areas? All the schools (so all the teachers) should be in semi-rural parts of the country, and those of us who can afford to live in expensive areas will just ship our kids off to central PA when our FMLA expires. All so that you don't have to think about the uncomfortable reality that socially critical professions such as teaching don't pay a locally-reasonable salary. Because if you thought about it, you might have to DO something about it, like quit bitching about taxes and levies and whatnot, and oh my no... that won't do. |