Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, well, I'll just be candid: I'd be pissed if I shelled out a small fortune for my kid's education and they decide to stay home and be a housewife/husband. And don't give me all this crap about how a great education makes for a better mom; you don't need THAT great an education to raise children well. Seriously.

Just let them know beforehand that your tuition payments are 100% conditional on them working outside the home and everything that entails. If my parents offered me tuition money contingent upon me doing what they wanted me to do as an adult, I hope I'd have the good sense to say "no thanks."

What that PP needs is a legally binding contract with her kids so that she can recover the tuition and damages if they fail to make her tuition payments worthwhile in her view by working outside the house. Oops -- children by law can't enter into contracts because they are not deemed to have the necessary judgment. Too bad.

Some of you PP’s are being snarky, but it is sort of a legitimate point. If you got scholarships and took out loans to finance your own education, it is easy to be guilt-free. But I will admit that consideration for my parents’ sacrifices did shape the way I viewed my professional options. I did not go Ivy, but I attended undergrad at Stanford and have a graduate degree from U of Chicago. Honestly, my parents probably would not have cared much had I decided to be a SAHM raising their grandchildren. But in my own mind, I KNOW the sacrifices they made and the things they did not do for themselves so that I could attend Stanford. I did not feel I was wasting my talent, I felt I would be wasting their money. Truth be told, I could have gone to Big State U at a third of the cost and been just as effective a SAHM. And that is a legitimate feeling.

Actually, there's life beyond work and home ... it's called your community. Many of the best-educated SAHMs I know make an important contribution to the community through volunteer work, especially once their kids are little older.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SAHMs who have had the privilege of elite educations and degrees are contributing to society if they raise their children well (an Ivy degree does not mean you're going to be a great mom), BUT not as much as those who manage to raise their children well and have a positive influence in the workforce. The difference between the two groups becomes more noticeable as we age and enter our professional "primes" in our 50s and 60s.

You propose too simple a calculus. First, working in the workforce does not autmatically make one a "positive influence in the workforce." Second, even is on has a "positive inlfuence in the workforce," one can have a negative net influence on the lives of others. You sound like the type of person who subscribes to the false idea that having a high-status or high-earnings career ias the ultimate measure of a life. No, the ultimate measure is being a good person, and by being good one can have a positive influence in a variety of areas of life and, one hopes, a positive influence on the lives of others.

1) Being a SAHM doesn't mean that one will have a positive influence on your family members.
2) Being a WOTHM doesn't mean that one will have a positive influence on family members or the workforce.

BUT

A) Assuming that both SAHM and WOTHMs can be good moms and exert positive influences (which are not zero-sum), it is true that
B) A WOTHM may exert a positive influence in the workforce (and will likely have more power having been at her career for 20-30 years+), whereas it is clear that a SAHM will never have that influence in the workforce.

*NOTHING was said to correlate high status and high income to positive influence; although it is very clear that seniority matters in the workforce and that seniority will often bring higher pay and status. Also, there are many areas of the workforce that do not have high status or pay, but are influential nonetheless: education (childhood, secondary, and higher), the public sector/govt, not-for-profits/NGOs.

Anonymous wrote:SAHMs who have had the privilege of elite educations and degrees are contributing to society if they raise their children well (an Ivy degree does not mean you're going to be a great mom), BUT not as much as those who manage to raise their children well and have a positive influence in the workforce. The difference between the two groups becomes more noticeable as we age and enter our professional "primes" in our 50s and 60s.

You propose too simple a calculus. First, working in the workforce does not autmatically make one a "positive influence in the workforce." Second, even is on has a "positive inlfuence in the workforce," one can have a negative net influence on the lives of others. You sound like the type of person who subscribes to the false idea that having a high-status or high-earnings career ias the ultimate measure of a life. No, the ultimate measure is being a good person, and by being good one can have a positive influence in a variety of areas of life and, one hopes, a positive influence on the lives of others.

SAHMs who have had the privilege of elite educations and degrees are contributing to society if they raise their children well (an Ivy degree does not mean you're going to be a great mom), BUT not as much as those who manage to raise their children well and have a positive influence in the workforce. The difference between the two groups becomes more noticeable as we age and enter our professional "primes" in our 50s and 60s.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, well, I'll just be candid: I'd be pissed if I shelled out a small fortune for my kid's education and they decide to stay home and be a housewife/husband. And don't give me all this crap about how a great education makes for a better mom; you don't need THAT great an education to raise children well. Seriously.

Just let them know beforehand that your tuition payments are 100% conditional on them working outside the home and everything that entails. If my parents offered me tuition money contingent upon me doing what they wanted me to do as an adult, I hope I'd have the good sense to say "no thanks."

What that PP needs is a legally binding contract with her kids so that she can recover the tuition and damages if they fail to make her tuition payments worthwhile in her view by working outside the house. Oops -- children by law can't enter into contracts because they are not deemed to have the necessary judgment. Too bad.

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, well, I'll just be candid: I'd be pissed if I shelled out a small fortune for my kid's education and they decide to stay home and be a housewife/husband. And don't give me all this crap about how a great education makes for a better mom; you don't need THAT great an education to raise children well. Seriously.

Just let them know beforehand that your tuition payments are 100% conditional on them working outside the home and everything that entails. If my parents offered me tuition money contingent upon me doing what they wanted me to do as an adult, I hope I'd have the good sense to say "no thanks."

NP here. Two reactions to prior comments on this thread. I went to Ivy undergrad and a super-prestigious Ivy law school, and now work part-time as a lawyer. With respect to the PP who said she has some guilt about feeling like she is not living up to their potential as a SAHM, I just wanted to commiserate and say that I have the exact same feeling as a PT lawyer. I don't the time/energy/interest to be 100 percent dedicated to my job, so I live in a pretty demoralized place because I still feel like I'm not living up to potential.

For the poster who asked about why it might matter if someone was an Ivy league grad, I obviously don't know what it was like elsewhere, but at my law school there was a constant and tremendous focus on the fact that everyone who graduated could and would be expected to try to change the world, influence law, policy, social justice, history . . . we knew that some of our classmates could be tremendously influential people: presidents, judges, senators, professors, etc, and that created pressure on students generally to be ambitious to achieve professionally in a big way. (That kind of ambition was what got us into that institution in the first place!) We were painfully aware that we'd have opportunities based solely on the fact that we attended this place, and doors owuld be opened based on a name-brand - and thus we wield this power and advantage thoughtfully. As an ardent feminist/former women's studies major, I expected I'd change the world in a major way too! Turns out I can't do that as I struggle to get through the days working PT and feeling like I'm not doing enough at work or at home. And when I get the alumni reports about what people are doing now, it causes some soul-searching about whether I've wasted my potential. I imagine that similar pressure exists elsewhere, at other schools, but it is a near-universal complaint among my school friends who are also struggling with work/life balance.

NP here. Two reactions to prior comments on this thread. I went to Ivy undergrad and a super-prestigious Ivy law school, and now work part-time as a lawyer. With respect to the PP who said she has some guilt about feeling like she is not living up to their potential as a SAHM, I just wanted to commiserate and say that I have the exact same feeling as a PT lawyer. I don't the time/energy/interest to be 100 percent dedicated to my job, so I live in a pretty demoralized place because I still feel like I'm not living up to potential.

For the poster who asked about why it might matter if someone was an Ivy league grad, I obviously don't know what it was like elsewhere, but at my law school there was a constant and tremendous focus on the fact that everyone who graduated could and would be expected to try to change the world, influence law, policy, social justice, history . . . we knew that some of our classmates could be tremendously influential people: presidents, judges, senators, professors, etc, and that created pressure on students generally to be ambitious to achieve professionally in a big way. (That kind of ambition was what got us into that institution in the first place!) We were painfully aware that we'd have opportunities based solely on the fact that we attended this place, and doors owuld be opened based on a name-brand - and thus we wield this power and advantage thoughtfully. As an ardent feminist/former women's studies major, I expected I'd change the world in a major way too! Turns out I can't do that as I struggle to get through the days working PT and feeling like I'm not doing enough at work or at home. And when I get the alumni reports about what people are doing now, it causes some soul-searching about whether I've wasted my potential. I imagine that similar pressure exists elsewhere, at other schools, but it is a near-universal complaint among my school friends who are also struggling with work/life balance.

No need to instigate class warfare every chance you get. And this, from the bourgeois parents of DCUM.

Anonymous wrote:Every SAHM I know at our school has a college degree. Why would any of them feel guilty about staying home no matter where they went to school or how much it cost. Just because I choose a school at 18 - this doesn't define the decisions I want to make at 40 to stay at home with my children.

So the average Jane from northern va community college has the same talents/achievements/potential as the average Jane from Harvard. Clearly there are outliers, but for the most part I'd say that the college/university you attended does say *something* about you. And possibly could mean there is more "opportunity cost" if you decide to leave the working world, even temporarily. No need to get reverse snotty about it.